Cooking for One

Even though I've had plenty of practise, I'm having a hard time cooking for just me. Take last night, for example. I cooked up brown rice, mixed in some diced carrots, rehydrated TVP, and 1/2 of a cooked pumpkin I mashed with some soymilk and a generous pinch of rubbed sage. I threw the whole thing in a casserole dish and let sit in a 350 oven for about 20 minutes, and voila, dinner. But I made too much. Now the leftovers are sitting in my fridge next to the other pumpkin half, some pasta I made the night before, what's left of my applesauce, some eggs, and 3 miscellaneous jars of preserved something-er-others from my landlord's wife. My teeny-weeny fridge is full.

It's Saturday. It's cold outside (there was a touch of snow earlier this morning). I want to cook, but the fridge can't hold anything else. I'm also having a problem with my oven: it keeps blowing its fuse. I have to keep an eye on the fuse box while I'm baking or else the oven just gets cold. The heater blows its fuse all the time, too. That's a bigger pain because unless I have the fan switched on, I can't tell that the heater has gone off.

To get back to TVP, though...This, surprisingly, is available here. (That's textured vegetable protein for the non-initiated.) I've played around with TVP in creating backpacking meals (see my Idaho Plus post), but I've never taken TVP seriously as an ingredient for use in the home. Until now. I don't really feel confident about buying meat here. Fatty ground beef is widely available, but it sits uncovered in bowls in the deli cases. To be honest, I like my ground beef prepackaged and clean-looking (something the Japanese did a wonderful job of doing). The thought of it sitting around in a vat under a fluorescent light attracting flies doesn't attract me. So when a fellow American up in Pristina said to me, "Hey...have you seen those little packages of dried soy nuggets?" I said, "Oh, you mean TVP?" "Uhh...what's that?" I explained TVP to her and on my next grocery store expedition I found the little soy nuggets, which did indeed turn out to be non-GMO TVP.

Last night was the first night I cooked with the TVP, and it was fine. It blended in quite nicely with the brown rice. I think it will be a suitable protein source and substitute for ground beef (even though I don't usually cook with ground beef). Cooking here will make me more creative. Last night I felt like having a shortcake-type dessert. I mixed about 1/2 C of whole wheat flour (a Macedonia purchase) with 1 t baking powder, 1/4 t baking soda, sprinkles of cardamom and nutmeg, and a bit of liquid yogurt until I had a thick dough. Oh, I had also added vanilla-flavored sugar to the dry mix. I baked in a 350 oven until the top was browning, let it cool a bit, covered it with applesauce, poured a small amount of yogurt on top, and that was dessert. Granted, without the butter it's not really shortcake, but I had the right idea and it actually tasted just fine.

Maybe I'll just think about cooking today, eat my leftovers, and spend the day in the kitchen tomorrow.