19 February 2018

Today I served vegetables at the dinner line at Record Street, what used to be known as Tent City, but I just call it serving dinner at Record Street. A different group serves dinner every night, and some plan their meals in advance, but we just sort of bring what we make. Some people from my church and those with the other church are a little more organized than I am, and actually have a weekly e-mail about what everyone is bringing, which I've just gotten onto, so now I can feel a little more in the loop. I usually get there late, a testament to my less than stellar planning and organizing skills with cooking. That's actually a good thing, though, since we always run out of food. Tonight I was there on time and noticed I was trying to add my vegetables to their already full plates, but then when I was running out, the food on the plates was scarce.

In any event, I've been thinking about what I could make for next week, when it will certainly be crowded, but I just realized that I actually can't go next week. I could make something up and put it in the church kitchen, however. So I started to look for a cooking blog that is specifically about cooking and serving large groups of people. I found a bunch of youtube channels that mostly seem to be about the fact that people are serving food to the homeless, and less about the actual cooking process. Cooking and preparing a large amount of food can take a goodly amount of time.

Today I went to Costco to buy vegetables. I had originally planned to go to either Winco or Trader Joe's, but had another reason to go Costco, so I figured I could find big bags of veggies there. I got a bag of fresh green beans, a bag of broccoli and a bag of asparagus as well as a bag of frozen corn. Most of this was organic, interestingly enough. I think the asparagus was Green Giant and not organic, and it was really thick, yet cooked down to almost mush, sadly, because I didn't manage the cooking times well. I'm thinking I should probably do the shopping on Saturday, and then figure out how I'm going to cook, reheat or transport on that Monday.

So here is the Costco receipt--I actually used to blog all my Trader Joe's receipts at one point in time. I like having a record of prices. I bought Taylor Farms Organic broccoli florets, $5.99 for 3 lbs,
Fresh Wave organic green beans, trimmed, 2 lbs for $4.99,
JMB farms Asparagus, 2.25 lbs for $4.99,
Watts Brothers organic sweet white corn, frozen, 5 lbs for $5.89,
Earthbound Farms organic baby kale for $4.79,
although I bought that for my daughter and didn't cook that this evening. I also bought some vegan Yakisoba bowls and vegan Don Lee Fiesta bowls as well as a pack of hotdogs for $12.99. There were three packs together, so about 30 beef franks in all.

Generally the food I make is vegan or vegetarian, but after Thanksgiving this year, I asked for donations of turkey carcasses, since I find people do not use their Thanksgiving turkey carcass to the full degree; if you are going to suffer and die to be food, you should be fully utilized in that capacity. I don't want to add to the demand for poultry by purchasing it, but sometimes I do want to make things that include meat, dairy or eggs. Today I made vegetables and I had just purchased a single stick of Organic Valley butter, which was $1.99 at the food coop, and I purchased it for my younger daughter who visited a dietician. The dietician told her margarine was garbage, so I decided I'd get her a stick of butter, which should last for awhile, but it was the only stick I had and it's gone now. I guess she will have to use Earth Balance if she happens to need something like butter. I suppose I could have purchased that at Costco, and I did consider it, but it is in huge quantities.

I didn't start cooking until close to 1:30 pm, and I did the asparagus first, steaming it in the Instant Pot for 3 minutes. I transferred it to a crockpot, and put some raw broccoli florets in on top of it, as well as a cube of vegetable bouillon. I did the green beans next, snapping them into 2 or 3 pieces, also cooking for 2 or 3 minutes along with broccoli florets on top. The broccoli in the Instant Pot became a drab green, but the stuff that was put into the crockpot stayed bright. But then I felt like I needed to fill up the pot, so I added more broccoli, probably about 2 lbs in all. I added some garlic and onion powder too, since I didn't really notice much salt or extra flavoring, even with the bouillon. I also added half a stick of butter to the crockpot. I cooked the 5 lbs of corn in my small stockpot, and added the smaller half of butter to that, along with salt. The broccoli was unevenly cooked, and the asparagus turned to mush, so I might just do it in various pots on the stove if I have to cook a lot of vegetables again soon.

Here is a photo--I'm trying to remember to take more of them so I have a record. If I keep up this new purpose to this blog, then I will post them here. The corn filled about half of my 8 quart stockpot.