Online Shopping Reviews:Cooking for One: Learning Food Pairings
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My continuous challenge is to not waste food as I shop and prepare meals for myself only. I used to throw away rotted produce and expired pantry items simply because I forgot about them or didn’t know how to use them. Watching some Food Network shows helps because eventually you pick up on tips and food pairings which you can use to customize your own meals.
Since prices on virtually everything have gone up tremendously, buying produce that is in season is a huge help so that even if you inadvertently neglect to use up all the produce you spent your hardworking money on, you won’t feel too bad about it, aside from the wasted food itself. I watch Sandra Lee and Melissa D’Arabian’s shows for wonderful money-saving tips.
Cooking is a discipline all by itself, and when you have a fulltime job and other responsibilities, it’s a challenge to come up with recipes designed for one person that may or may not leave you with leftovers. What I have found helpful is knowing certain food pairings that can be used to create lunches and dinners with the foods you have sitting in the pantry or in the freezer or those about to expire in the refrigerator.
For instance, let’s take that bottle of balsamic vinegar that has been sitting in your pantry for longer than you can remember. It can be used in salads or as a reduction in a sauce; with strawberries, pears, orange or as a mozzarella/tomato/basil topping.
Other food pairings include fresh spinach salad with a citrus fruit, such as grapefruit; tuna steaks (buy them frozen at the supermarket) and avocado with Asian sauces (use that aging soy sauce bottle in your fridge); bacon with scallops, and so on.
Once you learn a decent set of food pairings, you can create your own recipes or feel more confident about simply cooking a meal with what you have on hand. So go ahead and take an inventory of your current food items, bring to the forefront what’s about to expire, and see if you can come up with a meal around that food.
Google the food or search for it on a recipe site, and see what recipes come up. And if you don’t have all the ingredients for that recipe, try customizing it with subsitutions. Use up what you have before buying more stuff. It’s fun to see what you can come up with, it unleashes some creativity in an area where you probably don’t give yourself much leeway, and you are taking care of yourself which is important.
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