How to Make Vegetable Stew

How often do you get to enjoy a poem while making dinner?  

Recently I was at a family wake, saying goodbye to our beloved Uncle Bill.  Family and friends gathered and chatted quietly – a somber scene, but also one with lots of hugs and promises to keep in touch in good times as well as sad or difficult moments.  As the winter afternoon turned into dusk and the crowd thinned, we said our goodbyes and made plans for dinner. 

Cousin Pat mentioned that she was going home to make vegetable stew.  Pat is one of my favorite people in the world, not to mention the source of my favorite soda bread recipe, so my ears perked up.  At that moment, I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than a steaming bowl of comfort.  

I asked her for the vegetable stew recipe and Pat obliged, but warned me that it wasn’t an ordinary listing of ingredients and directions; rather, it’s a poem she wrote.  Last week, I printed the poem (off the email she sent me), took a look into my refrigerator, and made my own version.  It was indeed a wonderful experience – rather liberating to set aside the measuring cups and scales – and a tasty result.  This vegetable stew can be either the main course or a side dish and it's great reheated as leftovers.

Your ingredients may differ and so may your timing, but that’s the joy of this dish.  Enjoy your creation, especially if you share it with folks you love. 

How to Make Vegetable Stew

by Pat Brisson

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The Dilemma – What to Do with Thanksgiving Leftovers?

I love leftovers, sometimes even more than freshly cooked food.  Sure Thanksgiving is nice, but our annual Friday-after-Thanksgiving-leftover-feast and the sandwiches all weekend long were at least as good as the holiday dinner. 

Then came that inevitable moment of reckoning.  Last night I inventoried the remaining pieces of meat, the turkey carcass (even the word sounds like you should immediately get rid of it), and multiple containers of stuffing and cranberry sauce, not to mention the bits of pie.  I bet similar moments of truth have been happening in households all over the U.S. as refrigerators are whipped back into shape for another workweek. 

Like a good drill sargent, I pitched, transformed, or froze much of what was left.  Both the refrigerator and I heaved a sigh of relief as we moved out of Thanksgiving mode.  We do have the memories though, along with a few leftover treats.

The best guide for saving, using, and freezing leftover Thanksgiving fare is your common sense.  If you have a moment’s hesitation when deciding whether to keep leftovers, listen to the little voice in the back of your head saying “throw it out.”  Although none of us likes to waste food, the solution is not to serve food that isn’t safe.  And for those moments when the little voice doesn't guide you, here are a few tips:

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Applesauce Walnut Muffins

When I saw leftover applesauce in my refrigerator, my thoughts turned to applesauce muffins. It seemed like a good idea, but within a few minutes I realized that this was not a well trod path.  I couldn’t find a recipe in any of my cookbooks or online for applesauce muffins, nor could I find one that would easily accommodate my key ingredient.  After all, applesauce is not quite liquid or solid, so you can’t easily substitute it for a liquid ingredient like milk, or a solid ingredient like dried fruit or chocolate chips.  

I suppose I could have gone for a banana bread muffin recipe, figuring that mashed bananas and applesauce aren’t too different in texture.  Or I could have taken a cue from Liam, turning my banana bread recipe into muffins with applesauce instead of bananas.  But I was in a more adventurous mood after all that searching through recipes. 

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