Sequestration Meal #693

 

Here we have green leaf lettuce, cucumber slices, olive hummus (recipe from Living Lou), pickled red onions, a tahini sauce I had left over from my tofu and quinoa salad bowls (watered down a bit), leek and herb fritters (recipe from Sneaky Veg), and yellow rice with peas and carrots (recipe from Eat Simple Food).

You've seen many variations on this kind of rice-and-chickpea-flour-fritter meal here, but there's a reason: It's an easy way for me, with pantry staples, to clear out veggies in the fridge. Plus, even in my most averse-to-protein-y times, I will eat anything made with chickpea flour. Also, if you're looking for such a thing, this is a great allergy-friendly option, being free of the top 8 major allergens.

I had intended to go grocery shopping a week ago, but couldn't wrap my mind around it in the face of everything else. Fortunately, I am somewhat resourceful. In the overall using-it-up quest, this didn't contribute much except with respect to the olives. But as I keep reminding myself, even if I am eating down perishables and staples I wouldn't allow myself to be out of altogether, I am at least not buying anything new. And I'm also using what I do have, and getting a greater appreciation for those ingredients.

Leeks need more love. I had the end of a package of leeks and some wilting herbs (cilantro and parsley), so this was a great recipe for using those things up. These were just pan-fried, without nearly so much oil as I would use for pakoras. They worked out great! Not nearly so crispy, perhaps, but still very good.

The kalamata olives were a purchase for that salad you saw Monday, and I am determined to actually use them up deliberately, rather than grabbing an olive to pop in my mouth at random until eventually the jar in the fridge is depleted. And I've always loved olive hummus. I probably added too much water to this one, but it's fine; I'm not going to quibble too much with myself about things like that. It was good with the raw veggies here, and as a dip for the fritters.

Though I have made rice I've liked better, this was still very good rice. Rice and vegetables, I was thinking while I mixed the peas into the finished rice, have always been a go-to comfort food for me. I don't know why that would be, because I don't remember that being something out of my childhood, but I do remember cooking a lot of rice with veggies in my first apartment in college, and maybe that's the distant soothing memory it triggers for me.