Sequestration Meal #378

 

As I was going through my pantry recently, I found I still had some soba noodles, which really excited me. I absolutely love soba noodles! I got to thinking I wanted to make some sort of sesame sauce for them and found this recipe at Love and Lemons. Although it's fairly obvious I didn't follow the recipe that closely--I'm well into week three of avoiding the grocery store here and  didn't have most of the other ingredients--it was a great springboard for my imagination. I made the sauce exactly as written except for swapping agave for the Truvia nectar, but cut it in half because I was only cooking 4 ounces of soba noodles. I then threw some broccoli and sliced carrot into the pot with the noodles while they boiled, and cooked up some spinach and a scallion. I mixed everything together, decided I wanted a bit more tamari, threw that in, and served it up with sesame seeds and a lime wedge to squeeze over everything. It worked out beautifully, and I loved the sauce--it would go well with a lot of other things, too.

For those finding this via the gluten-free tag: Not all soba noodles are gluten free, but mine are; if they're made entirely with buckwheat flour, yours will be, too. Make sure to check your labels to find out. (Buckwheat is not wheat. It's a confusing name.) Because I used tamari and not soy sauce, I avoided the other possible source of gluten in this meal. (Some soy sauces also are gluten-free; more label-checking will be necessary to find out if yours is or isn't.)

A few thoughts on avoiding the grocery store: Both my physical issues and the pandemic have taught me a lot about what foods can last a while between trips to the market and how to store them. So long as broccoli and scallions are kept in totally airtight conditions, they will generally make it 3-4 weeks, with some trimming here and there. You'll need to eat the florets before the stems, because the florets are what will go bad first. Carrots, of course, will last me what seems like virtually forever (probably more like 3 months, but I don't know, because I eat them faster than that). Bagged spinach, if left sealed, is good for longer than you might think, too, so long as you buy the fully grown kind. Baby spinach turns to slime if you look at it wrong. Citrus fruits, like limes, will dry a bit after a few weeks but are generally still fine to eat and full of flavor.

My typical grocery shopping schedule these days is shorter than it needs to be--usually I go every other week--but I've been thinking about stretching that to three weeks under most circumstances to save gasoline and limit my exposure to other people. It's a hard trade off, because if I go every other week I dash in and out quickly and have less to carry into my apartment (which helps with my physical stuff), but if I go less often, I strain myself less often, and am exposed less often. Plus, if I have that schedule, it's riskier if I am feeling ill and can't go at the usual time and have to stretch it out more. I still have virtually all of the shelf-stable stuff delivered to me from a small handful of stores, though that can be harder in freezing conditions (nobody likes it when jars freeze and break). But going to the store more often makes more sense in the spring and summer, when I'm buying more delicate produce like raspberries and zucchini rather than sturdier things like apples and acorn squash.

I haven't reached any conclusions, but from anecdotal evidence it seems like I go to the store less often than just about everybody anyway. I also know I overthink things at times, but that's just how I'm wired. How often do you do your grocery shopping?