Weekend Cooking with Moosewood

My latest adventure is to attempt every recipe in the Moosewood Cookbook.

At first, I was a little perplexed by Katzen's decision to handwrite everything and include her own illustrations.  Wouldn't it be more Kindleizable if it were typed?  Maybe a high-res coffee table book of the end result we are shooting for so we know what's worthwhile to attempt?

But I eventually concluded that this approach made everything much lower stakes and diy friendly.  There was no Gourmet centerfold taunting you with how messy your creation had turned out.  Everything felt a bit more experimental-- no celery?  that's cool, carry on and see how it turns out.  If you mess up, you're not "wasting" food, you're getting the cheapest cooking training ever from a self-taught pro.  Plus the ease of use features won me over.

• For containing 254 recipes, most draw from a pretty limited set of ingredients which are available even in streamlined SKU grocery stores like Trader Joe's.  Spares you a gianormous, expensive shopping list and gives you a lot of options for cooking leftovers.  
• Ingredients listed in the order you add them in, so you've got a built-in progress bar and don't forget to add some critical ingredient because you were skipping the instructions 
• Optional ingredients and garnish called out as such explicitly
• Requisite skills limited to chopping, boiling, sauteing, stirring

I'm about 6% underway, so if you want to join, there is plenty of time to catch up.  Here are some tips I discovered on the way.

**recipe selection**

1. Lunchables.  It is unrealistic to expect that you will be game for novel cooking adventures after a 14 hour day at the office.  It is also completely unrealistic to expect you will be game for eating any let alone a healthy lunch during your 14 hour day at the office. I found myself gravitating towards soups I could bottle up and reheat at work.  
2. Risk portfolio.  You want to make a couple things so if one is inedible or you're not excited to eat it two days in a row, you don't completely abandon the experiment.  That said, you don't want to pick stuff that you can't parallel process or which require small amounts of entirely different ingredients which are only sold by the bushel.  I usually pick a "comfort food" which I know I'll eat (i.e. Split Pea Soup), a "this ingredient languishing in my fridge, cabinet, counter forever" dish (i.e. Mushroom Barley Soup), some adventurous new hotness which might later graduate to one of the 2 prior categories (i.e. Lentil Walnut Burgers), some easy garnish so that if everything else is a wash, I still feel a sense of accomplishment (i.e. Berry Sauce).  

**shopping list**

• Recipes and their corresponding page number on the top half.  You can fold this part over and forget about it unless you can't find an item and need to see which recipes are impacted. 
• Missing ingredients and the recipe #s which call for them on the bottom half (notice 4 call for onions!)
• Tick marks or other indications of quantity next to them
• Miscellaneous ingredients for other projects/staples on the perimeter like the pre/after thoughts that they are (in this case diy pickles and gladware seedling pots... 5 recipes above required a combined 8 ingredients)
• If it's Saturday, take this to the farmer's market first and see if you can knock the produce items off locally.  Free advertising for Dripstop coffee also available at my Farmer's market.
• If it's a pretty straight-forward list, take it to TJ's for everything else
• If there are semi-obscure spices, oils, etc. (usually misc. additions, not Moosewood) take it to an Albertson's or Ralph's that have more selection.

**Mis en Garde**

Many lessons learned here.

• Tiny $1-$2 spice boxes you get in the grocery > giant sack of paprika you buy on Amazon... unless you really go through a lot of paprika.
• Tiny containers with magnets super glued to the back keep spice in line of sight and encourage you to experiment with it... however, these aren't exactly dark and airtight ideal storage spaces -- in fact, I think I've applied more spice to the floor than to food because of the loose caps.  Work in progress.
• Spices arranged roughly by geographic location.  Hypothetically, I think if I compartmentalized every herb/spice, I should be able to grab a set from a proximal region and end up with authentic Mediterranean/Middle Eastern/Asian/South American/etc cuisine (i.e. garlic, basil, oregano)... more likely brutal if I grabbed all of South America-- chili, cayenne, chili pepper, chipotle...
• Garlic is empty because you will quickly discover it's easier just to buy a bag of peeled garlic on the Moosewood program.  Get a Chef'n Garlic Zoom to save you from endless mincing.  
• Basil, sage, mint, thyme, and cilantro are missing because they are growing outside and are better fresh.    
• Spices (bark, seeds, roots) intensify the longer they're in the mix, so add them first.  Herbs (leaves) can start tasting bitter if cooked too long, so add them towards the finish.  Oh, and if you leave spices in a marinade or sauce, that intensifies over time... so you probably want to eat your Ginger Carrot soup while its fresh unless you anticipate needing to clear your sinuses later.  
• Knives:  Tim Ferriss says real men don't use knife blocks-- bacteria can build up.  I'm conflicted on this because if I leave cutting implements in plain sight, MacGyver reappropriates them for unorthodox uses-- like electrical work, or shellacking the skylights with more roofing tar.  I finally took one of the "good" knives I'd ordered from Amazon out of hiding it from him for the last several months.  He does most of the cooking, so I'm not sure if this affirms my uber witch status or drives home the point that Swiss be damned, we are not chopping firewood with the Victorinox when Belle isn't looking.  It's amazing what you can do with spare magnets from your spice container project.   
• [not pictured] Wide mouth canning jars.  Don't buy these on Amazon because they charge a bundle to make sure they ship without breaking.  Some higher-variety grocery stores and *gulp* Walmart have these for cheap.  I started with the narrow-mouthed ones, because that was all that was stocked on the shelf.  That was dumb.  They are really hard to fill neatly (particularly with boiling hot chunky liquids).  They tend to be "taller" for their proportions, which is all good and well until you want to try canning and realize to cover them with an inch of water you need a very deep pot.