Mother Hubbard's Paté

Bulk cooking is a wonderfully stretchy way of dealing with food. It's often a time stretcher and a money saver when we find larger quantities at better prices. Remember the BOUNCING BEANS from my last post? Well, they just keep bouncing into my mind and onto our plates in all sorts of wonderful disguises. 


After an absolutely delicious meal of Busting Butt Baked Beans, followed the next day by a hearty, yummy BEAN SOUP, I opened the fridge this evening to see a container of fat white beans just waiting to be made into MOTHER HUBBARD'S PATé for tomorrow's lunch.


So, while making supper this evening, I popped the beans into my food processor and whizzed them into a paté along with:
- a large dash of balsamic vinegar (normal vinegar or lemon juice would work just as well)
- a good measure of salt
- generous sprinklings of ground coriander and cumin
- and enough olive oil to make a spreadable consistency 


Tomorrow I will garnish it lavishly with fresh coriander leaves from my garden, and serve it on bread with some garden salad leaves.


Cooking a little extra of something when I am already busy in the kitchen is a TIME TAMING TECHNIQUE, and a way of blessing myself the next day with one less meal to prepare. It also miraculously converts what would have been two loads of dish washing into just one. 


This recipe was devised last month, during a no-shopping-pact time when my resources were rather lean and in need of some serious stretching. Nothing sparks my resourcefulness more than this sort of a challenge. I was in the mood for hummus, but had no chickpeas, nor garlic, nor lemons, nor tahini...... so I made a plan.... and it worked really well. My family gobbled it up, squabbling over the last blobs in the dish. 

Just a last word on that ground coriander. Last Summer I was dismayed to find the coriander in my veggie patch going to seed rather too quickly for my liking. But, in an Elastic Mom moment, I gathered as many of the dried seeds as I could, and they have supplied me with more ground coriander than I could use for the rest of the year. They also seeded themselves all over my veggie garden and have been supplying me with fresh leaves since early in Spring. 


Happily, the beans are still bouncing along merrily, feeding my family on the sniff of a pepper pot. I still have one frozen portion to cook, but that will have to wait. I wouldn't want to overdo the bean thing. And besides, the first marrows of the season have arrived.