Big pot of food

Every once in a while I make a large quantity of food, enjoy it for a few days, and then get sick of eating it. I am not one to waste, so I instead improvise and create a big pot of food, including this previously made dish, with a variety of other food stuff, so as to change the flavor enough so I can resume enjoying the content. A little while back I made a very nice black beans dish which, after realizing that eating any non-trivial amount caused excess expulsion of gas, I abandoned eating. On Wednesday I resolved to turn this fart food into something I could eat safely (by amply diluting the beans with other material). Thus was born my most recent big pot of food.

Most people, I imagine, have the experience of food accruing in the fridge, without any clear destination. In addition to my black beans, I had some odds and ends of vegetables, an old cheese rind, and two Yuenging Light beers (I mistakenly bought these rather than regular ones and immediately regretted it). The key rule in this game is to cook stuff for a while and too be careful about overloading with flavors. When I started out I was unsure whether I was making a soup or what. After chopping the veggies and adding the beer, plus a little cider and cider vinegar, I determined that make this a full meal in its self. So I added some pearl barley and threw in the cheese rind.

A thought crossed my mind, somewhere after the cheese rind began to cook into the mixture -- if I made a soup, how would I be able to bring it to my office? I have never invested in a soup carrying device, so this would be utterly impossible. What happened next, I can not alone take credit for --- I am but acting as any one would who stands on the shoulders of food giants. I decided that to both thicken up the mixture and to improve the nutrients, I would add an ample amount of oatmeal and cook it until the oatmeal was totally broken down. The result was thick enough to be stored and brought to NYU. The oatmeal made for a really nice thick sauce which carried the flavors quiet well.

I will need to keep this in mind as a good way to thicken a soup (just be sure to cook it enough that it fully breaks apart).