aqua fortis

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Canned Goods I Can't Live Without

I find this somewhat disturbing.

Hey, that almost sounded like clickbait. Oh, you clicked it? Read and weep, suckers.

Why the random topic? Who knows? Why not? I'm posting this for no real reason at all other than, if I don't, this blog will languish quietly into sweet oblivion. So, basically, no reason whatsoever. Just like 99% of all blog posts ever written. Whoops, did I say that out loud??

Actually, I feel like I am somewhat of an expert on the topic of pointless daily web content, having been an early provider of such in the prehistoric stone age of the internet. (I mean PREHISTORIC. You have to look on the Internet Wayback Machine to find it.) So maybe I DID say that out loud.

Okay, so yeah: I decided to make a list of the canned goods I like to have in my pantry (and by "pantry" I mean a cabinet of inadequate size and an ancillary shelving unit in my office) at all times, thus providing you with an unsolicited and thoroughly pointless glimpse into my daily life vis-à-vis my cooking tastes.

  • Canned, diced tomatoes. Totally indispensable for chili, pasta sauces, curries, stews, soups, whatever.
  • Chicken broth (technically in a carton, but I'm listing it here anyway). See above. Rob likes to cook it with ramen noodles.
  • Two, if not three, of the following kinds of canned beans: kidney, black, pinto, garbanzo. Chili! Tostada salads! Minestrone soup! Bean dips of a multitude of varieties!
  • Tomato sauce. We really do make a lot of pasta.
  • Tuna. Which is actually for the cats, mostly.
  • Beer. I guess that's not really a food. Nor is the extensive amount of diet soda in a can.
  • Canned goods I occasionally stock: corn (in the off season), Ortega chiles, tomato paste, pineapple chunks, water chestnuts, coconut milk.

I'm sure there are a few others I'm missing, and I didn't include rarer purchases like beef broth or bamboo shoots, or weird shit that is on our shelves for reasons I can't remember like conch meat and a can of chipotles, but that's the majority of it right there. Bully for you!

I suppose if you want you can weigh in on your favorite indispensable canned goods in the comments, if you are one of the select* (*possibly tiny) group of people reading this. I know some of you probably have different and exciting canned goods. Go nuts. (Oh. I do also stock cans of nuts. Almonds, usually...)

4 comments:

David T. Macknet said...

You're missing Hominy. You need Hominy to make awesome tortilla soup. You should incorporate that into your canned goods. Also, of course, dried beans make way better-tasting meals than canned, but hey, sometimes you don't have time.

tanita✿davis said...

...water chestnuts.
IDK what to do with those. And the texture... kinda crunch yet wet? Disturbs me!!! And yet, I feel like I'm missing something because Other People eat them. Ditto lychee. I keep trying to like them...

We actually do a lot of jars, and have a chest freezer, but we always have tomatoes, kidney beans, black beans, and (in a jar) artichoke hearts. We make our own pinto beans from dry. And yes, there are the ginormous cans of hominy...

We are so Californian it's painful.

Sarah Stevenson said...

I know, we are all such Californians. :D Water chestnuts, I put in various Chinese dishes, usually stir-fry. (I buy the sliced kind.) Also, they're my mom's secret ingredient in Thanksgiving stuffing--diced very fine, they give it a nice crunch. Guess the secret's out!

Sadly, I don't usually plan far enough ahead to do the dried beans. I do use various sorts of lentils dried, but those rehydrate so much faster, so I can do lentil soup or dal on the spur of the moment, sorta.

For me, I learned to love lychees because of 1) fresh lychees (which are amazing, but harder to find) and 2) lychee jellies (which are addictive...)

I don't make tortilla soup as often as I should, but maybe if I stocked hominy I would. :D We do usually have the corn tortillas and other ingredients on hand. *runs for shopping list*

David T. Macknet said...

If you can get the pintos into a slow cooker by 10:00 a.m. then they'll be ready for dinner. If you do maybe 3-4 cups dried then you'll have them in the refrigerator or freezer for when you want them. :) I put some on just this morning at maybe 9:00, so Mexican-ish food for dinner tonight!