september's coming soon

I got Too Good Too Go and had to suffer other people's inexplicable need to gut croissants and fill them with unholy substances like ham and cheese and brie and bacon. The Koreans I might forgive a little because they seem to do a lot of sweet fillings too, but "ham a cheese croissant"? NO MERCY.

The solution was to empty the worst offenders and keep their mutilated husks for breakfast tomorrow, to be enjoyed with home-made cranberry jam and possibly equally home-made yoghurt. Yeah yeah, "why do you sneer at the ham and cheese when you'll be eating them day-old" IT'S ABOUT FOOD WASTE. And because the entire purpose of Too Good To Go is limiting food waste, getting my sliced bread out of the freezer and put the ham-and-cheese into sandwhiches that will go back into the freezer. This however messed up the logistics of eating the rest of the smoked trout and that egg tomorrow, so that went to Monday's lunch, but this then delayed the ham past its expiration date, and that's how I ended up with six days' worth of lunch sandwhiches all ready to be taken out the night before (one with trout).

The cousin to whom I am closest in age would rather die than go through the embarassement of this frugality. But it really is about the food waste, for me. Making yoghurt from expiring milk and re-purposing profane sanwhich fillings won't save the world, but you know - I almost never throw away food. At least I don't help drive the demand for meat because I only buy it from the "expiring date today" bins and chuck it in the freezer.

Fun fact: A depressing amount of my actual interest in Yuri!!! on Ice could, at some point, probably be traced back to its thing for katsudon, since katsudon has been high on my list of exotic food I'd like to try an authentic version of ever since I discovered Cooking With Dog some five years ago



Fact 1: I'm no fan of cooking, and yet I cook my meals from scratch. This because it saves money, but more importantly, because I'll at least know what exactly it is I'm eating.

Fact 2: So I'm not gourmand, which means that 90% of what I cook are varieties of soups or stews that can be made in big quantities and frozen for easy microwaving the upcoming weeks. Soggy vegetables, unbalanced seasoning, weird combination of whatever the hell that was about to expire, that's where it's at. It's not something I serve other people, but my dietary demand is one hot, savoury meal daily and I hate wasting food.

Fact 3: It's a terrible, terrible thing to develop an addiction to youtube cooking channels when you're back to living on student loans in a tiny room with a not exactly well equipped kitchen. I've spent a sad amount of my life going through the archives of Titli's Busy Kitchen, Sorted Food, and this ridiculous cake channel. (my newest discovery is this Swedish thing, which I don't suppose a lot of you'll understand but look at those cakes)

Youtube, having clearly cottoned on to what's happening, has sent me over to Foodwishes, which is okay and all, and I liked the goofy narration. But I never realised why I was watching until this video happened. Now THAT is what cooking is all about.

But secretly I could do with more people doing recipes like this.