frugal ⁽¹⁴⁾

If you have been hanging out, snooping my recipe book for a while, you know that I am all about that capsule kitchen, which means that certain items which are pantry staples for others, are just an additional bit of recipe for me. Such as brown sugar.

Have you ever had colcannon? A St. Patrick's day favorite, colcannon is an Irish potato recipe. [source] At its most essential, the colcannon recipe is mashed potatoes mixed with chopped cabbage or kale. Other additions like bacon, ham, scallions or yellow onions are also common. [source]

Happy St. Patrick's Day. I'm not Christian, but due to the influence that my religion has had on St. Patrick's Day, I like to celebrate it in all of its green and delicious mealed glory. And now so can you!

Since we still haven't yet had the Lantern Festival, I've been craving the tastes of China and Taiwan which my partner cooks always (it is his food culture) but tonight is my night to cook and I know this is a totally Americanized dish, but I've been listening to Code Switch and they claim that it is completely authentic to adapt to new flavors from a Chinese lens, so I'm going with it.

IN SEASON ALERT! It is winter and that means citrus is in season so that means they are cheap and plentiful!

As a person with executive dysfunction, I loathe grating citrus zest. One of the substitutes I like to make is a powdered citrus peel. I make this from the peel of citrus fruits I was otherwise eating anyway, and simply reserve the peel for this extra process. This is a /r/NoScrapLeftBehind kind of #frugal winner.

It is very simple to make: raw (as in not boiled to otherwise cooked) citrus peel (including pith) dehydrated and then ground up in a spice grinder.

Want that in more detail?

Let there be /r/NoScrapLeftBehind with this way to render apple cores and peels into usable jam. Cook it in the Instant Pot for easy cleanup and a generally hands-off experience. And to make it even more NoScrapLeftBehind, try cleaning your Instant Pot's inner pot with just water as a first rinse to get some jam-juice to drink.