What I really cook

The pre-vacation edition

Few people are more efficient than a mom about to go on vacation, you know what I mean? 

Later today, my family and I will fly out to southern Spain, so I’ve been trying to buy as few fresh ingredients as possible and use up what I have on hand all week. 

But to kick things off, I embarked on a thorough fridge clean-out, the kind that always has me finding at least one embarrassingly old condiment or container of good intentions. 

After that, I identified the ingredients I needed to use up before the trip else I’d return to more science experiments. 

They included: 

• Heads of slightly wilted escarole and lettuce.

• A half jar of Rao’s marinara sauce.

• Baby turnips I harvested from the garden.

• Snap peas that were still tasty but starting to wrinkle.

• A bunch of cilantro.

• An old lime and half a lemon.

• Slices of orange cheddar cheese.

• A container of crumbled cotija cheese. 

• A loaf of sliced sourdough from Bread Alone. 

So here’s what I did.