In the Kitchen with Sluggy

I've been trying to use/use up stuff around the house here when making meals as most of us are having to do during this "Stay Home" time.
And only going to the grocery store or having Hubs go for me to the big stores once a week or less has led to some other challenges.

Hubs went to Weis(PMITA)Markets 2 weeks ago now and he decided to get himself some bananas to put on his cereal in the morning.  So he brought home a bunch of about 28 bananas.
He has/had no clue that these will not all get eaten before they go bad. A ripe banana(and he didn't buy green unripe ones)will last up to 1 week in most circumstances.
Now I am not a big fan of banana bread so the thought of having to make 40 loaves of that(and use XX lbs. of flour I didn't want to use too)to use up what he didn't eat wasn't going to fly.  And putting them all into the freezer for smoothies would work if A-I had that much room in the freezer and B-if anyone here liked/drank smoothies.....so that was out.

I went into the pantry and found 2 boxes of banana creme pudding mix and a box of Nilla wafers(except the Nillas were lemon flavored).  The cookies weren't lemony enough to not use them to make Banana Pudding(but I had Danish Butter Cookies in a tin I could sub if needed)so that's what happened here late last week.  I sacrificed 4 cups of milk to the dish and voila!, Banana Pudding.....

Going to the Restaurant Supply store meant I had to buy this many scallions instead of a small bunch at a grocery store(which didn't have any).......

That was 2.5 POUNDS of scallions! Plus they were quite large to begin with.  So I've been chopping them up as my hands allow me to and putting them into quart sized baggies and throwing those into the freezer..........

And I've been subbing scallions in for some dishes I usually put yellow onions in because my body is not liking yellow onions very much these days.  I can tolerate scallions better than reg. onions so far.

After seeing how much we were spending on take-out Chinese I decided to try my hand at one dish I've never made before-Sweet and Sour Chicken.
We have a deep fryer that daughter left here and I have a killer recipe for tempura batter(1 Cup of Flour to 1 Tablespoon Corn Starch plus salt/pepper and add Seltzer water until it's a slightly runny batter).

Then I found a very good recipe for Sweet and Sour Sauce online HERE.

1 Cup Pineapple Juice
3/4 Cup Brown Sugar *You can use low sugar substitutes here-see recipe online.
1/3 Cup Rice Vinegar
3 TB Ketchup
2 TB Soy Sauce
1.5 TB Cornstarch in 1 TB water to make a slurry

Add, mix and boil the first 5 ingredients, then add the slurry slowly, wisking the whole time so it doesn't clump up.
Boil a bit longer until the sauce thickens up.
You can add some red food coloring if you want it the atomic red color from the restaurants(just a couple of drops though).

This Sauce recipe can be doubled, tripled, etc.  It lasts for about 2 weeks in the fridge(if you don't eat it all before then lol).
It really does taste just like what you get at the Chinese restaurant but I like that you can control what does in it(and there are no preservatives).  Plus it's not hard to make.

So I made Sweet and Sour Chicken.  Sorry I forgot to take a photo of that.
And this Sweet and Sour Sauce is also a vital ingredient in the Sizzling Rice Soup I make so I made extra sauce and made a pot of this soup too.

Since we had leftover tempura Chicken I also made myself this for lunch one day.............

It's Chicken in Plum Sauce.
There use to be a restaurant near where my mother and brother lived we'd frequent before Hubs and I had kids.  We'd go there and they had this dish on the menu.  I have never seen it at another Chinese restaurant since.
It's just the Tempura Chicken pieces like in a Sweet and Sour Chicken dish but instead of SandS sauce you pour over a Plum Sauce(which I just happened to have in my stockpile), add scallions(I gots LOADS of those now!lol)and Walnut pieces.  You could serve over rice, add veggies like  broccoli too if you want.
It's so good. ;-)

I've been making a dent in the list of meals I had the ingredients for of a few weeks ago...............

Now here's what's left.....

I added 4 more meals too and quite a few are scratched off.
I've still got 17 dinners to get through on this list which will put us well into May.

My mom grew up in rural Southern Virginia.  She grew up eating all sorts of dishes y'all modern folks, even y'all Southern modern folks don't/won't eat nowadays.  Things like tomato pudding, eggs with calves brains, tom thumb(an Eastern NC sausage), spoon bread, chitlins, pickled pig's feet, salt on your watermelon and cantaloupe, and a dessert that was essentially a leaf of iceberg lettuce with a pineapple ring sitting on top upon which was placed a slice of processed(from a wrapper)American cheese and a big dollop of mayo.  Good eats, right?
And as a kid I ate all these strange old timey concoctions she served.

But there is one Southern dish I had never eaten or heard of until last week......
A Georgia Cracker Salad.

Paula Deen is doing a series of Quarantine Cooking videos on YouTube.  I'm not sure why she calls this Quarantine Cooking other than it's cooking at home when you can't go anywhere. lol  Maybe it's recipes using stuff you have in your house?.....I don't know.

Anyway I watched this video and now I can't wait until I can get a homegrown tomato to try this(which will be around August here!).
It sounds nasty to me, and a waste of a good tomato you could make into a lovely tomato sandwich but what the heck!  If I've got saltines, mayo and a tomato I'll give anything a try at least once.





Any interesting food adventures at your house lately?
Have you had or would you try the Georgia Cracker Salad?


Sluggy