A mother of two busy young girls, she often finds herself time challenged trying to feed her growing family. My kitchen is just made for team cooking, so I offered to help her prepare a few meals for the week when both of our schedules converged on a Saturday afternoon.
A trip to the store with her revealed what is true for many moms. While we had written down "onions" for some of the recipes, she headed for the open bins. But bulk buying (as in a 5 lb bag) would only cost us $1.99. She'd never thought of it that way, and was surprised at how inexpensive it was to buy more rather than less.
It bears repeating that you can compare the prices of things by looking at a tiny number on supermarket shelves which is the price per 100 grams. While shopping for mozzarella, some of the premium varieties were going to cost us anywhere from 3.20 (organic) to .88c (no-name store brand). It's located at the top of the bar code label on the shelf.
No-name store brands aren't for everyone. Many like the prestigious nature of packaging and marketing. But as any insider will tell you, the no-name product is often the same one as the "regular" version, without the additional cost of advertising. The SAME. So for something as generic as mozzarella, I would choose to allocate my dollars elsewhere. (I WISH THEY MADE A NO-NAME DAIYA!!) but I digress again...
When we got the cheese home and were ready to shred it for her lasagna. There was a tiny piece of greyish-ness on one corner of the cheese (probably the beginning of a little bit of mold near the exposed corner where air was trapped). I cut off two inches of cheese and smelled the rest, which was fine. My friend refused to go near the entire brick, and said that she's pretty picky when it comes to cheese and mold. (I love her dearly, but laughed inside when I thought about how cheese essentially IS a bacterial culture similar to mold. People literally go nuts for blue cheese which is mold one can literally see! Even nut cheeses culture this way....) However, I didn't want to force the issue and just tucked it back in the fridge, and we moved on.
But the entire brick of mozzarella was still fine, and I really hate to waste food. So thiis morning, I grabbed a bag of tortillas and sliced the mozzarella in 4 inch by 1/2 inch hunks.
Scoop 2 tablespoons of sauce on one 10 inch, whole wheat tortilla. Centre one slice of mozzarella, and roll it up.
5 minutes later, I had 9 pizza rolls for a snack or lunch for Harrison. I packed each roll into a plastic snack bag, froze 6 of them and left the last two in the fridge.
So, in a rare, non-vegan moment I decided to do a quality check (just to make sure the cheese did actually taste OK), and grilled one for myself on my George Foreman grill. It crisped up on the outside, and the cheese was beautifully melted on the inside. It oozed out like a perfect calzone, and was tidy enough to be hand-held.
Even though my example is pizza, and I've gone out on a limb with the story about the tiny corner of mold, I hope this idea will inspire you to grab some tortillas and make your own version of a quick snack.
White bean puree with sauteed spinach is a great go-to savoury breakfast wrap.
Almond butter with dried cherries and pecans inside?
What about peanut butter with chocolate chips?
Crushed black beans with hot sauce and lime?
The possibilities are easy when they're all wrapped up.
Now that I've had my pizza indulgence, it is time to get back to the kitchen. I have 2 cups of cashews which have soaked overnight, and it's time to make vegan cheese.
Once I add the soy yogurt to the pureed cashews, I'll have to leave it out on my counter for 2 days to "culture" :)
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