But Its a Bargain!

I've gone through the cupboards and I've poked through the freezer. My suspicions were right on target up to a point. I do have very little tomato sauce left, although I still have tomato and celery canned in tomato juice which will work in most chili recipes. As I suspected, I have a lot of applesauce. I'm planning to make some more apple butter and use it in place of the maple syrup I've run out of.
Since we normally only use pure maple syrup this will save us quite a bit and the kids all love it.

My search through the freezer revealed that there are still a great deal of greens in there but there were a few surprises. First, there is quite a bit of frozen strawberries, bananas and pumpkin/squash (I use them interchangeably). Those were the good surprises. Then there was the several containers of tahini.

The tahini dates back to my early days as a member of the food cooperative. I just looked back through my invoices and discovered that I bought 9 pounds of tahini on October 4, 2004 for $18.12. What a bargain, except that I still have at least half of it in the freezer. Aside from making hummus, the occassional batch of uncheese, or the rare occasion some sleepy lunchmaker mistakes it for peanut butter, its just going to sit there.

I dragged out the cookbooks, made a batch of Buffalo Mosterella from Joanne Stepaniak's Uncheese Cookbook and then tinkered around with the recipe for Tahini Sauce in The New McDougall Cookbook. The Buffalo Mosterella (a faux mozzerella) was very good, the tahini sauce was not. With the help of my daughter, Leen, we came up with a much tastier version simply by adding, mixing and tasting over and over again. Here's the recipe for anyone else who finds themselves with unwanted tahini.

Leen's Tahini Sauce
Combine all of the following in a blender:
1 cup tahini
3/4 cup water
1tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup ketchup
2 Tbs tamari
1/2 tsp seasoned salt

Whirl in blender until smooth. Scrape out with rubber scraper. Pour 1/4 cup water into blender and whirl to get most of residue off sides of jar. Pour this into tahini sauce and whisk together. We served this over pasta and green peas, first as a hot dish and then the following day as a leftover cold pasta salad type dish. It was extremely filling and quite good. If you find the sauce is lacking something, try an extra squirt or two of ketchup, it seems to be the magic ingredient.