Cous Cous Faux-entine.

From pantry:
cous cous
half bag of frozen spinach
5 raisins
10 peanuts
pat of real butter
olive oil
tbsp of parmesan artichoke dressing
one egg
pepper and salt to taste
Purchased Add ons: none
cost today: $0

This is from a rather meager pantry-- about half way through what was in there when i arrived two weeks ago.  Remember the goal is to eat everything in there before i go the the grocery store.  If people go on vacation and give me their perishables it adds to the pantry. If my friend who is in catering brings me back half a lasagne it adds to it and so on.  I am someone who is known to order 50 bucks of food from yummy.com just to avoid going to the store (it's LA that is DRAMA), and eat their prefab sushi and sandwiches and smores which are kind of to die for actually, and I can easily drop 30 on bottled water cool whip and mighty leaf tea.  So this is a real change of attitude for me.  Recession mentality. I also feel like Patsy and Edina when they tried to be poor and ended up blowing six figures because of all the trouble they got into.

Today was east meets west with a spinach/egg/cheese florentine flavor added to moroccan cous cous.  I made a box of cous cous which takes five minutes and a cup of water. When it had puffed up to cous cous size I added 5 raisins which I have been rationing from the one box i had in the pantry, to throw on top of salads and whatnot, and 10 peanuts from a jar that some subletter left here this summer. There are about 30 peanuts left as well as the peanut dust which i am going to put in a sauce. This is pantry raid people, we use EVERYTHING.  Then I made the bold move of cooking up the half bag of frozen spinach that was in the freezer-- again I think left over from some errant subletter.  I seasoned with pepper and salt and a pat of real irish butter that kristen likes to eat when she visits (i myself am a margerine girl) I immediately put half to couscous and half the spinach in tupperware.  Then I set the spinach on top of the cous cous (and raisins and peanuts) and poured on some Annies artichoke and parmesan dressing which sits in the door of my fridge for when mysoy free gluten free friends visit.  Remembering that on Top Chef people like to put an egg over easy on things and break the yolk for texture I cooked one egg in the spinach pan in some olive oil, flipped it and then put it on top of the spinach and cous cous. Broke the yolk let it mix with the sauce and couscous and greenery.  I have to tell you it tasted pretty freaking delicious. It reminded me of those hippy restuarants like Juice For Life in Toronto and Real Food Daily in Los Angeles where they make rice bowls and just kinda mash on textures and vegetables and usually some version of tahini and it tastes healthy and sort of like dirt.  And all the wait staff are white people with dreadlocks who leave a waft of patchouli and cayenne pepper as they swish past your table in their hemp clothes.  It's a style and i like it sometimes. Mine had a kind of moroccan flair from the raisin peanut cous cous action with a florentine french twist from the egg and spinach.