Where I live, food prices vary according to the dates, due to their production, the weather and many other factors. So at home we are attentive to these seasons, and we plan our meals according to these foods. Especially the more nutritious foods, such as eggs, fruits and vegetables to buy and consume them a little more than the others. This has worked well for us to vary foods, learn new recipes and also reduce our expenses.
Currently where we live it is egg season and we have made good use of it, but it is also the season for fruits like watermelon and melon. It's my favorite season because I love the patilla. But we also try to use everything, so we don't accumulate too much garbage, so usually since it's all organic, what we do is that with the waste, like eggshells or fruit shells, we grind them up and add them to our plants as compost.
However, recently I saw on the internet that with some parts of certain fruits we can make candies and so on, so as it is the season of patilla where I live and we had bought some, I wanted to try it with it. The patilla being such a big fruit takes up a lot of space in the bags when we throw them away or it is even a little bit problematic to crush them because of their size, so I remembered a recipe I saw some time ago somewhere and I wanted to pre-cook it.
Generally we eat the red part of the sweet potato and there is a white rim that we leave behind because it doesn't have much flavor or sweetness. Well, the candy is made with this part of the patilla, the part that is usually thrown away. So, thinking about this I decided to use it this time, and turn this part also into something useful, after all it is still fruit. The result was super good, it was a delicious dessert to share.
I only removed the shell and chopped the peeled pieces into small squares. So that it would not fall apart when cooked, I left it soaking in water with baking soda overnight and the next morning I rinsed it very well. Then I cooked it with water and enough sugar until it starts to caramelize, but not too much to harden, it just takes a brown color, but it doesn't taste like caramel. Finally we add a few cloves and that's it, it's similar to dulce de lechosa, with a similar flavor.
Although I don't have as much creativity as I would like in the kitchen, I learned one important thing after preparing this recipe, and that is that there are many options we have to take advantage of the food seasons and not waste or at least take out the least amount of garbage. While everything could be turned into food for my plants, there are also other options that can work well from time to time.
Learning how to make things like this is super useful, it can help us develop more creativity in the kitchen and also think of a lot of possibilities not only with food, but also to give use to our old things or learn how to recycle as well. I definitely want to learn other useful ways to use my things and my food.
-Content entirely of my authorship and inspiration.
-Original text in Spanish, translated at DeepL.
-Personal photographs, taken with my Huawei p30 Lite Phone.
-Banners designed in Canva Pro.
