My mom insisted on giving me for some emergency a frozen Jennie-O “turkey roast with gravy” that’s been taking up precious space in the freezer for months. Cooked it and no one liked it. I thought it tasted like salty, gelatinous, tan Spam. Well, at least there’s space in the freezer now. What IS it with Jennie-O turkey products? They’re all meh, if not actually bad. Their turkey bacon is disgusting!
I made the Italian Chicken Soup from pioneerwoman.com. It’s lovely. I had to buy celery and a sweetpepper but everything else was stashed away somewhere. It’s lovely. I’ll take a big bowl to my client tomorrow…he’s had pneumonia and maybe this will cheer him.
Used up part of a bag of stale marshmallows to make marshmallow fondant, and then made the fondant into little snowmen for party favours for Gnat’s birthday tomorrow. Win!
Also, making things out of fondant is like playdough. It’s fun.
I won’t be joining in, because the idea of a kitchen not full of enough food to last out a Zombie apocalypse fills me with horror, but I like the idea of being more creative with what you already have in.
I like using frozen soup as a sauce, for… God, I want to say casseroles, but you use that word so differently… Um, layered savoury all-in-one dishes cooked in the oven. Like meat (fake meat in my case), mushrooms or whatever, potatoes or pasta, plus veggies, layered in a casserole dish (by which I mean a deep baking dish) with the soup poured over and stirred in so that it covers all but the very top bit.
It’s actually something I do to use up extra veggies (etc) because it takes almost no effort and tastes sooo good. When I say almost no effort, I mean it, because the soup should already provide all the herbs and flavoursome stuff you’d usually add. And it seems to work a lot better than using it as a soup, even with starchy ones.
I think I have the same issue, which probably accounts for my rather large supply of groceries. I don’t imagine that I’ll ever get down to bare shelves, but it would be nice to have room for more new groceries!
Mostly I’m trying to make room for all the prepared food I want to have on hand for when our twins arrive (in between two weeks and a month).
Tonight, casserole from frozen broccoli, frozen leftover turkey and ham (from Christmas), probably sour cream and cheddar. Sounds like it’ll work and not be bad.
I’m hanging in there! I had a couple of acorn squashes that had bad spots in them…cut out the moldy stuff and nuked the good parts. I’d forgotten how much I like acorn squash!
I’m going to freeze some of the soup I made the other day, just to see how it it when it thaws.
For dinner tonight: leftover fried chicken, the rest of the sqash, soup for those who want it. Leftovers all around!
I’m getting more space.
Tonight we’re going out for Chinese buffet, but tomorrow I’m going to make and freeze smoothies with the strawberries and mango in the big freezer.
I’m gonna make Spaghetti Casserole this week. I have leftover cooked spaghetti and spaghetti sauce with a few meatballs in the freezer. (Frozen separately.) I had bought stuff to make calzones, but I ended up making a pizza, so I have leftover ricotta.
I’ll thaw them out, and layer mozzarella and ricotta in there. It might look weird, but I bet it tastes good!
I’m looking at this as an effort to re-organize, get rid of (or use up) stuff that’s outdated, and rebalance the contents of the cupboard - I mean, I have way too many canned beans compared with our normal eating habits, and due to some changing Christmas plans, WAAAAYYY too much flour, brown sugar, oatmeal and raisins :).
Last night was the second night eating soup made from a dried soup mix we got at a farmers’ market (it was a mix of lentils, peas, rice, noodles, you add meat and veggies). Of course, I went to the farmers’ market Saturday and got 2 big loaves of artisan bread, one of which is in the freezer…
Tonight: ravioli / sauce (we need something quick), but then we have a pork tenderloin when they were on sale last year. That will go in the marinade tonight and we’ll eat off that for a couple of nights. Followed by a whole chicken from a year or so ago.
Then I’m going to hit the freezer in the basement and make sure we’ve cleared out as much old stuff as possible.
THEN we get to restock :D.
Where did all of this soup come from I have dozens of cans of Amy’s soup, and I’ll be cooking for one till May.
I have two fridges for the first time since high school, so while I"ll be cleaning out the pantry I’m going to clean the 2nd fridge and get it going to store lots of frozen meat. My iron is low and I’m just not getting enough protein, period.
I had to go to Sam’s today for dogfood, and the whole time my “Danger! Danger!” radar was warning me away from all the goodies I really, really wanted. Mostly I paid attention, but I did buy huge baking potatoes, onions, bread and a big piece of salmon.
I was sorely tempted by the ready-to-use steak fajita strips…so easy! so yummy! Then I remembered: steaks in the freezer (I buy them on red-tag markdowns and stash them), sweet pepper and onions in the fridge, all the accoutrements available in my own kitchen! Happy day!
So this evening I made up a big panful of fajita filling to use tomorrow, and baked that lovely salmon. Also cooked the last acorn squash. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE acorn squash?!
I got out of Sam’s for under $50, and that included the enormous bag of dogfood. Not too bad, I guess.
Due to an emergency hospital visit, I haven’t made the turkey/broccoli/sour cream thing yet, but I’m planning to make it, and strawberry crumble, tonight.
I’ve got to go to Costco today- we’re nearly out of medical supplies for my kidlet- and I’ve been put on sort-of bedrest, so I’m going to restock on peanut butter sandwich supplies and frozen pizza. Things Mr. Lissar can cook.
I didn’t mean to, but because of a mixup with the bank I made Pantry Pasta Bolognese last night. Was pretty good.
1 lb ground beef --> mine was frozen, so that kind of sucked. But it worked
~1/2 c. yellow bell pepper strips --> again, these were frozen, so I diced them and added them to the pan mid-way through the ground beef defrost
1 onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 14.5 oz. cans diced tomatoes
scant 1/2 cup red wine --> I just poured some in from the glass my husband poured me; I’m not too sure how much really got in there while leaving me some too!
dried oregano
dried basil
salt
pepper
–brown the (hopefully not frozen!) ground beef in a large skillet with peppers and onion
–add the minced garlic and cook for 30 seconds or so
–pour in the tomatoes; don’t drain them
–add the wine and stir
–add the dried spices, then salt and pepper to taste
–simmer for 25 minutes or so or until as thick as you’d like - the taste improves the longer you simmer it
–toss with 1 lb penne cooked al dente, serve sprinkled with a little grated parmesan
Turned out delicious - way better than I’d hoped.
I’ve been thinking of you. I hope all is well.
We finished up some leftovers tonight. Kids will be at Dad’s this weekend so that means less cooking, although I usually make soup or bread on Sundays.
If I can do this for another month I’ll be able to catch up the bills AND clear some more space. (I cannot believe how much stuff I still have…menus haven’t even gotten boring yet!)
We’re fine, the babies inside me are fine, and I’m just going through lists of things that are easy to make and finding volunteers to do some of the heavy housekeeping for the next few weeks. Thanks for thinking of us.
I’m sure I’[ll be in much worse mental shape within the first week after the babies are born. Oh, sleep deprivation…
I SO cooked from my freezer today! I made a big pot of chili using 2 lbs of meat (plus some weird veggie meatballs that I figured I could hide in all that soup), tomatoes from my summer garden, sweet peppers, beans that I’d cooked and frozen (don’t like beans? just pretend you didn’t see that, then.), and more of the succotash I made recently. Added fresh onions, barley, plenty of seasonings, and an unknown large dried pepper I got at the pantry.
Smells divine. It’s solid ice outside, so today’s a good day for chili. On a less-positive note, I’m now out of any kind of tomates and barley.