Making Amazing Meals From The Pantry - #1

 

With all of the holiday baking, cooking and entertaining I had done throughout the holiday season I began the month of January with A LOT of leftovers.  Because people brought things over and didn’t take them back home with them plus what I had made there were loads of odds and ends of things I had squirreled away in the refrigerator and freezer compartment.  There was also still quite a bit of produce and dairy items nearing their end dates.  I knew that I wanted to concentrate on using these things up and get them out of here as soon as possible so nothing ended up getting wasted.  Fortunately the BFF was here to lend me a hand.

 

New Years Day was another holiday meal and we were left with plenty of leftover items to finish off the week.  First up was to make a batch of chocolate pudding on Saturday to use up milk that was nearing its best buy date along with a partial can of evaporated milk leftover from making fudge.  I also had a partial can of whipped cream to top these desserts with.  The two of us polished this deliciousness off in nothing flat and we didn’t feel guilty about it at all.  Done!

 

By Sunday I was ready to get really serious about tackling all of this extra food.  I went through the refrigerator and freezer compartment, took an inventory and pulled out some items I wanted to use up.  I pulled out the end of a loaf of homemade whole wheat bread, a couple eggs, some milk and an open jar of Costco peaches to make French toast for Sunday brunch.  The last of a jar of pear butter was used to top the French Toast.

 

I still had chicken and cranberry sauce left from Thanksgiving and a bunch of open partial bags of vegetables so I did a sheet pan meal.  A partial container of chicken stock in the refrigerator was used to make some gravy.  Since the oven was going I went ahead and added a frozen apple crisp I had put away in the freezer last Fall.  Sunday dinner was a hit and we also used some more of the whipped cream on the crisp.

 

In my ongoing endeavor to remove processed foods from my everyday diet I found four hotdogs and four store bought buns in the freezer.  We decided to eliminate them right away by having them for supper on Monday.  I made a salad with homemade dressing to go along with that meal so we could feel better about eating the hotdogs.  We finished the apple crisp that evening too.

 

Next I used up an open bottle of green salsa, an open container of sour cream beyond its best buy date, some leftover grated cheese  plus more I had pulled from the freeze, and some corn tortillas to make an enchilada casserole, of sorts.  The remainder of the week was spent eating up the leftovers that had accumulated in the refrigerator from the three meals I had made.

For quick brunch type items we polished off the last of the Christmas cinnamon rolls and pumpkin bread along with the citrus and the jar of Costco peaches.  Then I made a loaf of zucchini bread using a packet of grated zucchini and carrot I had put away in the freezer.  It was perfect.

 

The following week I was on my own once again and cooking for only one so I focused on what was in the freezer.  I pulled out a pasta dinner, some beef barley soup and biscuits and a couple beef and bean burritos.  I also ate some leftover enchilada casserole from the week before.

 

Food Waste – From the refrigerator I tossed two partial bottles of store bought salad dressing that had been hanging around way too long into the trash.  I also added a bunch of green onions that had gone slimy as well as a forgotten tomato with a mold spot on it and a few less than stellar mandarin oranges.  After that we really concentrated on eating the fresh produce before we lost anymore.  From the pantry I pulled out the last of the ultra processed food I had in there and although it pained me to get rid of it, it pained me even more to look at the ingredient lists and realize what utter crap I had been storing.  That made it much easier to pull out marinades, barbecue sauces and more salad dressings and a few cans of soup.  Since they were all past their best buy dates I couldn’t donate these items.  I should have done this sooner.

 

Without realizing it I had done an impromptu pantry challenge, but after those two weeks I feel like I have a really good handle on what is going on in my kitchen.  Once all was said and done, I did an inventory and made a solid list of items to buy at the grocery store moving forward.