Amazing Meals From The Pantry #8

 

I started off the month midway through a two month pantry challenge and excited to try something a little different for me by using Gemini AI and telling it I had only $20 and to come up with 14 meals to feed myself.  At Fred Meyer (Kroger).  One of our highest priced grocery stores.  And.  I don’t like lentils.  It came up with a great list of food items plus a nice menu, but it was a little carb heavy for my liking so I decided to open up an Excel spreadsheet and see if I could tweak it a bit to make it better and I think I did pretty darn good.  I checked all of the prices to make sure I stayed on budget and came up with four solid meals with enough leftovers to carry me through the week and used that to do a meal prep and restock my freezer.  It was FUN!

 

Instead of actually going to Fred Meyer and plunking down a $20 bill I shopped my shelves and deep freezer to come up with a pretty identical set of items on the list.  I substituted cabbage and spinach from my crisper drawer for the head of lettuce since that is what I had and then I put on my apron and got to work.

 

First up was to weigh out a half pound of spaghetti and get that cooking while I used home canned marinara and ground beef plus an eight ounce can of tomato sauce to prepare a delicious spaghetti.  I opted to break the pasta in half so it fits in the meal prep dishes more easily.  In a large pot I combined the marinara sauce with the meat and the tomato sauce and let that simmer while the pasta cooked.  After draining the cooked pasta I added it to the pot of sauce and stirred it all together.  Then I evenly divided the pasta and sauce between four of my meal prep containers as well as twelve ounces of frozen broccoli florets.

 

This looks delicious!

I didn’t even wash the pans I was using as I moved onto the next meals which was to prepare taco meat and some rice bowls.  In the pasta pan I brought two and a half cups of water to a boil and added the rice mix as well as the extra quarter cup of rice and let it simmer over medium heat for five minutes with the lid ajar so it didn’t boil over.  I then turned off the heat and fit the lid on tight and set the timer for another twenty minutes to continue cooking.

 

This made a lot more food than I was expecting

Meanwhile in the larger pot I had simmered the pasta sauce in I cooked up the ground meat and seasoned it with taco seasoning, about a half packet so it didn’t get too salty.  Then I opted to add the black beans to the taco meat to extend it further.  After filling each of four small freezer containers with enough of the meat to make up two tacos I was left with quite a bit of the meat and bean mixture for my rice bowls.

 

Four portions of taco meat - top
Four rice bowls - bottom

When the rice was done I divided it equally into four of my meal prep bowls and then topped each one with the meat mixture.  Once everything had cooled I fitted them all with airtight lids and placed some in the refrigerator to start with right away while the rest went into the freezer for later on in the week.

 

Home canned Split Pea Soup

My final meal was to simply set out two cans of soup to reheat and eat.  You can’t go wrong with canned soups, especially if they are homemade so I chose two of my home canned jars of split pea soup to use for my two soup meals to round out fourteen budget friendly and nutritious meals for less than $20.

 

These portions were surprisingly large

Some for the freezer

What I really enjoyed about this challenge was that Gemini AI was able to quickly and easily get me started.  I could have gone with everything they suggested or I could tweak it to make it suit me better, which is what I did.  As Gemini suggests you can alter it according to sales prices, available digital coupons and of course by using items you may already have on hand to make substitutions or add to it.  For instance if you already have some sour cream or cheese on hand you can enhance the tacos and rice bowls.  If you already have salad dressing you can use some of the lettuce and carrot to make a simple salad.  I found the portions on each of these meals were definitely adequate as well as the nutritional aspects too.  They were also very tasty and satisfying.

 

Some for the fridge

The taco meat portions were so large that I only used half
which allowed me to have even more meals

Start to finish, including clean up, this meal prep took me only one hour.  My plan is to use these meals intermittently between other freezer meals I have and some lower carb meals I want make.  So, what do you think?  Would you use Gemini AI to help you come up with a meal plan and shopping list based on a set dollar amount and the store you want to shop at?  Because you can ask for low carb or gluten free options and also specify what you already have, like I would say I already have eggs on hand, you can really tailor it to your own specific needs.  I think I would totally do this again!