Eat from the Pantry: The Homestretch

Well, the finish line on the Eat from The Pantry Challenge is here. This week was much better than last week. Taking two nights off last week by ordering pizza one night and taking advantage of the bonus free meal from Chipotle helped improve my attitude.

This week we had some great meals, and I tried a new recipe for potatoes that I LOVED! (I'm sharing it below, don't worry.) I also made classic scalloped potatoes and ham (leftover from I don't even know when) that were delish as always. We even fed company on Sunday when we had friends over to watch the football game.

Here's our supper menu from the rest of the week. Again, we ate leftovers for lunches, with the occasional scrambled egg or peanut butter sandwich for me when there weren't enough leftovers for two. As a bonus for you, I previously posted three of these recipes, and the links are included below.

Sunday - Jambalaya, garlic bread and snap peas with dip.

Monday - Steak bites, crash hot potatoes, spinach salad

Tuesday - Leftover jambalaya, steak and potatoes with veggies/salad

Wednesday - Scalloped potatoes and ham, spinach salad

Thursday - Homemade cream of tomato soup, fish sticks, green beans

Friday - White chicken chili, salad

Saturday - Chinese takeout

We got the week off to a great start when I found some steak in the freezer and was able to make steak bites, one of our favorite treats. The recipe has only two ingredients: steak and butter.

See why it has to be a treat and not a regular on our dinner table?

The recipe comes from The Pioneer Woman. You can find it here. Enter her site forewarned that her food is amazing, but she cooks for hard-working ranchers, so it's not exactly low-calorie. Of course, that's why it's amazing.

Combine it with her Crash Hot Potatoes, which are incredibly easy and completely delicious, add a little veg and you've got a meal fit for a king. Or the WBH.

Crash Hot Potatoes are basically new potatoes boiled then "crashed" with your potato masher, brushed with olive oil and seasoned. I only had regular baking potatoes, so I cut them in half or thirds to make them a little smaller. The Pioneer Woman uses fresh rosemary. I used dried chives from the cupboard. All good.

Stick those beauties in a super hot oven and they come out all crispy and oh, my. Yum. I'm salivating on my keyboard. You can find the recipe here.

Again, I am not responsible for any weight you might gain just from looking at The Pioneer Woman's recipes.

I did have to buy groceries again this week. You know, what with all the milk consumption that goes on in my house and the need for well-rounded meals.

Total groceries purchased: $53.29

I bought fresh spinach, grapes, bananas, 6 gallons of milk, 8 cans of fruit, a loaf of bread, snap peas, hot dogs, avocados, bell pepper, blueberries, a pint of half and half, and veggie dip for our meal with company.

I am not including in this total the orange juice I bought because I started a cold. That's medicinal. Or the ice cream I bought to assuage the WBH. What's the point of saving money on groceries only to spend it on a divorce? If you must include those two items, my total comes to $58.97.

Which makes my grand total for groceries this month $123.90.

(Or $129.58, if you MUST hold the o.j. and ice cream against me.)

Either way, we came in well below our average monthly grocery budget of $425 and easily met the goal of saving $200 for college funds. And I still have meat in the freezer, rice, pasta, some canned fruits and veggies on the shelves, frozen veggies and all kinds of other staples. The shelves are not bare, so I will not have to go out and spend my nearly $300 in savings to restock.

I do have lots of space in the freezer to stock up on good deals, and I have a list of things I still need to use up. I hope to try some new recipes to get rid of the last few odds and ends. Only now I'll be able to but a few ingredients to experiment with!

I learned two big things in doing this. One, I need to keep better track of what's in my freezer and on my shelves and challenge myself to use things up. Bargains are only bargains if they get eaten and don't languish in the bottom of the freezer until they are past the point of no return.

Two, I am a 64-color-crayon kind of gal. That is, I felt very limited by not being able to go out and buy a few ingredients here and there. An extra $20-$30 would have really freed me up to try some new recipes while still using up much of what I had on hand. I will probably do just that in the next few weeks to use up a few more things, which will still save us money on groceries, but will be a lot more fun.

Hope you enjoyed this little foray through my pantry!

© Trippin' Mama 2010

Cooker's Block

It's week three of the Eat from the Pantry Challenge, and it's a bit like getting to the halfway point in a marathon -- you can feel the burn, but the real challenge is mental.

It's been tough to be creative this week. A big reason I took on this challenge was simply to use up things that need to be used up, like a Chicken Helper that I bought, God only knows why. I assume it was practically free. If not, it was a lapse in judgment for sure. Then there's the cod and the venison.

It's good to get these things used up and out of my freezer and cupboards before they go bad (though I'm certain that "Helpers" never go bad) and have to be thrown away. But it would be a whole lot easier to be creative if I hadn't limited myself and was buying ingredients, like sour cream and mushrooms. Sour cream and mushrooms can do a lot of good in this world.

Since we started the challenge, we have not eaten out, but this week it was time. I was out of ideas and pizza sounded like the perfect solution. So we ordered pizza for Friday night's supper. Then today when we took the kids to the local Y to burn off some energy, they had coupons from the local Chipotle for a free burrito. Score!

So here's this week's supper menu:
Sunday: Chicken corn chowder
Monday: Chicken pot pie
Tuesday: Salisbury steak (combo of venison and hamburger, not bad!), potatoes, carrots and peas
Wednesday: Pork stir fry (using the Chicken Helper box mix)
Thursday: Baked cod with green beans
Friday: Pizza (carry-out)
Saturday: Chipotle burritos (free!)

We ate leftovers for lunch and our usual cereal and toast for breakfast.

Total groceries purchased: $53.18

Just like last week, I did buy produce, some staples and a few things to round out meals. I bought four gallons of milk, cottage cheese, cheddar cheese, hot dogs, two loaves of bread (Yes, I bought instead of baked.), three dozen eggs, bananas, blueberries, sweet potatoes, pears, mandarin oranges, cinnamon graham crackers, and chicken bouillon.

That brings our total grocery spending for the month to $70.61. Not bad at all!

We are not done buying groceries for the month, since I've got only half a gallon of milk left in the refrigerator, which won't get us through tomorrow.

If I buy a cow it won't count as groceries, right?

The Cupboard's Not Bare Yet

We just finished week two of the Eat from the Pantry Challenge. It hasn't been too tough yet, which probably means I keep way too much on hand.

I was able to use up a tuna noodle "helper" that I don't even know why I bought. I suppose because it would be fast and easy. But they aren't that tasty, so I turned it into a tuna noodle casserole that was MUCH better than the original "helper" meal. All of the meat and the homemade tomato soup in my menu (below) came from my freezer.

In addition to the tuna casserole, this week's experiments included making cauliflower cheese soup from a frozen cauliflower with cheese sauce mix and making my own flour tortillas. The soup turned out pretty well, and the tortillas were perfect.

By perfect I mean they were edible, but not so good that I feel compelled to make my own instead of buying them from the store, which is ever so much easier! Oh, and they were all oddly-shaped. The only way I could have made them round was to cut them. But this was more fun, like a Rorschach test on your plate!

Hmmm...they never look this way at the restaurant.

Really, the tortillas were a lot of work. There's a reason Mexican restaurants have those little machines that flatten the tortillas for them. But we had an avocado that I needed to use up and it was really only good for guacamole. With no chips or tortillas on hand, I didn't know what to do for a meal. But I had flour, shortening, baking powder and salt, so I thought I'd try making tortillas. Everyone needs a new challenge once in a while, right?

The tortillas were much better turned into oven baked chips, this week's Pantry Recipe of the Week. I will definitely make these again, but probably from store-bought tortillas. They were tasty, and I like that they have less fat and I can control the salt content or add any other seasonings I want. (Cinnamon and sugar chips, anyone? Yum!) Unlike the tortillas, the chips were fast and easy to make.

Homemade Baked Tortilla Chips (Adapted from http://whatscookingamerica.net/)

Flour tortillas, corn tortillas, and/or wheat tortillas

Olive oil or cooking spray

Seasoning of your choice

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Lay the tortillas out on a cutting board and brush both sides with olive oil or spray with cooking spray. Sprinkle with seasonings of your choice. (Salt, pepper, garlic, cayenne, cinnamon and sugar, etc...) Stack the tortillas in piles of eight. Using a sharp knife or pizza cutter, cut through the pile of tortillas, cutting into 4 equal triangles.

Arrange tortilla triangles in a single layer on baking sheets. Bake for approximately 6 to 7 minutes until crisp, and the edges start to curl and turn lightly brown. Watch the chips carefully after 5 minutes, as they can burn easily. Once the chips are done, remove from the oven to cool. Chips will continue to crisp as they cool.

Here's our supper menu from the rest of the week. Again, we mostly ate leftovers for lunches, except for a couple days when Jeff took sandwiches for lunch instead.

Sunday - Chili with venison, veggies and dip
Monday - Tuna noodle casserole

Tuesday - Tomato soup with grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches

Wednesday - Baked potatoes, cauliflower cheese soup, salmon patties

Thursday - Fish sticks, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables

Friday - Chicken tacos, guacamole, homemade flour tortillas
Saturday - Perkinsville pork with pasta and red sauce, garlic bread, green beans

Total groceries purchased: $17.43

I did have to buy groceries this week just to keep the kids in milk and get some fruit and vegetables. I bought milk, bananas, oranges, canned peaches, avocados, sweet potatoes, and one loaf of bread. The milk at $2 a gallon for 4 gallons was almost 50% of my bill. Still, since my total last week was $0, we're well on our way to meeting our savings goal for the month.

Next week watch for more venison and cod to appear on our menu somewhere, though I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to use them. We also will have the answer to the great "bake or buy" debate over bread. I know how to bake bread. (Thank you 4-H.) I have the ingredients to bake bread. But do I have the time or energy? Stay tuned...

Pantry Recipe of the Week

We are completing Week One of the Eat from the Pantry Challenge. So far, so good. I'm trying to avoid having to do all my experimenting at the end of the month, so I tried a new recipe this week. It was a turkey casserole that used up a stuffing mix I had on hand, and it was pretty tasty.

But it's not the Pantry Recipe of the Week.

I've got one that's even better.

See, the challenge this week was that I have to provide an appetizer for a holiday party we're attending tonight. Fortunately, I still have a few special ingredients on hand because of the holidays, including a can of artichoke hearts. So it was off to supercook.com to see if I could eke out a spinach artichoke dip, since I have some frozen spinach too.

Supercook.com lets you pick what ingredients you have on hand and turns up recipes for you. I like it better than allrecipes.com or any other recipe search I've tried. It pulls in recipes from everywhere, and you can "store" your pantry contents there, so you don't always have to re-enter staple ingredients like butter, flour and milk.

My search turned up several different versions of spinach artichoke dip. I'm not a mayonnaise fan, but I was a little short on the alternative ingredient of cream cheese or sour cream, so I had to do a little substituting. And I substituted my way to a winner. I will never order spinach artichoke dip at a restaurant again. You might not either!

Here's the recipe:

Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip
• 1 (8 ounce) package light cream cheese, softened
• 1 (5.2 ounce) Boursin garlic and herb cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup light sour cream
• 1 (14 ounce) can artichoke hearts, drained, chopped
• 1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, drained and thawed
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

Directions:
Beat cream cheese, Boursin and sour cream with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Add remaining ingredients, mix well.

Spoon into 9-inch pie or quiche dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 20- 25 minutes or until very lightly browned. Serve with pita chips, tortilla chips or veggies.

The Boursin garlic and herb cheese makes this a real knockout. Unless you don't like garlic. And then I'm not sure we can be friends.
 
OK, we can still be friends, but warn me about your aversion to garlic before you come to dinner, would you?

Here's our supper menu from the rest of the week. We ate leftovers for lunches.
 
Sunday - Chicago style spinach pizza
Monday - Turkey pot pie (filling from the freezer), lettuce salad
Tuesday - Roast turkey breast (from freezer), mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans
Wednesday - Leftover turkey and pot pie
Thursday - Corn and Turkey Casserole (leftover turkey, stuffing mix and creamed corn from pantry)
Friday - Wild Rice Soup (leftover turkey, wild rice from pantry)
Saturday - Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip and pita chips to take to the holiday party

Total groceries purchased: $0

You can see that our meals certainly are not suffering during this challenge. At least not yet!

I will have to head to the store next week since we've been out of bananas for 4 days now and I'm nearing the end of my available fruit and milk. Challenge or not, I still have to feeding growing little bodies well-rounded meals!