Cleaning out the pantry

I don't know what got into me, but I cleaned out the pantry....wow. I have to say here that only 2 people live here, with 2 additional grandchildren 3 and 4 yrs old from Wednesday nite to Friday afternoon. But the amount of food just in the pantry (still a freezer and a fridge full, but that's another day). Who bought all this stuff?

So in my attempt to use up this stuff I have decided (dictatorship here) that for the month of February I withdrew $100 bucks only and that is all that we will spend on extra food, like dairy, fresh veg, eggs, etc. We will empty out this pantry.

Now I remember why I emptied the pantry....I had no room to put the stuff I bought over the weekend from walmart, sobey's, and costco. So we are set. We will not starve.

So on Monday ( I actually started this challenge on Monday) we had grilled cheese and tomato's and fried onions on toast, yum, for breakfast. Leftover rotisserie chicken and sliced carrots and green onions in chinese nooddles (who bought all these packaged nooddles anyway)for dinner. Canned soup for lunch. Well we bought it, we gotta eat it.

I should also say here my husband has been put on the GI Diet as of Monday as well, here dictatorship is in play as well.

So tonight the grandkids come so its going to be panko chicken breast strips, rice and corn niblets. Kinda colourless maybe some fresh green beans from costco instead.

I discovered two and half bags of oatmeal. So on sunday evening I baked four batches of oatmeal cookies, and that's what I had for breakfast this morning, dipped into my coffee. Real good breakfast.

almost

Ice cream - done
..Who knew it was so easy, just used recipe that came with ice cream maker yummm

No knead bread - day 2
So easy ....so far
Used recipe in "the art of eating in" by cathy erway
...Good all round read

Projects

- grilled peach ice-cream
- start day one of "no-knead" bread
- finish quilt top
- make big batch of chow mein for nuking

Plans

OK so I've wasted my weekend reading books about food. So now ive got to write down somewhere some of the things it would be nice to actually make since reading Food Trucks and The Art of Eating In

No knead bread
ice cream
chili with pork shoulder
pickled radish
and that's just from The Art of Eating in

There are just to many from Food Truck....First i have several wierd ingredients to locate
baharat
tamarind pulp
and I don't even remember what I needed these for so now I have to look through the book again and add other ingredients that I will probably find.

That's the problem when one starts reading......all the scraps of paper that i need to write ingredients down on

Soup

What is it about soup lately, I always invisioned soup as a fall thing...not so much a spring thing.
I was "facebooking" with my mother the other day about my sad state of boredom since my daughter and family moved to their own digs....and she said the quickest way to get out of a funk was to make soup. Well I already did that the other day when I was canning turkey I roasted the bones and had the most amazing broth that called for a big pot of soup, so I made some and ended up with several bags in the freezer, not to mention the canned turkey (I side effect of buying turkey on sale I decided to bone it...can it) I also made a few other things for the freezer. I seem to have a problem making small batches of anything lately, everything goes into the freezer. It's then I came to realization that I was turning into my mother....so I stopped all the canning and freezing.
An this morning I was going through a few blogs that I visit weekly and discovered this soup

Miso bacon corn chowder

so now I have to make a trip the T&T market to find some miso. The soup looks and sounds wonderful. If I'm lucky I will only make a batch big enough for one sitting for two.

I've also been reading and enjoying

Pleasures of cooking for one

after watching a segment on Anna and Kristina. I already had a copy from the library sitting around so after watching the show featuring the book I started reading it and soon discovered that I will have to buy a copy for myself. It also added to my list of "things to buy" as in smalled pots and pans and casserole dishes and such......

So as I'm sitting here posting this - I have a room to finish painting another coat, plus baseboards to nail, not to mention the chair rail to paint and attach, and housework you wouldn't believe. Since my daughter and her family moved into their own place (after 3 yrs living together) I have LOTS of re-organizing of space......heavy sigh....all that work and I"m just inheritatly (bad spelling) sooooooo lazy.

Quinoa

I've never made anything with quinoa before...so along with the ham I thought why not.

1 cup (rinsed) quinoa
1 1/2 cups water

went into the rice cooker, until a hard boil then turned it to warming. It turned out very nice, but I got busy with other stuff so I just threw it into the fridge until today - wednesday.

added the cooked cold quinoa to a bowl added 1/2 diced onion, diced baby cuc, handful of juliene pea pods,diced up 1/2 tomato (because that's all I had) 1/2 cup diced leftover ham (from weekend) about 1 to 1 1/2 cups roasted cauliflower florets that I threw into the oven while I was making some banana bread.

Added about 2 tbsp kraft zesty italian, zest of 1/2 a lime, and a little splash of the same lime and mixed it all up

I roasted the cauliflower with olive oil, italian seasoning and red pepper and garlic flakes from club house

Divided up the spoils into two containers and threw it into the fridge for later. When I sampled some for a snack I was pleased with the result. Will be making this again.


Banana Bread

doubled the recipe, currently waiting to put into freezer, this recipe tastes good after sitting in the freezer for a bit. Also I added 2 squares semi sweet chocolate and 1/2 c chopped up almonds, 1 tbsp cinnamon and dusting of nutmeg.

Sloppy Joes

I made a ham over the weekend, and so of coarse I had to bake a couple (4) large yams. Along with the leftover ham I had I large yam as well.....so....when it came to making some sloppy joes I thought ....why not
actually I added the yam because I added a little too much sriracha hot chili sauce. (my latest go-to-additive)

Sloppy joes

1 lb ground round (500 g)
1/2 lb ground pork (250 g)
1 med onion diced
3 cloves garlic mashed
1/2 red pepper diced
sloppy joe spice mix
1/2 cup red wine
1 cup cooked yam
1 tbsp sriracha hot sauce
3/4 can 16 fl oz tomato scarpones (about 1 1/2 -2 cups)


I browned the meat with the onion and garlic. Added the wine (only because it was sitting on the counter and I figured...why not). Then the peppers for color

I added the hot sauce along with the packaged sloppy joe mix, and it tasted a little bit toooooo hot, so that's when I added the yam, about this much

about 1 cup

after the yam was encorporated

added the tomatoes and wasn't sloppy enough after cooking a bit, so I added about 1/3 cup water.

And it was a very good sloppy joe after that, I served it to the grandkids spooned over steamed baby potatoes and grated cheese, with some sour cream to temper the spice down a bit more.