Eating Down the Fridge

A few days ago, Washington Post food blogger Kim O’Donnel’s publicized what she called the “Eat Down the Fridge” Challenge – i.e., skip grocery shopping and just eat what you already have on hand*. I try to practice that somewhat regularly anyway, and am doubling my efforts while the Guy is out of town (he’s usually my major roadblock on this front). The Double Challenge – I’m also trying to eat *healthy* this week!! So let’s see what I’ve got and what I’m doing with it, hopefully as inspiration for something you have in your fridge/freezer/pantry:

Leftovers:
Party Leftovers: Limes, Salsa, Tortillas & Chips
Perennial Ingredient Leftovers: Craisins, Flax, Tomato Soup, Chicken Broth, Canned Tuna, Pasta, Puff Pastry, Filo Dough
Veggie Leftovers: Corn, Broccoli & Cheese, Peas
Freezer Leftovers: Two Chicken Breasts
Random Pantry Side Leftovers: Potato Pancakes, Spinach CousCous, Sweet Potatoes

Recipes:
Lime Chicken Quesadillas
Chipotle Corn Salsa over Baked Chicken served with Peas and Potato Pancake
Cranberry Flaxseed Muffins
Mini Margherita Pizza with Broccoli and Cheese

YUMMY! After just a little creativity...

*I am actually not counting all of the frozen entrees I have in the freezer right now, because those I can eat anytime, and aren’t as much in the spirit of the challenge!

Some Serious Meal Planning - Mini Chicken Pot Pies

The Guy and I have been getting to that there-is-nothing-in-the-fridge moment a little too often this past month, and I really can’t help but think it’s because we didn’t really plan ahead much. So, before we went to the grocery store, we made a list and did some serious meal planning. And I discovered a great “second or third night” of meal-planning to deal with all of the leftovers. Mini Chicken Pot Pies!!! These are super yummy and by my calculations – only 500 calories per ramekin of mini pot pie.

Ingredients:
Two 4-oz. chicken breasts – baked the day before
Handful of leftover green beans (or really any other veg you have on hand)
That perennial bag of baby carrots in the fridge
Puff Pastry
2/3 cup Light Sour Cream (or Crème Fraiche if you have that kind of refrigerator)
A little more than half an Onion
1 ¼ cup chicken broth
4 ramekins/souffle dishes/small bowls

Recipe:
Preheat oven to 450. Sautee onion, carrots, green beans on med-high for 8 min. Add chicken broth, turn down the heat and simmer for another 8 min. until some of the liquid is absorbed. Add the sour cream and chicken. Add filling into puff pastry soufflé cups or ramekins and cover with additional pastry. Brush a tiny bit of the sour cream on the tops of the filling. Cook for 15-20 minutes or until everything is warmed through. Enjoy.

A Few Recipes to Kick Off the New Year

I recently uncovered that the Mayo Clinic’s website actually has FANTASTIC, no-fuss recipes. And for those that had those types of new year’s resolutions, they’re all from the Mediterranean diet. Yum, heart health! Even better, there are quite a few that are plenty frugal. I found a lot of recipes where I had everything in my pantry beyond the main ingredient, as was the case with the three recipes below – what I’m having for dinner this week:

Entrée: Honey Crusted Chicken (4 ingredients!)
Side: Green Beans with Red Pepper and Garlic
Dessert: Grilled Pineapple

Hungry Girl Recipe Review.

You might recall I got the Hungry Girl cookbook, and was determined to make a lot of recipes. I’m now weighing in on everything I made – there were definite winners and losers.

Winners:
Bake-tastic Butternut Squash Fries – First of all, amazing. They tasted just like fries. Better than fries, because there was so much more flavor. Crispy with lots of sea salt, they were good enough to serve to company. (I can't believe I just wrote that. Who has "company"? Excuse the 1950s reference.) And, so easy. You just cut up the squash in the shape of fries, bake lying flat for forty minutes at 425. The hardest part is wielding the knife on a big squash.

Crazy Good Turkey Taco Meatloaf – This one came out of the stove looking pretty sketchy. But it tasted awesome. I fixed this for the Guy – who doesn’t always trust my cooking – and he was impressed.

Loser:
Death by Chocolate Cupcakes – The whole gimmick here is that these were supposed to be 100-calorie cupcakes. They might have worked better as a very light sponge cake. As it was, the texture was just horrible – weird, somewhere between custard and chocolate angel food cake. If you’re going to spend 100 calories on something, so many more worthwhile indulgences.

Unmemorable:
Rockin Tuna Melt – With all of the substitutions, this was hardly a tuna melt. But a fine sandwich for those days when I get home late from work.
Choptastic Veggie Salad – Really good, just nothing too innovative.

I do enjoy Hungry Girl’s recipes usually since they are pretty down-to-earth. And you can be frugal about them. You don’t have to go buy crazy ingredients, and they all taste like real FOOD. Any other favorite Hungry Girl recipes I should try? Otherwise, I'm shelving this one for awhile.

(Frugal) Hungry Girl

The Guy recently gave me the Hungry Girl cookbook, and it coincides with the feeling that I should be trying to get a little bit more out of my grocery budget (in terms of savings and variety), so here goes:

First, Recipes I can Make with the Stuff in my Pantry:
Red Beans & Rice, Lima Beans, Mushroom Patty
Turkey Omelet with Pineapple Salsa, Turkey Sausage
Vegetable Barley Soup, Blue Corn Chips & Roja Salsa
Potato Pancakes, Carrot, Edamame and Black Bean Vegetable Blend, Peaches
Kashi Lemongrass Coconut Chicken
Kashi Spinach Feta & Mushroom Pizza
Whole Wheat Pasta with Vodka Sauce and Broccoli Cuts

Second, NEW Recipes from the Hungry Girl Cookbook:
Chop-tastic Veggie Salad [Grill a veggie burger patty and add vegetables to top a salad]
Rockin’ Tuna Melt [Skip the mayonnaise and add carrots for some texture]
Bake-tastic Butternut Squash Fries [Cut up squash in the shape of fries, Bake lying flat for 40 min at 425 degrees]
Crazy Good Turkey Taco Meatloaf [Add veggies (corn, peppers, onions) to traditional ground turkey]
Death by Chocolate Cupcake [Use diet hot cocoa mix, chocolate cake mix and Splenda as the base]
Mint Mocha Freeze [Coffeemate, sugar free sweetener, and instant coffee for a Starbucks substitution]

Frugal Food + a Plea for Cheap Entertainment...

Forgot to add my little boast that to top the Guy's crepes yesterday, I managed a veritable feast this morning using the few hodge-podge ingredients in the pantry/fridge: Baked Apple Oatmeal, Homestyle Southern Cheese Grits and Breakfast Burritos with Corn Salsa. The oatmeal was an amazing weekend treat... one of those that looks gourmet when it isn't:

Mix:
2 packets instant Quaker oatmeal
1/2 apple chopped
few raisins/dried fruit if you've got them
1/3 cup brown sugar
titch of salt & cinnamon
1.5 cups milk

Bake at 350 for 30 min. Serve with applesauce, more milk, honey, whatever you've got...

Also, a plea: my mother and grandparents (emphysema, one bad knee + one worsening case of Alzheimer's) are coming into town next weekend for a visit. The easy answer would be to buy up theater tickets and book pricey restaurants galore, but that would definitely combat my plan to limit nonessentials. Any suggestions for entertaining Nana and PawPaw on the cheap?