(HT: Christine at Memories of a Catholic Wife and Mother, whose mention of food blogs directed me to some new reading material!)
Discovering Organic and Thrifty couldn't have come at a better time, as I really needed to clean out my fridge and I really need to do a better job of planning meals around what needs to be used up now. I've found that the most difficult thing about eating from our stores (garden produce I've frozen or otherwise perserved; local produce and meat we've bought in bulk; and all the eggs the chickens are laying) is planning. Planning to use the potatoes before they sprout, using more onions when they start sprouting, using the squash in the pantry before the green beans in the freezer so the squash doesn't go bad, rotating hamburger with lamb with chicken with beef roast so that all the hamburger doesn't get used up right away... not eating the bacon ALL IN ONE MEAL... that kind of thing. So I was happy to find this challenge.
Here are the rules:
1) List "Notable Items in Fridge to Use Up" (feel free to post a pic as well)
2) List "Notable Items in Freezer to Use Up"
3) List "Notable Items in Pantry to Use Up"
4) Either list your menu plan or at least 2-3 meal ideas with which you'll use those items.
5) E-mail me the URL to your post and I will add it in to my post for more "link love" for you. (If you don't have a blog, feel free to leave a comment!!!)
6) Link back to my weekly fridge & pantry cleanout post.
So. Andy was out of town last week when we had the flu AND he had a company retreat to attend on Saturday for 13 or 14 hours. Sunday the weather was "nice" (i.e., above freezing), so I justified cleaning out the fridge on the grounds that a walk to the compost pile would be nice. I was really embarrassed at the amount of food that was taken to the compost, but at least it will be put back into the soil and not just thrown away. After I came back from the compost, I resolved to do a better job of using up what I had, starting then. Here are my lists:
Items in Fridge to Use Up:
After I got done cleaning out all the science projects... er, leftovers... I wasn't left with much. Monday has recently become our shopping day, and we were quite low on a few things. But here's what I discovered after I emptied and reorganized the fridge:
- Feta cheese
- EGGS. I have 4.5 dozen in the refrigerator right now. Our girls work hard!
- 4 packages of tortillas (the kids eat cheese quesadillas for lunch quite often, but apparently we had gotten ahead of ourselves a bit.)
- celeriac
No, it's not very pretty. I don't imagine that you have any in your fridge. But if you can find it in the fall and winter (its other name is celery root), it's good in soup or stew. And it keeps practically forever. I've had this celeriac in my refrigerator since November.
Items in the Freezer to Use:
- 1 turkey carcass and 2 chicken carcasses I saved for stock
- vegetables frozen in the summer: broccoli, green beans, corn, squash. I need to use these before others.
Bit of a mess right now, actually. The meat is mostly beef, with a little lamb and pork mixed in. We have about 5 chickens left, I think.
The door held mostly fruit, which we are making a dent in now with the Vita Mix.
Items in the Pantry to Use:
- potatoes. Some of them may be past the point of use, though, and might be better off left for planting next month.
(We have to figure out a better way of storing potatoes. Digging up the ones in the middle our bottom of the pails is almost impossible.)
The sweet potatoes are actually in pretty good shape... which was surprising to me, because I haven't checked them in a while. But we need to eat them. Next to the sweet potatoes are onions, which -- as you can see -- are sprouting. Our storage conditions aren't ideal and/or we didn't cure the onions enough last summer. I can't use all of them up, so I might try planting a bunch of them next month -- just like the potatoes.
Menu Ideas:
Since I did my clean out on Sunday, I've already used some of this stuff. I made turkey stock with the turkey bones, some onions, and 2 of the celeriac on Sunday. For dinner Sunday, we had Mustard and Black Pepper Braised Beef Shanks (seriously adapted from a recipe in the Williams Sonoma catalog) with baked sweet potatoes. (Farmerboy ate 3.) Monday was spaghetti, with extra spaghetti sauce to freeze. Tuesday was Turkey Divan, using up some leftover frozen turkey plus the meat that came off the bones when I made stock -- and some of the broccoli from the freezer.
Meals for the rest of the week,..
Wednesday: busy day, so... frozen shrimp, salad, tropical fruit
Thursday: quiche or a puff pancake... something that uses up A LOT of eggs. Fruit on the side. Peas with quiche.
Friday: Black bean tortilla casserole, corn, fruit.
Saturday: I'd like to try to recreate a sweet potato -bacon soup I saw at our local farm store, grilled cheese sandwiches. I'll use some of the turkey stock.
Sunday: Braised beef tips, mashed potatoes, green beans, fruit.
Hopefully taking stock of fridge and freezer won't be so much of a challenge next week!
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