I’m doing an inventory of my food today (and probably tomorrow). This is prompted by a couple of things, not the least of which were my recent musings on well-stocked freezers & pantries.
Bill and I discussed, this morning, that maybe we can get by for awhile without doing any grocery shopping. For me, a pipe dream would be to make it until after our next CSA delivery1 without shopping, except maybe for milk. That delivery would occur a week from tomorrow, meaning I’d be shopping a week from Wednesday. I think that’s asking too much of ourselves, partially because this upcoming Saturday is when I’m hosting the winners of my homebrew and home-cookin’ giveaway, but a gal can dream. If I can hold out until at least Saturday, to hit Green City Market or Logan Square Farmers Market, I’d still feel pretty excited.
Based solely on what I can see in my pantry (not yet inventoried) and what I know I have in the small freezer (inventoried) and fridge (surprisingly empty of food and full of BBotE bottles2), I think Saturday is doable. I think it’ll be a bit tough, and we might feel a small pang of lack of veggies (but not fruits), but I think we can manage. My cautious confidence that we can wait until Saturday is because I have the start of a menu based solely on food we own already devised & I think I can sort out the rest for the one day I haven’t decided for.
So, tonight we’re having a lentil soup for dinner. I haven’t figured out which one, but this recipe from About.com is taking the lead so far. Tomorrow night, we’re going to have tacos. I have MANY corn tortillas in the freezers, so I’m thawing some today. We also had a surprising amount of “chili” from The Pioneer Woman Cooks cookbook. Her simple, perfect chili recipe is really just taco meat. So, since I stored some from a previous incarnation, it’ll make an easy meal for tomorrow.
I don’t know what I’m doing for Wednesday. I would very much like to do a savory bread pudding, but the truth is I can’t seem to wrap my brain around the various directions I’ve been given from a number of people. We may also do leftovers, depending on what the leftover situation is. I may also just make hummus and feed us that with carrots. Probably not, but it’s an option that’s on the table. So’s pasta, but I may want to keep that up my sleeve for Friday. Or I’ll get fed up with lentil soup recipes today, feed us the rest of the hummus in the fridge right now, and make lentil soup Wednesday. This is becoming more appealing by the moment, I have to admit.
Thursday is our newly-designated “date night”, so I want to do something special. Looks like that’s going to be our prime rib from Christmas. I got incredibly sick around Christmas3 so we did not cook it Christmas day. It’s been in the freezer since then, so I pulled it out today to start thawing. I’ll do some sort of turnip side dish, and probably some bread. I think maybe roast a few turnips with a sweet potato.
Friday, we’ll either have leftovers (prime rib leftovers, anyone?) or pasta. I expect to have enough leftovers from the week to feed us on Friday, but if not, I have some frozen Smitten Kitchen Naked Tomato Sauce and plenty of pasta in the house. Steam some frozen broccoli to go with, and that’s dinner. Or I could do my favorite (because it’s easy) mac & cheese with some broccoli.
Saturday is up in the air, and I’m nervous as hell about it. But that is a post for another day. Maybe Wednesday, maybe Friday. Stay tuned!
fn1. Tomato Mountain Farm just introduced a winter CSA. We joined up at the last minute, but we joined up. I’m pretty psyched about it, but I wonder if we ordered too small a box (ha!) given it’s only a biweekly delivery. I’m going to wait until after the next box is delivered to see.
fn2. If you live in Chicago, please buy one of these things. I desperately want the fridge space.
fn3. I didn’t even manage to call my grandmother. I only spoke to my other grandmother & my grandfather because they were at my parents’ house when I called. I nearly fell asleep on the phone…
Good luck with the challenge. I think I’ll do the same! Looking forward to seeing a post next week about how well you managed!
You know it!
Relatedly, a week or so ago, we were going thru our cabinets and realized we had a bunch of random ingredients that I picked up for one thing or another and really we should use them up sometime. So I told my partner he should pick some random ingredient a few nights a week and challenge me to make something out of it on the spot.
Well, tonight he didn’t chose but I picked out a half cup of rye berries and added some wheat berries, some beans, binders and such and eventually made some fairly tasty pan-fried veggie patties that we put random condiments on. And they were good. Now to figure out what to do with all the gluten-free flours I obtained but then ended up not using …
That sounds pretty good! I have no berries of that nature, which is probably good.
My Saturday challenge, combined with my desire to use things up, is helping some. I thought of a dish I made awhile back that would meet the dietary restrictions of my guests & realized I still have all or most of the ingredients, including the one “oddball” ingredient. I’m pretty excited by that! Everything else for the week really is figured out, especially with the inventory. I don’t precisely know Wednesday, but I have an idea. It just depends on how many legumes Bill & I can stomach to eat in a week or two.
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