Gathering Fragments: November Week Two

Sunday:  This morning, instead of our more usual oatmeal, I thought of the single piece of Turkey Spam I had left yesterday after making Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.   Katie had also given me several items that were more than she could easily use up, including a half package of Muenster cheese.   I scrambled eggs for breakfast and added cubes of cheese and Spam to them.

This evening, I was trying to determine what we might have for supper.   I moved a pan in the bottom of the fridge and discovered the vegetables and broth left from stew  last weekend.  It was at the back of the fridge which is the coldest part and since it was all vegetables I felt it was safe to use still.  I heated them up and mashed the vegetables so that it made the broth a little thicker.  This turned into a very good soup for our supper tonight.  I'll keep this idea in mind to do again in future.   It sure hit the spot tonight to have soup, even though it's not cold.  It just felt super nourishing after eating quick to make, not very balanced meals over the last few days.

Monday:  I had hoped last week to make banana bread.  I'd taken out the best looking bananas from the mess in the freezer to make muffins with and then today I found I had one ripe banana on the counter.  In counting, I discovered I had 3 frozen bananas and since my favorite recipe calls for just two medium bananas, I felt a double batch of banana nut bread mix was in order.   In the morning, I have a little boy coming to visit, one big enough to eat several muffins at a sitting if I'd let him, so I was doubly sure I wanted to make muffins.  He'll want to take some home to share with his family.  That's what Isaac and Josh do, take some for themselves and some for others.   That will leave John and I with muffins to snack on this week or to have as breakfast bread if we choose.

In two weeks I've got a house full of company coming and at least one breakfast will be needed.  I'm going to keep things super simple.  I'll serve cereal and banana nut bread that has been buttered and toasted.  I did add chocolate chips to my batter and all the walnuts I had on hand as well.  

I have one dozen large muffins and will have one big loaf of banana nut bread for the freezer.

Towards the end of last week, I'd boiled two chicken thighs with the intention of making dumplings or Brunswick stew.  I found I lacked ingredients that are necessary for the stew and I was just two tired to make the dumplings.  So there sat my two thighs in broth in the fridge.

Last night Kimmy Hughes, She's In Her Apron, on YouTube was making a Buffalo Chicken Pasta that sounded pretty good to me.   I had less chicken than the 2 cups the recipe called for but used what I had.  It seems my chicken thighs were quite small.  I had homemade Ranch dressing which is thicker than bottled, so I used pasta water to thin it a little. 

I did find the amount of the ingredients to be a little excessive, not in number but in quantity.  I was pretty sure the amount of hot sauce required was going to be too much for John and reduced that.  I didn't have Mozzarella cheese, but I did have Colby and I used what I had of that, but I did not use 2 cups of shredded cheese total, nor did I put in an entire 8 ounce block of cream cheese. I used 6 ounces of cream cheese but may cut that in the future if this turns out okay.  The reason I made many of my substitutions was because it seemed to make the recipe more cost effective.   I am not a big believer in if a recipe calls for a lot of cheese, which is expensive, that I must use all that much cheese.   Obviously I want the integrity of the recipe to be upheld, but I know some folks just think if a little is good a lot is better.  I disagree with that theory.   I'll let you know tonight how the recipe comes out but will go ahead and share the recipe as it was presented online by the  blogger whose recipe Kimmy used.

Buffalo Chicken Pasta

 2 cups uncooked Penne Pasta (I had an open box of rigatoni, so I used that)

1 8 ounce package softened cream cheese

3/4 cup prepared Ranch Dressing

1/3 c hot sauce

2 cups shredded cooked chicken (Kimmy used rotisserie chicken)

1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella, divided

1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese

Sliced Green Onions (optional) to top

Heat oven to 350F.  Grease an 8 inch pan or casserole dish.  Cook pasta per box instructions.  Drain when cooked then drizzle with a little bit of olive oil to keep it from sticking.

Stir together cream cheese, Ranch dressing, and hot sauce until creamy and well combined.

Add chicken, 3/4 cup Mozzarella and cooked pasta.  Turn into baking dish and sprinkle with remainder of shredded cheeses.

Bake 20 minutes at 350F.  Serves 6.

I was unsure what John and I might have for breakfast this morning.  I knew he wanted to work on the front porch and had promised I'd help remove furnishings but a big breakfast was never going to do.  I had one lovely red Empire apple on the counter with a slight bruise on one side.  John will never eat a piece of fruit that is marred or bruised.  I cut away the bruise, diced the apple and cooked it slightly in a covered saucepan before making my usual oatmeal.  I will share that the apple juice which was tart, did cause the milk to look a little curdled but it tasted just fine.

Later note:  John liked this!  For myself I'd like to make a few further changes.  I said I'd cut back on the cream cheese, using just 6 ounces but I really feel like it could be cut back still further to just 3 or 4 ounces.    I said I'd cut back on the hot sauce, but I realized as I was typing out the recipe I'd used 1/3 cup as called for.  I used the Burman's hot sauce and it is not so spicy so it worked just fine for us.    This tasted good to me but it is rich and definitely needs only a salad as accompaniment.   I stand by my choice to cut down on the shredded cheese as well.   In future I'd like to try this with a bottled blue cheese dressing as a sub for the Ranch dressing  since we usually eat Buffalo wings with blue cheese but if I did I'd cut the cream cheese down to about 2-3 ounces.

waste:  I knew last week my gallon of milk was moving past it's prime date, hence I bought a half gallon of fresh milk, but I meant to use that last quart.  Well I didn't and this morning, when I examined the milk in the jug it was rather chunky.  Total waste.

I put the chicken broth left in my sauce pan (the pan I'd cooked the thighs in last week) into the freezer.  I had three or four containers that had more than enough head space to allow me to top them up to the 1 inch headroom mark.

Tuesday:  Last night as I was putting the banana bread into the freezer, I found the last of the apple fritters we'd bought a couple of weeks ago.  I pulled those out to eat for breakfast this morning.

I sorted through the fridge right after lunch today.  I recalled I had bell peppers in the fridge and so I went ahead and removed those, seeded them and put the halves in the freezer.   I will stuff these later, but also have the option of semi-thawing and cutting into strips or dicing if needed.

Waste:  mushrooms.  Katie purchased both button and baby bella or chestnut mushrooms for me earlier in the month.  I don't know why those slid under my radar but I lost about half a packet of the button mushrooms and one third of the baby bellas.  Sigh.  

I pulled a half pear and a mandarin that had slid to the back from the fridge.  The pear needed to be lightly trimmed but was edible and the mandarin was just rescued in time.  We had those as  our after sweet items following lunch today.

I poured some baby Pear juice into the fruit juice I cooked up last week.  I am going to buy paraffin this week and make jelly.  My family enjoys getting a jar of homemade jelly for Christmas.

I used the chicken broth, which the thighs I used for last night's casserole had cooked in.  The broth cooked both our rice and green beans this evening for supper.

Wednesday:  No waste to report today.  At least none that is my fault.  I've got ants...

Katie gifted me cheese cubes and half packages of blocks as well as some cherry tomatoes.  This morning, I served muffins and used some of the cheese cubes to go with them as an easy and light breakfast.

Tonight we are having the leftover Buffalo Chicken Pasta casserole and I am serving it with the cherry tomatoes  and some steamed broccoli.

Friday:  It was our day to get the deer meat and that meant clearing out space in my freezer.  I'd done pretty well overall, but I did pull a few things out of the freezer to use right away this weekend.  I found sliced fruitcake from last winter's first attempt.  I'll be the only one eating this, as John doesn't care for it at all, but that's all the more for me!

I also took out pizza dough I'd forgotten I'd stashed two weeks ago.

I cleared the refrigerator and we had lunch.  I had one slice of leftover cottage pie, a big chicken tender, two potato logs and a slice of cheese pizza from our supper Saturday evening.  I have a few more leftovers in the bottom but I do have a plan for them.   You'll see in the coming week how I use those.

While sorting out the cupboards, I found a quart jar of sugar packets.  Why I have these I don't know.  Remnants from a former vacation from home?  Perhaps so.  I didn't want to risk opening a new bag of sugar and having it attract ants.  I'll put some more out when I'm sure the ants are fully gone.  In the meantime, I opened the packets and used in making my bread today.  I discovered that six packets equals one tablespoon.

I also used whey to make my bread instead of plain water.  The whey makes the crust a little crustier in a nice way and enriches the protein count of the bread.

So ends another week in November.