Pantry and Freezer Challenge Week Six: Grand Finale

 

Saturday: 

John and I ate leftovers for supper, the chicken and dressing and vegetables leftover from last week.

Sunday:  

John stopped to pick up chicken tenders and potato logs on the way home.  I appreciated that very much.  But we had supper of more leftovers from the week behind.

Monday: 

Last Friday, when I was making pizza, I'd browned a little hamburger and then didn't use it all.  I put about 1 cup into the fridge.  This morning, I took that 1 cup of burger and just about enough pork sausage to make a single patty and browned them up together and made a Creamed meat gravy to go over toast.  

Our lunch today was Pimento Cheese sandwiches.  I had been grating cheese to use in the Potatoes au Gratin and just went ahead with a little extra.  I keep pimento in the pantry.

 I'd found more ham in the freezer that I'd cooked and sliced and then frozen.  I made a Ham and potato au gratin dish that was meant to cook in the slow cooker...only it never got done.  I ended up finishing that off in the oven this evening.  I served with some collard greens I'd cooked and frozen several months ago.

I made muffins this evening, since I was turning on the oven to finish off our supper anyway.  I didn't have enough muffin cups to make the two dozen I'd mixed up, so I put the remaining apple batter into a 9-inch square pan and topped that with streusel.  This turned out delicious.

Tuesday:  

John went off to have lunch with Andy.  I was home alone, waiting on the fiber man who has yet to call and come finish connecting us.  Mind you we were only told by a third party they'd be out on Monday or Tuesday and that was just a co-worker, not the actual workers or a manager.  

With time to waste at home, I got busy and rearranged the freezer a bit.  I wanted to put the larger cuts of meat (pork roast, beef roast, ham bones, whole chicken, a corned beef) into the bottom basket of the freezer.  This will give me more room for hamburger meat and chicken cuts and chops.  

I pulled out the two bags of collard greens and put them on the stove to cook.  I sorted through and pulled out the thick stems since these were factory cut greens.  I used some leftover collards from supper too, that hadn't been cooked tender enough to suit me.  Adding those gave me about six jars.  I can only can five at a time, so I set the rest of the collards to cook together on the stove top.

I made bagels this afternoon.  I was going to double the dough and then didn't.  Wishing I had now.  I only got seven from the batch of dough and John just had to eat one immediately when they came from the oven.

For supper tonight we'll have a salad and use the rest of the sliced ham chopped into that.  That was the plan, but not what we had...and I've absolutely no recall of what we did have!

Wednesday:  

I wanted to make spaghetti meat sauce and pasta.  While I did use ground beef purchased this month, everything else was older stock that I had on hand in the pantry/fridge/freezer.  A half pound of an older package of Italian sausage was used that had been in the freezer for quite a long while. I made sure to use up produce that was fast getting beyond usage, like a rather limp carrot and some mushrooms that were just this side of getting slimy and being compost.  I had pods of tomato paste, shredded zucchini and diced bell peppers from the freezer to add in and tomatoes and sauce from the pantry.  I was more than happy to add in my home dried celery leaves, oregano, and parsley.  All in all, a very frugal spaghetti sauce.

Lunch today was leftovers of pizza made last Friday for our lunch.

Thursday:  We grabbed a deli sandwich at the grocery store today for our lunch.  John did that while I shopped for the best sales of the Labor Day weekend.  

For supper, we had hot dogs and baked beans.  The beans were from the freezer.  The hot dogs and buns purchased today.  

Friday:  Ham Biscuits used the last of the sliced ham from the freezer.

I don't remember.  It was a sandwich of some sort, and I dug in the cabinet to find chips to go with it but darned if I can remember what that sandwich filler was!

Chicken and Potato Sheet Pan Dinner, Steamed Broccoli.  The chicken was from the freezer.  I seasoned it with honey mustard I'd made last weekend to eat with our chicken tenders.  This turned out so good as the honey sweetened the onions which caramelized, and the potatoes crisped in the oil from the mayonnaise in the Honey Mustard.  

Saturday:  Pizza, Salad.  Katie brought frozen pizzas, I made the salad.

Leftover Ham and Potatoes au gratin, Green Beans Creole.  I used leftover diced tomato and a bit of onion in the green beans, a tiny bit of bacon grease to partially cook the onions.  I needed a pinch of cayenne pepper in this but didn't dig through the bigger pantry spice basket to find it.  

I'm calling this challenge to an official end.  I still have older things and a few expired items I could use for another week but I'm ready to focus on something else.  I'll continue to use up items as I go in September, but I am ready to do some real cooking once more.

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