I'm Playing Along with the Eat from the Pantry Challenge

I read about this challenge on the Money Saving Mom blog, and I'm going to give it a try. Since I drained a lot of my stockpiles with the cookie challenge, we are short on some staples and that'll keep me from following a strict "pantry-only" approach.Here's my version of the challenge:

- Only spend half our grocery budget, preferably less! The excess will go toward paying off the "grocery budget deficit" we acquired from buying a meat/eggs/yogurt CSA membership, which is good through April. I'd like to pay back the deficit over the next two months and try to sock some away to pay for our annual veggie CSA -- the membership starts up in June, but we haven't bought our share yet. This may need to turn into a habit...since as soon as we've paid off the meat CSA, it'll be veggie CSA purchase time, and then meat purchase time again (the veggie CSA is annual, but there's a winter supplement, and a fruit option, and...and...and...). The "preferably less" part of the goal will be important if I ever want to get us off of the "deficit" wheel and see pretty green bars in my grocery budget entries on mint.com again! This is a good warm-up for my 2010 goal of cutting down the grocery budget 20%.
- Eat from the pantry as much as possible -- in part so that I can get it better organized.
- Stick with my kitchen resolutions and boost our preparation for my maternity leave in the spring.

Here's my tenative meal plan for the next two weeks....it gets a little sketchy after the first 10 days:

Thursday, 12/31: Dinner: Lamb chops, sweet potato latkes, mulled cider, no-bake cheesecake
[prep for future: sweet potato hashbrowns]

Friday, 1/1:
Lunch: defrosted stuff from the recesses of the freezer (doesn't that sound yum! But there are cookies in those recesses, you know....)
Dinner: eggrolls (ground pork, carrot, cabbage from pantry -- wrappers from the store); kung pao chicken (pantry-only); teriyaki noodles (pantry-only)
[prep for future: bake bread from freezer, make extra eggrolls]

Saturday, 1/2:
Lunch: grilled cheese sandwiches, maybe w/chili or soup
Dinner: French beef stew in crockpot (pantry-only)
[prep for future: make cinnamon rolls]

Sunday, 1/3:
Lunch: veggie burgers, maybe w/chili or soup
Dinner: Roasted chicken; butternut squash and potatoes with rosemary in crockpot (all pantry)
[prep for future: make mac & cheese for Stella's lunches]

Monday, 1/4:
Dinner: leftovers!
[prep for future: soak some beans]

Tuesday, 1/5:
Dinner: steak, roasted carrots, white bean crostini (all pantry)

Wednesday, 1/6:
Dinner: lamb roast; potato-carrot pancakes; pita chips (all pantry)
[prep for future: bake a cake]

Thursday, 1/7:
Dinner: onion-coated chicken; corn (all pantry)

Friday, 1/8:
Dinner: leftovers!

Saturday, 1/9:
Lunch: ???
Dinner: yellow split pea-spinach dal (will need to buy some spinach) plus...??
[prep for future: make & freeze some bread dough]

Sunday, 1/10:
???
[prep for future: ???]

Monday, 1/11:
???something with the other beef roast I have

Tuesday, 1/12:
tortellini & sauce, garlic bread with cheese

Wednesday, 1/13:
shredded beef tacos, refried beans, tex-mex rice, homemade tortillas
[prep for future: make extra tortillas and freeze]

Thursday, 1/14:
leftovers!

Friday, 1/15 --> onward ....
????

For breakfasts, we have sweet potato hashbrowns, eggs, cereal, chocolate tarts, apples, yogurt, and poptarts, so no one is going to go hungry. For drinks, we have leftover cider and various cans of soft drinks.

This actually takes me pretty much to the end of my meat supplies (other than some smoked ham hock....). I feel a little guilty thinking about meat as central to a meal, but it's almost always the limiting factor...and figuring out what I need to defrost & when is the easiest way for me to think about what to make. I'm expecting another CSA delivery on the 19th, which will help. Tonight, we went shopping (technically that falls on 12/31, but I'm counting it against the challenge because mostly we were refilling on must-buy staples like milk) and that put our expenses so far at 8.26% of the monthly budget. So far, so good!

Pre-holiday Family Cooking

This week I'm staying with my daughter, husband, mom, mom's partner, brother, sister-in-law, two nieces, and nephew. In town to join us at some meals are my husband's parents, his brother, his grandmother, my aunt and uncle, and my mom's partner's son and his wife. Usually I cook for 2 and a toddler :). Cooking for 17 instead of 3 in a tiny kitchen with tiny pans has been a bunch of fun, especially with my niece helping out every step of the way. So far, I've made:

- turkey-bacon clubs on homemade buttermilk bread, Rachel Ray style (ground turkey, bread crumbs, milk, egg, chopped bacon, browned up nicely, spread with a layer of herbed goat cheese whisked with milk and some extra herbs, served with tomato and romaine) (lunch #1)
- pork chops browned with 5 minutes/side, cooked up with sunny spain seasoning from penzey's then simmered in crushed tomato sauce with herbs, pantry beans (3 cans of beans, sauteed shallots, some honey, some vinegar, a can of green chiles, and some dribs and drabs of barbeque sauce), corn bread by my mom's recipe with some corn. (dinner #1)
- brown sugar chicken and texas tortillas grilled up as quesadillas (lunch #2)
- pumpkin pie (did my usual approximation of the recipe on the back of the pumpkin can), apple pie (no caramel sauce in my rendition), cranberry bars, rosemary bread, french bread, all to go with my Aunt Brenda's famous lasagna and a green salad. (dinner #2)

Meat & Mushroom Lasagna

We are headed out of town so I'm cleaning out the fridge rather than plotting for the future. David was busy in Santa's workshop, so I only had one arm to cook with...the other being busy holding/feeding/patting/rescuing our toddlesome toddler. Dinner tonight was tasty & quick -- lasagna and salad.

For the lasagna, I used some organic whole wheat noodles, 8 oz mozzerella, some parmesan, some frozen Italian meat sauce w/spinach, and a can of cream of mushroom soup. The soup was an experimental new addition -- I keep seeing it advertised in various magazines as a recipe suggestion, and since I built up a bit of a stockpile of soup due to all the sales, I figured I'd give it a try. This was a good thing, because one of my usual lasagna additions -- ricotta cheese -- was a no-go....furry and green :(. If I'd realized this before I got into the thick of lasagna construction, I would have sauteed up some onions and mushrooms or something. As it was, I would have been pretty short on volume without the soup added in there. The salad was straight from a bag, a freebie w/Q from Dominick's. I don't generally count up the price of a meal, but this one surely came in cheap, with leftovers that look like lunch for tomorrow. I've been following these steps for making lasagna lately:

0. Put down a few spoons of sauce to prevent sticking.
1. Boil 4 noodles at a time for 4 minutes, add to pan in a single layer. Put in 4 more noodles to boil while you add a layer of sauce & cheese.
2. Continue step 1 for 3 or so layers. Your last layer should be sauce then cheese.
3. Bake for 40 minutes.

The nice thing about this method is that the time it takes to boil the noodles is just enough to get a layer laid down and some cheese grated, and you don't end up
with a messy pile of stuck together noodles because you cook so few at a time.

IRL prep time: 1 person, 15 minutes.
IRL cooking time: 40 minutes, unattended in the oven.
**IRL = in real life, as in, how long it took an actual person to go from the ingredients she had on hand to something cooking. So many recipes claim to be quick and easy, and then call for 15 different ingredients to be already peeled, chopped, blanched, etc. IRL means, I came through the door and dove in. Most of the time, the whole family is cooking, so I'll make a note of the number of people. Sometimes this makes a huge difference in prep time, other times it lets one person prep while another cooks, etc.

Day 12 of the Snowbound Cookie Challenge

I think I am officially too tired to handle day 12....I'm going to play the pregnant momma card and go to bed. I'll finish up tomorrow.

I've been falling asleep on the couch off and on for the last two hours, and instead of pushing through it, I'm going to listen to the message my body is sending loud and clear, and pack it in.

Grass Is Greener CSA Delivery

Today was the first of five deliveries from our membership in the Wisconsin meat/dairy CSA Grass Is Greener. It's a 6-month subscription, but we started a month late.

This month's winnings:
- sirloin steaks
- lamb loin chops
- ground pork
- cut up chicken
- whole chicken (missing parts) **
- lamb boneless shoulder roast
- sirloin tip roast
- smoked pork hocks

In addition, we bought a twelve-pack of yogurt and a carton of eggs. I'm not sure when we'll eat all this, since we're headed out of town, but it's a nice addition to the growing stockpile in our freezer. Also, I have no idea what to do with smoked pork hocks....I'm pretty sure I've never had them.

**This made me laugh...reminds me of the warning label on garage sale puzzles.

Day 11 of the Snowbound Cookie Challenge

It's the day before the last day of the challenge, and I gotta say....I am ready to be done. I am down to my last egg, and a half-stick of butter, and not much cooking spray either for that matter. Every container I could scare up is full of cookies, and some are mounded up on plates. I think we are equipped in the cookie department for a long time to come.

Today, I decided to go for an experiment -- starting with a "healthy" oatmeal cookie recipe, I added a little bit of this, a little bit of that, substituted here, skipped there, and ended up with what might be called "Oatmeal Puddles". They really smell great baking in the oven, but they come out a little too crispy-crumbly-thin. My original recipe was pretty much just oil, sugar, oats, and an egg (peanut butter, a couple raisins and cranberries from the bottom of the bag, cinnamon, and leftover fudge from the tarts were tossed in there too), but maybe it would have been useful to add in some flour to help it hold together and milk to soften the oats.

Day 10 of the Snowbound Cookie Challenge

Today's plan is to mix up some apple bars, let them bake, and then finally face the sugar cookies. I would like to cut them up in shapes, frost them with some canned vanilla icing I have in the cupboard, and sprinkle them with red sugar. Doesn't that sound lovely? But for some reason I am more excited about the apple bars :).

I managed to get the apple bars and sugar cookies baked -- yay. My sweetie helped me get all of the cookies cut out. I am calling them solstice cookies, since half are stars and half are moons. The decorating will have to wait until tomorrow.