I loved "Door Knock Dinners"! I wish they'd rerun that sometimes.

I have 8-10 cases of wine in the house

Good to know! Personally, I prefer white, but red goes with beef. Mhays, chgoeditor, PM me your addresses, and I'll be happy to stop by and clear out some of those pesky stockpiles of yours. You'll be glad to free up the space.

Egads, maybe we should have an event where people bring all of the things in their pantry that "looked like a good idea" when you bought it. Maybe a tradeathon.

My freezer supply is dwindling substantially after having started this process.

In another week or so, I will have used all of my excess food. There are so many creative cooks here, I thought I'd take this opportunity to challenge you by asking you to come up with a recipe with some of the ingredients that I have on hand. I think Food Network used to have a show like this... when it was actually about food:

2 pounds frozen halibut filet
2 pounds frozen chicken thighs
Lemons
Limes
Arugula
Frozen Green Peas
Frozen green beans
Shelled edmame peas
Frozen and fresh spinach
Country Ham
Baby Zuchini
Sugar Snaps
Grape Tomatoes
Fresh Baby Brussel Sprouts

I have a pretty well stocked pantry of canned tomatoes, herbs, beans, asian spices, bottled indian curry bases, garlic and onions.

OK, this thread isn't doing what it should in the Hays household...I took one look at the Basil Shrimp with Feta recipe...assessed the pantry...and went out and bought Feta cheese. I did get rid of some unnecessary grocery-store cow and made an easy pot roast, using the last of my garden's carrots and leftover bell peppers and leeks.

As for the cow, she (OK, probably he but it's much less colorful writing) arrived last week and is safely in the freezer, and being blogged here. The minestrone I mentioned used frozen blackeye peas which are a staple in my freezer, all those weird leftover pasta bits, as well as canned beans I keep buying and forgetting to use.

(Will, I'm envisioning seared halibut over arugula with a lemon viniagrette, and then a coq au vin with all your legumes and veggies. I'm free for dinner.)

YourPalWill wrote:My freezer supply is dwindling substantially after having started this process.

In another week or so, I will have used all of my excess food. There are so many creative cooks here, I thought I'd take this opportunity to challenge you by asking you to come up with a recipe with some of the ingredients that I have on hand. I think Food Network used to have a show like this... when it was actually about food:

2 pounds frozen halibut filet
2 pounds frozen chicken thighs
Lemons
Limes
Arugula
Frozen Green Peas
Frozen green beans
Shelled edmame peas
Frozen and fresh spinach
Country Ham
Baby Zuchini
Sugar Snaps
Grape Tomatoes
Fresh Baby Brussel Sprouts

I have a pretty well stocked pantry of canned tomatoes, herbs, beans, asian spices, bottled indian curry bases, garlic and onions.

Off the top of my head:

Ham, spinach, garlic and pea pasta with olive oil: Saute country ham, remove from pan. Leave 1-2 T. ham grease & reserve remainder (see below). Add about 1 T. olive oil, garlic, saute on low heat, add fresh spinach in bunches until wilted; add peas at end. Season with salt, pepper a little fresh nutmeg and a squeeze of lemon juice. Toss cooked pasta in pan with ham. Warm up and add additional olive oil to sauce.

Sauteed Green Beans: Take reserved ham grease (bacon grease would do as well). Saute green beans and top with chopped toasted nuts (sliced almonds preferred).

Brussel Sprouts with toasted nuts: Toast chopped nuts (pine nuts preferred). Run trimmed brussel sprouts through shredding blade on food processor. Saute in olive oil & garlic until desired texture. Give a generous dose of lemon juice. Add pine nuts.

Roasted Chicken & Arugula Salad: Season chicken thighs with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast skin-on in 400 degree oven until done. Set aside until cool to touch. Shred meat and serve over fresh arugula and halved grape tomatoes with a lemon-olive oil dressing. (Serve with parmaggiano-reggiano cheese if that's what you have.)

Chicken & Vegetable Pot Pie: Roast chicken thighs as stated above. Remove skin and bones and dice. Make veloute sauce and add green beans, peas, edamame, zucchini. Add cooked chicken to veloute; place in oven-safe dish and top with pastry of your choice.

YourPalWill wrote:My freezer supply is dwindling substantially after having started this process.

In another week or so, I will have used all of my excess food. There are so many creative cooks here, I thought I'd take this opportunity to challenge you by asking you to come up with a recipe with some of the ingredients that I have on hand. I think Food Network used to have a show like this... when it was actually about food:

2 pounds frozen halibut filet
2 pounds frozen chicken thighs
Lemons
Limes
Arugula
Frozen Green Peas
Frozen green beans
Shelled edmame peas
Frozen and fresh spinach
Country Ham
Baby Zuchini
Sugar Snaps
Grape Tomatoes
Fresh Baby Brussel Sprouts

I have a pretty well stocked pantry of canned tomatoes, herbs, beans, asian spices, bottled indian curry bases, garlic and onions.

I'd suggest using your green veggies to make what I call a green minestrone. Slice your zucchini into 1/2 circles about .25" thick, and chop up some onion. Cook these in 1/2 cup of chicken broth for about 8 minutes, then add about 6 cups of chicken broth and any/all green veggies you'd like. (Last time I made it, I used spinach, green onions, peas, edamame, green beans and asparagus.) Also, add about 1/4 cup of pesto. Simmer until veggies are tender. Top with parmesian cheese and fresh parsley before serving.

Other dishes:
Sauted spinach and grape tomatoes (add a few spoonfuls of tomato sauce if you have some)

Wrap the chicken thighs in ham, then braise until tender.

My favorite brussel spouts are pretty simple...cut in halves or quarters, depending on the size, toss with a little olive oil and sea salt, then roast for ~15 minutes at 400. The loose leaves that fall off when you're cutting and tossing them are my favorites.

Pan-sauted halibut with lemon and capers.
____________

It's been 17 since I last went to the grocery store*. (Well, except for a couple visits while out of town last week, and another trip to pick up a head of celery and an onion.) By my estimates, that's probably $300 that I've saved just by eating things already in the house. I think there's a chance I can hold out until I leave town in 10 days...I'd be thrilled if that happens! I still have a lot of staples and proteins in the house, but I actually have space on my pantry, cabinet and refridgerator shelves! Hurray! (It'll be so much fun to fill that up again come January.)

Things I'll try to make in the next few days:
* Custard and pudding (I have a few boxes of the instant stuff, plus a lot of milk, and I'm otherwise running short on sweets)
* Savory corn pudding/casserole
* Cheese crackers

I'm thawing the halibut tonght. I think that I'm going to sautee it with lemon, grape totatoes and add a bit of shredded argula at the end just to wilt it in the sauce.

The suggestion of the chicken and ham is one of my favorites. Thanks for the reminder. A few years back, I described a roast chicken that my mom used to make where she'd slightly hydrate some country ham and grind it with garlic, salt and pepper which would be placed under the skin for roasting.

For the thighs, I was thinking of marinating them in mojo criollo and making a spicy bread stuffing. I have a day old mini-ciabatta roll on hand. I was going to use that, the ham minced really fine, lots of garlic, some jalapeno and cilantro, and onion for the stuffing. Maybe even a little goat cheese for extra moistness.

I love the spirit of this challenge. I am really really good at freezing little bits of every leftover and marginally good at labeling them.
When I get in the mood it's either soup day or stew day, and all the little bits and pieces come together into creations that are wonderful and delicious and can sadly never be reproduced..LOL

My husband calls it slumgullum. Says its what his grammy used to call leftovers mashed together. But I always come up with a better name for whatever I'm serving so it's more appealing to the kiddos.

The last one was beefy pasta soup. Wonderful on a cold night.

At our house, these concoctions are all called "mish-mash."

Suzy

I think I'm having a moment of clarity.

I just pulled apart my biggest cabinet in search of dried apricots. If I found some, I was going to make an apricot-pecan bread. I didn't find any, but instead ended up throwing out 3 shopping bags full of old, stale stuff. Don't ask me why only now I'm throwing away 9-year-old chocolate chips. (I do clean the cabinet once or twice a year.)

In the last couple of weeks, I've spent more time than usual thinking about my meals. "What creative dish can I make from spinach, eggs, peas and pancetta?" "Do I have enough stock to make risotto?" "What can I substitute for ricotta in this recipe?"

I've also spent more time browsing through cookbooks, looking at recipes, thinking about ingredients. More than once I've thought, "I'm going to make that as soon as I can buy some [fill in ingredient."

I work from home and my boyfriend travels a lot, so I often don't plan my meals. Instead, lunch is leftovers from the night before, or some hummos and carrots, or a mishmash of little snack-type dishes. Dinner may be more of the same. I love cooking, but it's never as fun to cook for one, plus, with so much food in my kitchen, it's easy to take the quick way out and just nosh my way through an assortment of things in the fridge without actually composing a meal.

This challenge has also got me thinking about my European friends. When I visit them, their pantries are relatively bare. They don't keep a lot of things in the house, because they go shopping every day and only buy enough for the next meal or two. There's the emphasis on fresh ingredients and fewer preservatives.

So while I'm enjoying the challenge of coming up with creative meals each day, I'm also looking forward to the next step: Doing a better job of planning meals, even if I'm only planning for the next meal or two, buying fewer ingredients at each trip, and spending more time thinking about my food--rather than just making a meal of whatever's in the house. I hope I can follow through on that. So my New Year's Resolution will be: Don't buy it if you aren't going to eat it in the next day or two.

Tonight's dinner was chicken gizzard paprikash. I do have lots of other protein in the freezer, including a couple of Wettsteins whole chickens, but I know I'll get to those eventually. Using up the gizzards seemed more in the spirit of the challenge!

No pictures--for which you can thank me later.

I'm still plugging away at the challenge. Pickings are getting slimmer, but I'm confident that I'll make it til Thursday--when I leave town for the rest of the year--without having to buy any groceries. (Though in the spirit of full disclosure, we did make a roast chicken and veggies at my boyfriend's on Friday, and I brought home the leftovers before he left town for business.)

Earlier today I made shrimp & cheese grits seasoned with some butter, garlic and Old Bay Seasoning. It was a good stick-to-the-ribs dish for a cold, snowy day. (Thank goodness for the pound+ of frozen shrimp I bought shortly before starting this challenge! It's been used in more than a few meals.)

I also came across a box of devil's food cake in the back of my closet. Nothing out-of-the-ordinary, I realize, but I do have a bit of a sweet tooth and have eaten most of the sweets in my house. So I added some instant chocolate pudding mix and chocolate chips to the mix, and made a cake/brownie. (I have no butter or cream cheese, so no icing for me! I could make a glaze out of powdered sugar and milk, but the cake is already pretty moist, so it can do without.)

I've also taken this opportunity to get a bit creative with cocktails. I'm usually a wine or beer drinker, but had an interesting selection of beverages that could be used for mixers (plus some simple syrup and Rose's lime juice). The end result has been some tasty cocktails that have made for an interesting change from my typical glass-of-wine-with-dinner.

I wrapped up my challenge, and finally went grocery shopping this week. I'm proud to say that my pantry and fridge are significantly emptier, and I want to make an effort to keep them that way.

I spent the last week in the Loire Valley with my boyfriend and his French family members. One thing that struck me is that his Mom goes to the market and bakery every day, but only buys enough ingredients for the next day's meals. One of my bad habits is that I indiscriminately buy things that the grocery store. This looks good, that looks great, let's throw it all into the cart, regardless of whether I have a plan to use it. So one of my New Year's Resolutions: I'm going to make fewer, but smaller, trips to the grocery store, spend more time planning my meals and only buy items that I intend to use within the next 24-36 hours.

(In the interest of full disclosure re. the challenge: Between Thanksgiving and Jan. 3, I was out of town for about 2.5 weeks. While in Chicago, I made 3 trips to the grocery store. One trip was to buy a couple staples. One trip was to pick up a non-grocery item. And one trip was with my boyfriend, to pick up ingredients for a meal we were cooking at his house. I'd estimate that I could still eat at least another week or 10 days' worth of meals with the food that was in my house before I went grocery shopping this week. I'm continuing to make an effort to eat those items, but the challenge is officially over for 2007-08!)

I wanted to revive this thread for the 2008-09 holiday season. Given the lousy economy, I feel particularly thankful to have a pantry full of food. By avoiding the grocery store over the next month or so, I'll happily have some extra money to spend on Christmas presents this year. But I also think I'll do a January closet cleaning and give some of the remaining food (that's unopened and unexpired) to a food pantry.

I'm traveling a lot between now and the new year, so I'll only have 10 or 12 days of eating at home. In some respect, this makes the challenge more difficult because I won't have many or any fresh fruits, veggies or dairy in the house when I'm back in town in mid-December. At that point I'll have to decide whether to buy stuff or make do with the food I already have at home.

I hope others will take up the challenge this year to eat things they already have in the house!

Hi,

I think about this thread from time to time. I have made a more concerted effort to eat from my stockpile instead of acquiring something all the time. Especially when it is last minute request to make dessert for a meeting. Where I might have come up with an idea where a quick stop for an ingredient filled the bill. I stopped myself from running out the to door to make do with whatever I had on hand.

Several years ago, I was inspired by Marilyn Pocius to buy guave paste. I never ate it with cheese as intended. It just was something I would move around to get to something else. Recently I substituted guave paste for date paste for cookie bars. If you look around, there are not a lot of recipes for guava paste, though a bit more for dates.

The really old cans of pregnant anchovies bought on Argyle within the last 10 years and lambs tongues bought in New Zealand in the mid-1980's finally went into dog biscuits. While I will never prepare that recipe the same way ever again, it did free up some shelf space.

Your topic popped in my brain when I was about to waste time getting more stuff, when I needed to work with what I already acquired.

Regards,

Hi,

When I was in the store shopping for Thanksgiving stuff, my Mom called. "You have a lot of food at home. The freezer is stuffed. Try to use what we already have."

Can't complain when it is obviously true, there is a lot of food at home. I skipped buying frozen raspberries for a jello mold, because 1) I had tropical fruit cocktail already at home, and 2) I thought $5.99 for 12 ounces of raspberries was high. From my sister's collection of odd flavored jellos, I used daiquiri flavored jello as the base for our jello mold. Guava juice in the fruit cocktail softened the lime flavor. It was a pale green mold with suspended orange-to-red papaya and white sour cream cubes. Total cost of ingredients less than $3.

Instead of a lot of apple and pecan pies, I used the fruits I froze over the summer at their peak: blueberries and peaches. I used the last of the enormous pink banana squash to make two pies. I used pie pumpkins to make two pies and pulp left for one more. This cleared some room from the kitchen counters, refrigerator and freezer.

Right now I am working toward whittling down the leftovers from Thanksgiving. For lunch I made today Julia Child's curry From Julia Child's Kitchen (1975). It is a curry no Indian would recognize. It is English Empire curry with bits of currants scattered about. This was our lunch with the balance frozen for quick meals in a few weeks.

My niece only likes home canned green beans with butter. Green bean casserole is never at our Thanksgiving table. No niece around to eat leftovers. The green beans were made into green bean casserole with none left after our lunch today.

Remaining turkey will be made into chowder, which will soak up the leftover gravy and stuffing. If there is any turkey left, perhaps a tetrazinni a la Antoinette Pope, an early television cooking school instructor in Chicago.

While food shopping is entertaining for me, it's also good to make occasional concerted efforts to whittle down the stock. This thread ticks in my mind, especially when I am about to run out to get a last minute ingredient. I look around more rather than grab the keys and go.

Regards,

Im not much for leftovers, but extra smoked turkey, and the oven bird will be turned into turkey salad for sandwiches, a turkey pot pie for supper tomorrow, a turkey stock with the carcass's, and a turkey tortilla soup.

the above not done out of an concerted effort to do so, but a chance to make things I actually like, any grocery savings for the week are only an added benefit.

I kind of suck at this challenge, but I was pretty proud of myself today: thinking about gastro gnome, I turned the leftover sherry-orange mashed yams into Sweet Potato Whoopie Pies. I used the recipe for pumpkin whoopie pies in Joy of Baking, and filled them with homemade marshmallow fluff...in which I replaced some of the corn syrup with Log Cabin we had in the fridge (which I figure is corn syrup anyway - yes, we use Log Cabin when I can't find affordable pure maple.) (FWIW, a 15-oz can of pumpkin contains 1 3/4 cups puree, which is the measurement I used, successfully ignoring the fact that my potatoes had cream and butter.)

They turned out very well; I don't like heavily spiced cookies, so I backed waaay off the spicing listed in the recipe; in future I'll probably bring more spicing back as the sweet potato flavor isn't pronounced in the cookie. They are moist and sweet and chewy, though, and that works fine for me. Since we always have leftover sweet potatoes right after Thanksgiving, I think this one is going into my standard Christmas cookie repetoire.

Thread bump, & no I don't think I need to wait until Thanksgiving.

We throw out a lot of food. I've decided that eating a slice, or 2, of bread still ends up being cheaper than a couple of sandwiches out, but I'd like to do better.

The problem is, I really don't like to eat at home by plan, so menu planning hasn't worked. I'm hoping to harness the awesome ideas on this site and use up some of the beans and things in the pantry,freezer and fridge.

Already, I've started to note what's in the fridge, freezer, & pantry going in so as not to duplicate purchases.

Still, this can be a challenge. I recently had folks over for a "simple" meal pre-Goodman, but it turned into a huge fest with me trying to use up things before they died, or were old, and it was quite a bit of work.

Today, I suspect I will throw out old pizza dough. I took it out of the freezer almost 2 weeks ago and then life got in the way and it just didn't happen. On the other hand, the rhubarb we received in May was put to awesome use at the pre-Goodman dinner in rhubarb-creamcheese hand pies as well as a rhubarb & apple preserve.

How do you successfully manage this?

Thread-bump.

This is still an issue. Today I ate in.
Started with a few overly roasted sweet potatoes, and a few oz. of leftover fried rice with a couple of scrambled farm eggs.

Then onto clean out the giant tub, with very few leaves remaining, of the mixed baby lettuces in a small salad w/ a tablespoon or 2 of chow-chow, some vinaigrette made from scratch, and a Morningstar California Turk'y patty.

Coffee roasted at home, w/past-date( but ultra-pasteurized,so still good) cream & a chai te pineapple pastry.

Dinner was a veg dog, and hot dog bun ( both removed from freezer) , 2- 5 oz bags of sauteed baby spinach with some chopped cloves of roasted garlic and an ounce of Pringles.

My fridge is brimming with jars toppling over and the freezer is still full. So I should only be shopping for perishables for a while, + Coke Zero.

Hi,

I think of this thread often, especially when I contemplate buying an ingredient or making do instead. I have quite a volume of foodstuffs to choose from, so often I make-do and don't add to the herd.

My freezer reminds me of Fibber McGee's closet, which is no compliment.

Regards,

I am the leftover eater in our house; Sweet Baboo mostly acts as if leftovers are invisible. He is correct that some things are just no good reheated, but the old habits I learned from my Depression-generation parents (and/or my poor Irish forebears) die hard. I work at home, and just to not be wasteful, I suppose, I usually eat leftovers for lunch. Sometimes this means I heat up some leathery old pizza or 14 cents' worth of mashed potatoes and gravy and find out later he felt like going somewhere to have a $14 skirt steak for lunch (grrrr ...). Other times, all sorts of good things I bring home from restaurants are uninteresting to him because they look like leftovers, so I can count on them being in the fridge for my lunch the next day.

Once in a while I eat something that makes me sick to my stomach, and that drives me to go through both refrigerators (yes, here in the suburbs, we have the old refrigerator in the garage) and throw out all the leftovers. Could be psychological but my stomach usually feels better after a refrigerator purge.

Aside from occasionally getting sick, I think the thing that most helps me throw out what should be thrown out and eat what should be eaten is cleaning up/out the fridge about once a month.

Cathy's comment about buying new or making do resonates with me; I'll stop myself from buying something in the grocery store sometimes, thinking, eat up the X you have before you buy Y.

Hi,

I saw this post by a nun, which reminded me of this thread:

This is a "No Spending" week at Hermosa House. We will use what we have for groceries, which will clean out the refrigerator and pantry. It is challenging because we still want to meet needs in the community. Today, we gave people fresh home-baked muffins. The tough part will be if we run out of coffee, which is likely. Short term spending moratoriums not only save money, but they teach discipline, and remind us to be grateful for what we have.

If I attempted anything like this, I'd buy milk and bananas before closing the purse.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:If I attempted anything like this, I'd buy milk and bananas before closing the purse.
Regards,

At Woodman's?

Thank you to the contributors to this thread for inspiration! To compensate for some new ingredients (2 types of quinoa, plus some Ottolenghi supplies like freekeh), I started to work through some of my cupboard and freezer supplies.

From the freezer,
Frozen blueberries (not enough for a pie) went into smoothies.
Two types of frozen cookie dough were discovered, baked, and devoured.
Now, what to do with the macerated crabapples that we used to make flavored liquor (crabapple gin is really good)?

From the pantry,
Dried apricots (Costco bag) are being made into filling for a slab pie:
http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/bran ... b-pie.aspx

Now I just need to work through 1c pistachios, the last of the apricots (I'm thinking biscotti for those two), some peppermint mini-marshmallows, and several bags of butterscotch chips (nasty, but beloved by kid). Plus I have a side of smoked salmon-- time to break that out!

Cheers, Jen