We kind of cheated a little today on the Eat From the Pantry Challenge… we’d already scheduled to go out to dinner with my parents tonight and my parents offered to bring dinner over for my kids and my siblings who are babysitting them.
So I didn’t have to make anything for dinner, but we are using a gift card for dinner that we’ve had sitting at our house for a long time and wanted to use up before we moved. I guess that counts for something, right? 🙂
Anyway, here’s what we ate today:
Breakfast: Oatmeal
Lunch: Turkey sandwiches, apples, and chips (I had a salad!)
Snack: Finished off some ice cream some friends had brought by last week.
Dinner: Out to eat with my parents using a gift card
Today was a pretty simple and rather uneventful Eating from the Pantry day, but I have a feeling it will get more interesting as this week progresses and our cupboards become more bare. Stay tuned. 🙂
Are you eating from the pantry this week? If you are, leave a comment telling us what you ate today. Or, if you’re blogging about this challenge, leave a link to your direct blog post below that details what you ate for the Pantry Challenge today. I can’t wait to see your creative ideas!
This is great! I have been realizing recently just how much food remains in my pantry (and freezer) on a monthly basis that just does not get used up! With our first baby due in July and a desire to get some serious freezer cooking done next month so as to prepare for the arrival, I know I need to clear a lot of space in both the pantry and freezer, and this is perfect for it.
Thank you for the challenge – so simple, yet so inspired!
I look forward to these posts. I did this a few weeks ago before we went out of town for a week. I wanted to clear out the food that would go bad and save a little money for the trip by not buying lots of groceries. On the morning we left the only items in the fridge were butter, almond milk, five potatoes and cheese. All things I knew would still be good a week later when we came back.
Just found the challenge and thought it would be fun. I’ll post Day 1 and 2 tomorrow.
Wow, what fun this will be to see everyone doing this. We tend to keep an extremely well stocked pantry and eat from it most days. I can pull together dinner in a snap. It is not a challenge for us because it is the way we live. It is a good reminder that you can eat from the pantry with a little creativity.
There is a lot of food that goes to waste when we place it in the back of the pantry and never clean it out. I just wrote a post about those expired foods that have been found in the back corner of the pantry http://www.lifelesshurried.com/2014/04/is-it-safe-to-eat.html
This is a great time to clear it out and refresh the pantry along with all the other spring cleaning.
One of my favorite family recipes is Chicken Broccoli Casserole. Most of the ingredients come from the pantry. 2 cans of White chicken breast, 1 can creamed soup (chicken, celery or mushroom, I have used them all & whatever you have will work great), 1 cup mayonnaise (I use light), 1-2 TBS cumin, juice from half a lemon, 1 cup bread crumbs, 1 cup (or so) cheese (cheddar or mozzarella) 2-4 TBS butter, rice and 2 cups frozen or fresh broccoli (I have also used cauliflower & it tastes great too). Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Put canned chicken into a 9 X 13 size pan and spread it around the pan evenly. Cook broccoli for about 3 minutes (I put frozen broccoli in a glass bowl, add a little water & cover with plastic wrap then nuke for 3 minutes, fresh for about 2 minutes). Add the semi cooked broccoli to the chicken and scatter evenly. Sprinkle half of the cheese over chicken & broccoli. In a medium size bowl combine can of cream soup, mayonnaise. cumin & lemon juice, stir until combined. Spread mixture evenly over chicken & broccoli. Sprinkle with the rest of the cheese, then sprinkle with bread crumbs, melt butter and drizzle evenly over the casserole. Bake uncovered for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown on top & bubbling. Serve over the top of your favorite kind of rice, (I usually use brown) ENJOY! I usually make 3 at a time & then freeze them, them come out perfect every time! Just increase cooking time by about 10 minutes.
Made homemade minastroni soup with tomatoe sauce instead of diced tomatoes.. Didn’t have any.. Did add the puréed white chili beans., few seasoning.. N noodles.. Came out good
Breakfast: oatmeal. Lunch: Easter leftovers. Dinner: Pork ribs. The ribs were already in my freezer. I usually make barbecue ribs, but my family is kind of getting tired of that, so I found a recipe for ribs on allrecipes.com, using their “search by ingredient”. I had all the other ingredients, so that saved me a trip to the store. This is my first time participating in one of your challenges. It’s quite fun. Hope I’ll keep going to the end!
That is to weird how many people had this same thought this week!!
We are eating from the pantry – didn’t know this was goin on this week but we were painting Saturday and didn’t realize stores were closed for Easter. So made a menu for the week with what’s on hand. We are cheating a bit – kids will get lunches at school. Breakfast – cereal and juice today. Lunch for me and hubby – hummus (homemade) and veggies. Snacks – applesauce and cheese it’s Dinner – chicken drumsticks, broccoli rice, and green beans
We are joining in on the pantry challenge fun. We have a lot of leftovers from hosting Easter brunch and a birthday dinner yesterday.
B- donuts and turnovers ( this is a rare breakfast for us but they were leftovers that my parents brought)
L- I was exhausted, we used a fast food gift card 🙁
D- the kids had bacon, sausages, veggies and dip and fruit cups
hubby had steak, I had salmon and salad, we shared asparagus, twice baked potatoes and deviled eggs
We still have quite a bit of leftovers
Join me as we eat from the pantry using all our leftovers from Easter dinner.
http://adayinthelifeonthefarm.blogspot.com/2014/04/monday-movie-night.html
Today we enjoyed Ham and Asparagus Quiche.
Today I ate a cup of croutons and 1/3 of the burrito my husband left in the fridge from our Mexican food truck outing over the weekend. We’ll see what Tuesday has in store!