The Eating from the Pantry & Freezer Challenge: Week 3

Welcome to the third week of the Eating from The Pantry & Freezer Challenge!  Here’s what it’s all about or you can read the post from Week 2.

Here’s my update from last week

Well, this is a bit embarrassing, but not many of the meals I had planned for last week got made.   We had family in town for the week so many of our dinners/lunches were thrown out the window because we were all over the place.  Many meals at the in-laws and a couple out of town at a cousin’s house!

The meals we managed to eat were breakfast every morning, egg salad sandwiches, waffles, tacos, and fettuccine Alfredo.  Needless to say, we still have quite a bit of stuff in our pantry and freezer!

This week should be different.  We don’t have any company (until Saturday!) so I anticipate eating through quite a bit of our stuff!

I also picked a whole bunch of cucumbers, tomatoes and blackberries (yum!) from my Mom’s garden.  I can see some tasty salads in our future!

Getting creative with what you have left

At this point in the challenge you may have come to a point where you need to be creative when it comes to using up what you have an abundance of and filling the spaces of those things you wish you could go out and buy.

There are a few great websites out there that will come up with some recipes for the ingredients you already have on hand.  All Recipes is one of them.  Simply input the ingredients you have and the ingredients you don’t have and it will pull up a list of recipes you could make!  Recipe Matcher and Food.com (find the recipe sifter in the top right hand corner, orange button) are also good resources!

Can you provide some examples of how you use ingredients that you have an abundance of?  Or even some examples of what some ingredients you can use in place of other ingredients?

Here’s what we’ll be eating this week:

Since not many of my planned meal got made last week, you’ll see some recycled meals on this week’s menu.   To complete my meals this week, I spent about $17 on yogurt, produce, milk and eggs.

Monday:

• Breakfast:  Refrigerator oatmeal (recipe still coming!)
• Lunch:  Smoothies
• Dinner:  Black Bean, Corn and Rice salad burritos (recipe coming)

Tuesday:

• Brunch: Waffles or pancakes
• Dinner: Marinated steak, pasta salad. grilled veggies

Wednesday:

• Breakfast:  Banana chocolate chip muffins, yogurt, fruit
• Lunch:  Leftovers
• Dinner:  Perogies and Sausage, steamed veggies (needs to be a quick dinner)

Thursday:

• Breakfast:  refrigerated oatmeal
• Lunch:  Potato soup
• Dinner:  Out for a BBQ at a friend’s house

Friday:

• Breakfast:  muffins, yogurt, fruit
• Lunch:  Egg salad sandwich
• Dinner:  Cheesy Beef & Rice, salad

Saturday:

• Brunch: Bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, toast
• Dinner:  Crockpot BBQ meatballs, rice, veggies

Sunday:

• Brunch:  Smoothies
• Dinner:  Asian Vegetable Pasta (with chicken), artisan bread in the slow cooker

Now it’s your turn, what’s your update and what will you be eating this week?