Eating out of the pantry

This week's been going great. I love working my way through the stuff we have on-hand!

I made a big batch of quinoa with black beans - the only thing I had to purchase was the cilantro (it's just not worth making without the cilantro flavor).



The kids are working their way through some junky snacks that I don't want to buy again, but can't bear to just throw out. Mini pringles, Chex mix...a bunch of crap that I got for free at Shoppers Food Warehouse a few weeks ago.

I also made another batch of frozen yogurt pops with the rest of the blueberry yogurt from SFW and 2 bags of frozen blueberries I dug out of the freezer. Nate loves them and it was a great, healthy way to use up some stuff that's been sitting around for too long.

I also found some bagged-up soup frozen from a big batch I made a few months ago and ate that for lunch for several days instead of using new cans of soup, and I've been throwing frozen organic veggies from the SFW trip into just about everything I feed the kiddos. I'm definitely making headway on the storage items we have!

Last night we had friends for dinner and I decided to stick with the plan of using mostly items from the pantry. Whenever we have people over I try to do a totally vegetarian night without saying anything about it - it's part of my "eat less meat" campaign to show people, without being pushy, how delicious and complete a meal can be without meat. I took a look at what we had around to come up with a meal: I had tons of Wholly Guacamole in the downstairs freezer that I got for more than 50% off, shredded cheddar from Safeway for more than 50% off, salsa from Giant that was more than 70% off. I had tons of half-sized boxes of Wheat Thins I got free at CVS, organic diced tomatoes from Harris Teeter for 90% off, and tons of cans of beans. So...

Munchies: Wheat thins and baby carrots with dips: guacamole, salsa, and homemade hummus.

Main course: veggie chili made with frozen diced onions and other frozen veggies, canned beans, and canned tomatoes. Toppings: shredded cheddar, guacamole, salsa.

Voila! I didn't have to buy a single item, I used up tons of things I already had in the house, and I cooked a healthy delicious vegetarian meal. Very happy.