Pantry Cooking Project, Day 7

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Serene

Long, hard day. Here, have a photo!

This is dinner: macaroni with homemade spaghetti sauce, cooked green beans, and a salad of tomatoes, avocados, red peppers, olive oil, salt, and balsamic vinegar.

dinner

 

It’s day 7 of our project, and we’re nowhere near running out of food. We are still shopping, but only for veggies and coffee. I am still eating out a lot; not sure when I became a person who can’t go a week without buying prepared food. Good to know about myself, though!

Breakfast was an apple and a slice of cheddar. I took a cellphone photo of it, but it didn’t turn out.

Lunch was an avocado sandwich, a cold artichoke dipped in homemade mayo, and a pear. Later, a bought snack: cheese fries and an iced tea.

I forgot to post the week’s menu plan, so I may as well do that:

Monday (pasta): see above

Tuesday (Mexican): If I’m up for it, I’ll make flour tortillas and have soft tacos. Otherwise, it’s Spanish rice again, with beans and veggies (I bought tomatoes and cilantro today).

Wednesday (Asian noodles): <a href=”http://serenecooking.livejournal.com/75623.html”>Peanut noodles</a> with tofu

Thursday (sandwiches): Veggie burgers with homemade buns

Friday (stir-fry): Stir-fry seitan and rice and veggies

Saturday (chickpea gravy): chickpea gravy and potatoes

Sunday (anything I want to make): fish and chips

Money spent on groceries today: $30.70 (project total $86.56)
Money spent in restaurants: $7 (project total $99.76)
Food gifts received today: $0 (project total $17)
Things we’ve run out of: Mayonnaise, ice cream, hamburger patties, pork chops

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Pantry Cooking Project, Day 6

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Serene

Just a quicky today.

Breakfast was my basic buttermilk pancakes (recipe below) and a ham-and-green-onion frittata.

breakfast

Lunch was the leftover rice from the day before and some of our farmer’s market bounty: strawberries and donut peaches.

lunch

Dinner was a fancy restaurant with a friend, so basically, I’m not doing all that well in my resolve not to spend much in restaurants this month. Oh, well.

Money spent on groceries: $16.25 (project total $55.86)
Money spent in restaurants: $55 (project total $92.76)
Food gifts received today: $0 (project total $17)
Things we’ve run out of: Mayonnaise, ice cream, hamburger patties, pork chops

Print
Simple buttermilk pancakes
Author: 
Recipe type: Breakfast
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 

Serves: 3
 

Ingredients
Dry ingredients
  • 1 cup flour
  • ½ tsp baking powder
  • ¾ tsp baking soda
  • dash salt
  • 1-3 Tbsp sugar
Wet ingredients
  • 1 cup buttermilk (I use the thick Bulgarian kind; it makes a difference)
  • 1 beaten egg
  • 2 Tbsp melted butter, plus more for the pan

Instructions
  1. Combine the dry ingredients with a fork in a small mixing bowl.
  2. Combine the buttermilk and egg in a small bowl and add all at once to the dry ingredients. Stir until the batter is smooth.
  3. Stir in the melted butter.
  4. Fry the pancakes in melted butter. If you’re unsure how to cook pancakes, leave me a comment, and I’ll be more specific.

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Ah, bliss. (Pantry Cooking Project, Day 5)

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Serene

It’s my first weekend as a college graduate, and it’s off to a wonderful start. Slept in a little bit (until 8am! yay!) and then delighted in a gorgeous breakfast James made us: morel omelettes, potatoes, V-8, and tea. Later, scarfed an entire pint of raspberries all by myself. Life is good.

Today’s food:

The aforementioned breakfast.

breakfast

Lunch was veggie burgers with homemade mayo (you may recall we ran out of store-bought pretty early) and oven fries. James made lunch, as well. He’s a really useful guy to have around.

lunch

(I made the mayo from this recipe from the Frugal Farm Wife, Elise New.)

mayo

For dinner, I thought I’d try my hand at making flour tortillas using my friend Koko’s instructions, but I ended up feeling less ambitious than that, so I just made “Spanish rice” instead, and served it with refried beans and a tomato-and-avocado salad.

dinner

(I haven’t been mentioning snacks. Today’s snacks were the aforementioned raspberries, some milk and cookies, and a couple of white peaches. Ah, summer!)

Money spent on groceries today: $0 (project total $39.61)
Money spent in restaurants today: $0 (project total $37.76)
Food gifts received today: $0 (project total $17)
Things we’ve run out of: Mayonnaise, ice cream, hamburger patties, pork chops

Print
Easy Spanish rice
Author: 
Recipe type: Side dish
Cuisine: Pseudo-Mexican
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 

Serves: 6
 

Ingredients
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 small onion, finely diced
  • 1 small bell pepper (any color), finely diced
  • 1½ cups medium- or long-grained white rice
  • 3 cloves finely chopped garlic
  • 2½ cups stock or water (I used a knorr beef tub in hot water)
  • 1 cup crushed tomatoes (or tomato sauce, or diced tomatoes with the liquid)

Instructions
  1. In a medium saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring often, for a couple of minutes, until softened. Add pepper and rice and cook and stir 5-8 minutes, until rice starts to turn light brown. Add the garlic and cook another minute.
  2. Add in broth and tomatoes. Stir and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and cover. Let simmer 20 minutes, then remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes. Fluff rice with a fork and serve.

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Pantry Cooking Project, Day 4

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Serene

This’ll be a short post. Long week. So tired. *blink, blink*

Breakfast was oatmeal with raisins, butter, and amber agave syrup. Would’ve used honey, but it was in a tub, and the agave syrup was in an easy-pour bottle, and did I mention I’m really tired?

oatmeal

Lunch was a planned outing with co-workers. I shared an appetizer sampler with them, and my lunch was vegetarian nachos and a strawberry shake.

For dinner, we had the kid over, and she loves meat, so we made some of the Omaha Steaks pork chops. I dredged them in seasoned flour, then eggs, then seasoned panko. Fried in a mix of butter and olive oil. Pretty good, though I’m used to my pork fattier. Served with corn on the cob and artichokes. The kid said “Oh, man, I LOVE summer corn!”

pork chop, artichoke, applesauce, corn

(That pile of yellow stuff is applesauce. The kid and I don’t eat pork chops without applesauce. It just isn’t done in my family. When I was growing up, pork chops were always Shake ‘n’ Bake (I didn’t have any) and always served with applesauce. That’s just the way it was. Family traditions are important!)

Money spent on groceries today: $39.61 — we bought tons of produce, plus some milk, eggs, and buttermilk
Money spent in restaurants today: $26.24 (project total $37.76)
Food gifts received today: $0 (project total $17)
Things we’ve run out of: Mayonnaise, ice cream, hamburger patties, pork chops

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Pantry Cooking Project, Day 3

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Serene

Growing up, our beverage choice at dinner was usually water or water. We drank a lot of water in our house. Sometimes there was juice or milk at breakfast or lunch, and in the summer, Country Time lemonade or instant Nestea iced tea (you do know to boycott Nestlé, right?), but usually, it was water, and it’s still my favorite beverage. Preferably cold with no ice, but I’m pretty flexible. Am I the only one who sees people using a garden hose and wants to go over and get a quick drink? Yeah, probably the only one over the age of seven.

Anyway.

These days, I still mostly drink water, but I’ve gotten in the habit at The Best Job Ever of buying a drink in the afternoon: usually sweet, usually caffeinated, usually cold. Today, it’s jasmine and honey iced tea with lychee jelly. Delicious. But I want to see about moving to homemade drinks for my afternoon treat. One of the main reasons I don’t do that is that I don’t want to deal with washing out a container, but maybe I can find one that’s wide enough that I can just wash it the way I would a drinking glass. I’ll be on the lookout.

Possible afternoon bring-along drinks:

ice water (feels like more of a treat than just water from the tap)
sekanjabin
sweet iced tea
chia lemonade or other chia drink
V-8, tomato juice, Clamato (all faves, but in hot weather, they don’t tend to satisfy thirst as well for me)
[your suggestion here]

Food today:

Breakfast was delicious. Frozen O’Brien potatoes fried in oil; eggs over easy; a little sriracha; a cup of V-8; some yellow pepper strips.

breakfast

Lunch was an embarrassment of food in packets. I had taken some ham out of the freezer to make sandwiches with, but it wasn’t thawed yet when I went to make my lunch in the morning, so I just grabbed some stuff to take.

lunch

Dinner was some really amazing cheeseburgers, with those awesome homemade buns. Mom often thinks we’re not eating enough meat, so she sends us boxes of meat from Omaha Steaks. These are their burgers, topped with melted Swiss cheese and caramelized onions. Usually, I eat half my burger and give James the other half, because I’m just not all that into big chunks of meat, but this time, I ate the whooooooole thing, and it was just. so. good.

dinner

Money spent on groceries today: $0
Money spent in restaurants today: $2.99 (project total $11.52)
Food gifts received today: $0 (project total $17)
Things we’ve run out of: Mayonnaise, ice cream, milk, hamburger patties

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