My Wednesday Pantry-More Creativity

     

     Can you relate? And there's just two of us most of the time. Still, it's great to have a stocked pantry, I just don't always optimally manage it. I think part of the obstacle around meals is limited thinking. I get in ruts where we just circulate the same meals over a two week period, plus, leftovers at least a night and for my lunches. I get bored and reach for unhealthy snacks that do nothing but add calories. They're not really eaten for enjoyment or hunger.  

     Then, there's the obstacle of pickiness. I worked with a women once who's husband wouldn't eat hotdish (casseroles). When asked, she said he eats pasta, stir fry veg, meat, and rice, and meat, veg and potato. He just wouldn't eat them served together, hotdish style. She grew up on hotdishes,  knew they were easy day of and for lunches later. I remember several of us suggesting to her to just keep the saucy binder seperate for the meal, serve as sauce or gravy, and if leftover's, make him a seperate plate for reheating, but combine the rest, for herself ( this was pre-kid for her) as a small hotdish. Funny thing, when he saw what she did, he actually told her he didn't need a seperate leftover plate, and ate it as leftovers in hotdish fashion. I don't know if he was ever a hotdish convert in full. 

     Seperate ingredients, combined ingredients, surplus of something, this all happens in my kitchen too. DH gets bored with leftovers, but reconstructed, he's fine. It takes creativity to try to make the old or same something different or new. I'm going to do three things this year in my kitchen. 1. Cut waste 2. Decrease salt and fat filled convenience items 3. Try new recipes. As for three, this might be me making things up as a result of the first two. 

     Sunday I was going to make a pasta dish and started noticing all the odds and ends. I ended up cooking 6 ounces of penne pasta. In a seperate bowl I combined a small can diced tomatoes, 3/4 cup cottage cheese, 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 a roll of already cooked crumbled sausage from the freezer, pepper, salt, garlic, onion powder. I found 1/3 of an onion and bagged spinach in the crisper. I cooked them quick in microwave and added to sauce mix. I was going to heat sauce and serve over penne, but decided to just put pasta in a baking dish and cover with the sauce since we weren't ready to eat. Later I put in a 350° oven for 35 minutes, topped with mozzarella, and baked another 10 minutes. Because I hadn't combined the sauces and pasta, the layers of pasta, sauce, and cheese were visible when serving, as they would have been as seperate pasta and sauce, but this let me work and cleanup ahead. We had with garlic toast, made from a remaining hot dog and hamburger bun. DH said it was one of the best pastas he's ever had. 

Used up: wilted spinach, lingering cottage cheese, leftover cooked sausage, and part of an onion, two buns past date. We also need to get the gallon container of milk used up before it goes off, so this helped. It was not fine dining, but I was happy with the results. That's the kind of cooking I want to do more of in 2023.  Sooze over at Her In/Him Out had a successful use it up day and gave me future ideas. 

     DS got stranded in Phoenix and rebooked on same time flight today, arriving about midnight. His connecting flight was cancelled due to the second round of snow starting last night. I'm sure keeping runways clear was challenging and who knows the system for what flights cancel and what goes forward.  He got a hotel room, but he'll occupy himself between check out and 6:00 flight check in. I don't know if he traveled with computer for movie streaming, but he's an avid book reader. When we went to France, his flight arrived 4 hours ahead of us. He waited it out in a lounge with a book. I'm disappointed, but that's the chance we take when flying in the winter.