Wednesday, July 22, 2009

the daily dilemma

It's time for a post, but my very-full-of-wedding-thoughts mind could do no more than look over the drafts I've written. Laughable! Some drafts are no more than a title from a writer's rambling mind. Anyway, I found this one. Some of you have liked the recipe posts, so this fits that theme...

Dinner. It strikes fear in every woman, especially mothers. Even those who are into "once-a-month cooking" and are the most outrageously-organized women on earth still have those days when the approaching dinner hour looms like a not-studied-for algebra test.

This week, I decided to take the "use what we have" challenge. No grocery trips, last-minute or otherwise, to assemble a dinner.

After excavating the pantry, fridge and freezer, here's my loose menu plan:

Monday - some kind of chips/chili/cheese/chicken/tomato plate. Hot and tasty from the oven. Lacking sour cream, we used ranch dressing.

Tuesday - found a bag of stew beef in the freezer! It'll go in the crock pot with onion and beef bouillion and in the afternoon it'll be joined by some noodles for beef and noodles. Green beans (whoops - canned!) and homemade bread I found in the freezer will round out the meal.

Wednesday - corn fritters. Like pancakes, made with cream-style corn. I know it sounds dubious, but be flexible, ok? If you keep a can of cream-style corn in the pantry, you can always whip these up for a quick supper.

Thursday - quiche. Found a Pillsbury pie crust in the fridge and everything else happens to be in there, too. Apples & oranges round it out.

Taking it to a more serious level, we are undeniably the fattest and best-fed people on the planet. We would all do well to eat what we have and be exceedingly thankful for it.

Really now. Why not? Take the "use what you have" challenge and let me know how it turns out.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That challenge scares me--either because I'm not a naturally creative cook or because I dread the disatisfied consumers.

Tell me to clean and organize a room, and I'm on it!
-d

Jenny Haller said...

Oh my goodness. My dilemma: no wallet, out of olive oil (so no sauteing), a pantry full of my cravings (mac n cheese, pita chips, corn nuts!?), and a night off to cook...

I found a can of tomatoes, a bag of black beans, had an onion, a bell pepper leftover from fajitas and of course, cumin, garlic and pepper. Therefore: cuban black beans and rice in the slow cooker! Set it and forget it :)

Barb said...

IMO, the dissatisfied customers should be assigned a night to fix dinner.

Way to go, Dand and Jenny!

Anonymous said...

Must be genetic - I do this all the time - I constantly challenge myself to use up as many small leftovers as I can in one sitting - believe Dad used to refer to these combinations as purloo which I found out recently is a real word in cajun cuisine...Pat

Barb said...

haha - yeah, except it's probably spelled more like "perlieu"?? And we thought he just made it up!