Clean Out the Pantry Week

Well, we did it. We managed to get through a busy week creating meals from what we had on hand. This is a fun game for me. I know, I know…get a life, right?

Honestly, it gave me a chance to stretch my kitchen brain a little and clean out a few odds and ends before we move into fall-style shopping and cooking.

For starters, we made short work of the leftover soup from the last soup of the week – that works well as a light supper and is fantastic packed for my school lunch. Even more fun? When I heat it up and co-workers get a whiff of whatever it is, they are generally fascinated by the fact that it is A) homemade and B) whatever bizarre combination of vegetables it happens to be.

We had plenty of salad greens on hand for a few lunches and filled those with the ends of containers of dried fruits, nuts, and various other leftover items. I love that salad can be pretty much whatever you want. We had some homemade balsamic vinaigrette on hand to finish, but after that I used plain old olive oil and either lemon or lime. Not everyone likes that, but I can be happy with that. Toss some feta in and it mixes with the oil and citrus juice and makes a pretty interesting dressing.

A week like this often leads to what I call faker meals – the ones that get made up just because there are a particular combination of ingredients on hand and they sort of work together. We had a pound of ground beef in the freezer, a box of pasta (some shape, can’t remember what), the end of a container of grated Romano cheese, a block of cheddar, and some not-homemade spaghetti sauce (I know…shh. Sometimes we do that.) Kidzilla wanted jar sauce and noodles; Fab Hub wanted a cheeseburger pasta kind of thing. Did I mix them together and call it dinner? Yes, I did. Did they love it? Yup, sure did. That made everybody happy for dinner and the freezer now holds a container of that for another night.

One night, we defrosted our last set of frozen chicken breasts, browned them in a skillet and poured the leftover sauce from a plum chicken we had made the week before. I believe that was accompanied by a side of whatever rice was in the pantry – brown, maybe? Jasmine? CSA green beans on the side and something else that needed to be used – okra? eggplant? leftover carrots, maybe?

The one leftover chicken breast got chopped up and tossed into the Fab Hub’s favorite pasta salad. It’s sort of a variation on a Waldorf salad…but not completely. I whipped this one up once a very long time ago when we didn’t have much to work with and a favorite was born. Kidzilla also loves it. They fight over this stuff. Here’s how it works…

• noodles (either boil them on purpose or use leftovers from another night’s meal that you’ve set aside)
• whatever leftover chicken you have on hand (any flavor will do), chopped into bite sized pieces
• apple, any variety, chopped into bite sized pieces
• dried cranberries or cherries; raisins work just fine, too
• matchstick carrots if you happen to have them or skip them if you don’t
• mayonnaise to taste

Mix all of that in a bowl, season with some fresh or dried herbs or some salt and pepper if you want. We usually don’t bother – whatever the chicken has going on usually gives it just enough flavor to be perfect.

You’re done.

Measurements? Do whatever feels right. You’ll know.

Next, continuing to concentrate on using our CSA veggies in a timely manner, we came up with a fun new side dish. We sliced some little Chinese eggplants (Zilla loves these) and soaked them in olive oil, pomegranate balsamic vinegar, and some fresh CSA parsley for a few minutes. Just enough to coat them will do – don’t get them too wet. We tossed them into a well-heated skillet along with some dried cherries. and cooked them just a bit to let the flavors do their thing and soak up all the marinade. If you salt them with a bit of kosher salt after removing from the pan and before serving, you’ll get a fantastic salty-sweet veggie side that looks like you tried hard, even though it takes about five minutes.

Add some fresh parsley on top and it will look like you thought about it hard and paid attention, too.

On this particular evening, Kidzilla was perched next to me at the counter helping with dinner and learned how to grab a pinch of salt from the salt bowl and sprinkle it on a dish. Too much fun watching her. Her pinches, of course, are way tiny but she tossed her little salt sprinkle like a pro.

Several of our efforts this week have allowed us to not only use up leftovers, but to use leftover items to start a new meal, a habit Tamar Adler talks about in her book. Such a great idea, and we’ve found it really fun to think of leftovers not just as a few bits of this or that to toss on the side of something, but as a key ingredient in the creation of something new. We’ve also used this concept to think a little ahead and do things like make one extra chicken breast or twice as much pasta as we’ll need so that there are things waiting to be used later in the week. We continue to learn so much from that book.

We pulled a few things from the freezer, too, which is why I am always happy to have some things ready to go in there. I think we used up some leftover beef franks from a summer cookout day.

OK, that brings us to grocery day and some much-needed re-stocking.