A Walk in the Park

Making Something out of Nothing

I was looking for canned goods for the school "canned goods for Thanksgiving drive" and found really nothing that I could donate. Instead I found a lot of foods that needed to be used but that were a little too random for the food drive.

green chiles
roasted red peppers
baja chipolte marinade
fusilli pasta
white beans
lots of black beans
salsa verde
diced tomatoes
dried blueberries
barley
random: plum sauce, thin rice noodles, sliced papaya, oat bran

It's kind of like going through your closet! It was very sad. I was thinking a lot, "What was I thinking?"

Well, I also needed to menu plan so I took my list up to my computer and got on the cooking light web site.

I typed in my pantry items and came up with the following meals for the week:

turkey tamale pot pie
roasted red pepper, zucchini and tomato soup with fusilli
curried barley with raisins and almonds
bean and bacon soup
chicken enchiladas with salsa verde
overnight oatmeal muffins

YEAH! I am so excited to try these new recipes and use up a few pantry items. Also, I made a grocery list to go along with it and a lot of the stuff for all the recipes I had on hand. My grocery list is like: zucchini, corn tortillas, buttermilk, almonds and more normal food to donate to the food drive.

So, maybe I can use some of my money saved from grocery shopping by using up stuff I already had to buy some new shoes and use the time saved by just running into the store for a couple items to go on a walk. We'll see how it turns out.

posted by Kathryn @ 1:03 PM