Pantry Challenge Recipes

Here are some recipes that can be made from items in your pantry.

Breakfasts

Instant Oatmeal Mix  - Add any add in you want and you have a delicious breakfast

Fruit Smoothie - Use any frozen fruit you have on hand, juice, and even any yogurt.  Be as creative as you like.

Lunch:

Sloppy Joes - As long as you have some hamburger in your house, you can whip up some sloppy joes.  If you have enough time, you can also make homemade hamburger buns to eat the Sloppy Joes on.  Save some of those sloppy joes for a Sloppy Joe pizza later.

Dinner:

Baked Spaghetti - Again you can use whatever meat you have in your fridge or freezer.  Use whatever cheese you may have in your fridge - okay maybe not bleu cheese.  If the cheese is not shredded, shred it yourself.

Ranch Chicken Legs - As long as you have chicken (doesn't have to be just legs - use chicken breasts or thighs), Bisquick or something similar, and dry ranch dressing packet (or the ingredients to make your own), you can cook this simple main dish.

Taco Crescent Bake - You can switch this up with cooked chicken or even ground turkey.  You can try different cheeses.  This is a great main dish.  Don't have tortilla chips but have tortillas, make your own chips.

Orange Chicken - I usually keep the ingredients for this simple dish in the freezer (popcorn chicken) and pantry (orange sauce) for an easy meal.

Crockpot Ribs - You can use this same method for chicken or even a pork roast.  Use whatever barbecue sauce you have on hand.

Spanish style chicken noodle soup - This recipe calls for raw chicken.  I've made it with cooked chicken.  You can use frozen corn or canned corn.  You can use dried black beans or canned black beans.  If you use the dried beans, make sure you prep it beforehand.

 

Menu Planning Monday ~ Week of Jan 16

Monday - hamburger gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans

Tuesday - spaghetti with salad - Maybe garlic bread

Wednesday - broccoli beef over rice, veggies

Thursday - veggie soup with rolls

Friday - The boys are going up to their cousins' house so it will just be Hubby and I for dinner.  We are having apple sage porkchops, rice or noodles, and peas

Saturday - Eat whatever you want night - Don't know when the boys will be back from their cousins so we are going to have a relaxed plan for dinner.  Hubby and I are going to Chinese for lunch to celebrate the Chinese New Year so we will be pretty full from that.

Homemade Tortillas

Monday is Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday holiday.  This morning the Wee One started talking about the holiday and how it does not matter what color a person's skin is because God made you the way you are.  It made my heart melt listening to the wisdom of a 6.5 year old.

Now onto my recipe -

In October, Finding Joy in my Kitchen hosted 31 days of Cooking from Scratch.  She showed you how to make homemade bread, breakfasts, etc . . .  One of the recipes was for homemade tortillas.  Since October, I've wanted to make homemade tortillas.  So today I took the time out and made some.  They were fairly easy.  Time consuming but otherwise easy to make.

Homemade Tortillas

Finding Joy in my Kitchen

Stars of the recipe:

• 
  
  2 1/2 c. white whole wheat flour


• 
  
  1/2 c. whole wheat flour or more white whole wheat (I used all white whole wheat flour.)


• 
  
  1 c. warm water


• 
  
  1/4 c. olive oil (I used Extra Virgin Olive Oil.)


• 
  
  3/4 tsp. sea salt


• 
  
  1/4 tsp. baking powder

Steps:

1. 
   
   Pour the warm water into a big bowl (stand mixer bowl if you have one and are going to use it)


2. 
   
   Add the olive oil, sea salt, and baking powder.  Stir well to combine these ingredients.


3. 
   
    Place the bowl on the mixer and attach the dough hook.


4. 
   
   Turn on the mixer to setting 1 or 2.  (I had my mixer up to a setting of 3.)


5. 
   
   Gradually add the flour.


6. 
   
   Allow the mixer to knead the dough for 5 minutes until the dough is combined and fairly smooth.


7. 
   
   Shape the dough into a ball and cover, allowing the dough to rest for 10 minutes.


8. 
   
   After 10 minutes, cut dough in half.  Slice each half into 5 rolls.  Form balls out of each slice, cover, and set aside for 10 minutes.


9. Use a rolling pin, roll out each tortilla into an 8 to 10 inch circle.  You want them thin. (In order for me to roll the dough out, I had to flour the surface where I was rolling them out and then also the top of the dough.  It kept sticking otherwise.  Mine were not circles.  They ended up being more egg shaped.  It didn't matter, they were good anyways.)


10. Preheat griddle to 350 degrees and place dough circles on griddle.  (I did mine in a skillet on the stove.  I heated it up to 5.)


11. Do not grease the griddle or skillet if it is non-stick.  If you normally grease the griddle or skillet, use butter or olive oil.


12. Allow the tortillas to cook for 5 minutes/side.  Watch carefully to make sure they don't get too browned.


13. Place cooked tortillas on a large plate.

You can put them in the fridge after they cooled for 3 to 4 days or freeze them for a few months.

For directions on how make the tortillas without the stand mixer, visit Finding Joy in my Kitchen.

This post is linked to:  Everyday Mom's Church Supper

Fruit Smoothie

Yummy!  And healthy!  That's two words that describe these smoothies.

Right before Christmas, I bought an individual smoothie maker with cups for a Christmas gift for the whole family.  The Imagative One and I love making and drinking smoothies.  He also likes to drink milk shakes made with the smoothie maker.  I will share his favorite smoothie on a different post.

Breakfast Smoothie

Stars of the recipe:

• 
  
  6 to 8 oz of fruit juice (I've used 100% Juice Cranberry-Blueberry, Lite Cranberry Raspberry, and Ruby Red Grapefruit-Cherry.  All those were for different smoothies.)


• 
  
  1/4 c. yogurt (I've used Greek yogurt for an extra boost of protein.)


• 
  
  1 cup of frozen fruit (I've used either cherries or strawberries.)

Steps:

1. 
   
   Put all the ingredients in the individual smoothie cup or blender.


2. 
   
   Blend until combine.


3. 
   
   Pour into a cup and enjoy!

Menu Planning Monday ~ Week of Jan. 9, 2012

Monday ~ Greek inspired crockpot chicken {new}, mashed potatoes or roasted potatoes, veggies

Tuesday ~ Spanish style chicken noodle soup, rolls

Wednesday ~ grilled cheese sandwiches, basil tomato soup

Thursday ~ Eat whatever you want night

Friday ~ Pizza night

Saturday ~ Stuffed Cabbage Casserole (me) - Part is going to stock the freezer for later meals, left overs for boys

Pantry Challenge

Pantry Challenge - Winter of 2012

As I was looking through various blogs, I found a pantry challenge.  IT DOES NOT mean only eating out of the pantry or freezer.  It means looking at what's in the pantry or freezer before shopping or menu planning.

My goals for the pantry challenge are:

1.  Lower my grocery bill

We've been spending too much at the grocery store.  I want to lower that bill.  So does hubby.

2.  Clean out the pantry and freezer

We need to get that pantry cleaned out so if I cook dinners based around what I have in the pantry that will help us with the grocery bill.  This week we have had baked spaghetti which used up a half box of spaghetti that was sitting in the pantry and already cooked hamburger that was in the freezer.  We have also had peanut butter pancakes.  I used up some white whole wheat flour that was not being used.  Another meal was veggie beef soup.  In that meal, we used up some more of the hamburger meat from the freezer and half bags of frozen vegetables hanging around in the freezer.  We are going to have chicken scampi later on this week to use up some of the frozen chicken tenderloins that have made their home in our freezer.

Next week's meals are going to use up a whole roasting chicken taking up room in the fridge's freezer.  We are also going to use the cooked chicken for a soup the next day.  That soup contains corn and black beans.  I have cans of those in the pantry which is going to save us money.  It also calls for chicken broth.  Again I have that in the pantry.  The only expense I may have for that soup is the orzo pasta.  I will have to check in the pantry to make sure I don't have that.

3.  Once a month cooking

I would love to do some once a month cooking.  In order to do that, I need to get the deep freezer cleaned out.  Since I make most of the dinners, I don't always want to cook when I get home.  On those days, I like to stop at a fast food restaurant which is both not healthy and not cheap.  I would love to have back up meals in the freezer for the days I know I am going to be tired.  Also with it being winter, the weather is unpredictable.  It might take me longer to get home so I would like to have the option of a frozen meal that my hubby can pull out of the freezer.

Those are my three main goals for the pantry challenge.  As I navigate through the challenge, I think I will come up with more goals than those 3.

Baked spaghetti (Easy Meal)

The Imaginative One has very bland tastes.  When we have spaghetti, he likes to eat only the plain noodles.  He does not like to eat the sauce on his noodles at all!  I usually accomodate him by putting some of the noodles to the side for him.  When I cooked this dish, I decided not to accomodate him at all.

He gave me such a dirty look when I told him it was either the baked spaghetti or nothing at all.  Hubby had a talk with him about how lucky he was to have a mommy that not only cooked but one who cooked great food.  The Imaginative One bucked up and tried the baked spaghetti.  He ended up liking it!

This is an easy meal to put together.  Just add a salad on the side and Italian bread or garlic bread on the side and you have a whole meal.  (We had spinach salad with choose your own toppings.  The Wee One chose bacon, sunflower seeds, mandarian oranges, and dried cranberries for his toppings.  He did not want to have any dressing for his salad.  The Imaginative One had just spinach with his mandarian oranges on the side.)

Baked Spaghetti

Stars of the recipe:

• half box of spaghetti, cooked and drained


• pound of hamburger or sausage cooked, also drain off grease (I had cooked my ground beef about a month ago and then froze it so I had to just warm it up.)


• a jar of spaghetti sauce or homemade sauce


• 1 c. of Italian cheese or mozarella cheese

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.


2. Cook the spaghetti and then drain. (I cooked it al dente.)


3. In a 8 by 10 or 9 by 13 pan, spread a little bit of sauce.


4. Place the cooked spaghetti over the sauce.


5. Next, put the cooked hamburger or sausage over the spaghetti.


6. Cover with the rest of spaghetti sauce. 


7. Sprinkle mozarella or Italian cheese over spaghetti sauce.


8. Bake in oven for 20 minutes.


9. Enjoy!