So one night last week I was on a chair reaching waaay to the back of the cupboard (we have strange, deep cupboards) and I saw that one of the cans of tomato paste back there had burst and spewed tomato goop all over :( The goop got on three other cans of paste... I briefly considered just washing them off but, ug...
botulism, not worth the risk for 3x $.35 cans of tomato paste. All 4 cans went into the trash. I was bummed to know that I had failed to manage my stockpile efficiently and wasted food as a result. But I checked out everything else in the cupboard (pulled it all out and did a thorough cleaning of that shelf) and it all looks fine. This just renewed my commitment to finishing off the old crap and doing a better job going forward.
So, here are my accomplishments for last week:
- Finished off the last tub of lentil taco filling from the freezer. Now I can make up another batch :)
- I had about 1/4 cup of cornmeal remaining after making cornbread last week, and that isn't really enough for any full recipes. So on Friday when I was making homemade pizza dough, I used cornmeal instead of flour when rolling out the dough. I'll continue to do this until the rest of the cornmeal is gone.
- I had more pineapple juice accumulated in the freezer (every time I make Pineapple Dragon Chicken, one of our favorites, I save the leftover liquid from the can of pineapples for other recipes) so tonight we're having more copycat El Pollo Loco chicken, which used up all the pineapple juice.
- Used up the last can of French Onion Soup in place of beef broth when making Slow Cooker Beef Stew last night.
- Used up the last half of an open jar of raspberry jam as filling in some fruit and grain bars (like home made Nutri Grain bars, but way yummier).
- I had about 1/4 cup of applesauce left in a jar in the fridge, and combing through the freezer I found another 1.5 cups of frozen applesauce, so I made a big batch of oatmeal applesauce pancakes to freeze and eat for breakfast over the next couple of weeks. The original recipe calls for 1/2 a cup of applesauce, so I had to scale it up to accommodate 1.75 cups which doesn't come out very evenly so I just sort of winged it (3.5 eggs?), but they came out fine.
- Mixed up a big bowl of tuna for sandwiches for the week instead of buying lunch meat (we have a bajillion cans of tuna).
- Made another batch of chicken stock from bones and veggie scraps in the freezer.
- We've determined that the dog is allergic to rice (one of several reasons we've been cooking his food), so we're left with a large quantity of white rice since I normally get brown rice for us to eat. But I guess now we'll be eating white for a while, so I made a batch of chicken fried rice for the freezer for hubby's lunches.
- Cooked up the 2 butternut squashes that have been sitting on the counter for several weeks. I just made some puree and stuck it in the freezer, but its closer to being eaten now than it was previously.
So the good news is I did an inventory of the chest freezer and its not looking bad at all. I've been doing a good job of rotating the frozen food, apparently its just the food in the cupboards that I let sit for years. The only thing I found that I need to make an effort to deal with is some vegan whipped topping stuff which I had a free coupon for last summer (god I hope it was only last summer). I've also got 4 ancient boxes of jell-o in the Cupboard of No Return so that seems like an easy solution. My frozen vegetable stash has gotten crazy as I have nearly 10 bags of stir fry vegetables, some broccoli, and almost nothing else. Hubby hates broccoli, so I'll need to even out the disparity here.
Shopping this week was... well, I'm not sure what happened. I had very good intentions of only buying milk, yogurt, and some salad stuff. But meat was on sale and I had an iBotta offer for $4 off a chuck roast, but the family packs were way cheaper per pound than the single packs.... and well, now I have two large chuck roasts. And then pork loin roasts were on sale too, and I had found this
Slow Cooker 5 Spice Pulled Pork Recipe that I wanted to make to start using up the Chinese 5 Spice blend in the cupboard that I don't know what to do with, and more carnitas to keep using up the adobo chiles in the fridge... and now I have two large pork roasts. And they also had pie pumpkins in stock, and there is nothing more delicious than homemade pumpkin puree... so I bought 5 pumpkins and cooked them up. Fortunately that's enough work that I will not be tempted to do it again for at least another year.
The bottom line is I bought way more than I should have, especially after stocking up on canned and dry goods last week. So, I am hereby officially declaring that for the rest of October I will not buy any food that doesn't go on a salad unless I am COMPLETELY OUT or its TOTALLY free. No more stocking up, we have plenty to eat.