RE lamb fat - I've never personally cooked with any kind of rendered animal fat, but I've seen other people just use it for normal frying... maybe some sautéed onions or other vegetables, or potatoes?
I had another good week in my pantry challenge and have done minimal grocery shopping:
- Ate the last of the frozen spaghetti sauce. Now I have two bags of homemade turkey meatballs to work on, will combine these with jarred sauce (I have a shelf full of it!)
- I knew I was working late last Thursday, so for dinner Wednesday I made the last meatloaf from the freezer and baked potatoes. Made extra potatoes and salad that night and had half the meatloaf leftover, so Thursday night dinner was just re-heated leftovers. +1 for planning ahead!
- I decided that Saturday night we would eat the 4 hot dogs that came in our Omaha Steaks package Xmas gift. I almost never eat hot dogs, and buy uncured ones on the rare occasions I do eat them (camping usually), but I figured one meal wouldn't kill me. I had a bit of a conundrum though with the buns, since we only had 4 hot dogs and buns are pretty much universally sold in packs of 8 or more. I did not want to get stuck with 4 extra buns to try and use up, and frankly I didn't want to buy buns at all if I could avoid it. So, I used a recipe I have for home made hamburger buns, and just made 4 burger and 4 hot dog shaped buns. They didn't look perfect, but they tasted just fine. I have plenty of uses for the remaining 4 buns. I also had one last sweet potato lying around, so I made fries to go along (and salads too, so it wasn't completely a nutritional mess of a meal).
- I had one small russet potato left from a 5-lb bag, so Sunday morning I grated it up and fried it into glorious hash brown perfection for breakfast.
- Sunday night I was originally going to make Chicken Chow Mein, but found that I had 2 oranges left from last week's shopping, so I used one of them and made orange chicken with rice and some frozen vegetables instead.
Of most significance this week is the fact that HUBBY PITCHED IN! I explained to him at the onset that I'm trying to eat down what we have on hand and not buy anything more than absolutely necessary, and he said he was onboard. But what he says and what he does are often different things. But at the start of this week he asked if we had fresh celery so he could mix up a batch of tuna, and when I told him yes there was celery, he actually made tuna! And then he made another batch last night! This may not sound like a big deal, but believe me, it is. Usually he will go to great lengths to avoid exerting effort in the kitchen - putting pre-sliced lunch meat onto pre-sliced bread (he doesn't even use condiments, and only seems to want lettuce if someone else is making the sandwich) is about the extent of it. Two batches of tuna is pretty monumental.
Yesterday's shopping was very successful - I stuck faithfully to my list and got only eggs, produce, yogurt (bought enough for the rest of the month because it was on sale), and cheese sticks (on sale and I eat them every day in my lunch), and a couple of things I had free e-coupons for (tortilla chips, a sports drink for hubby, and salad dressing). I decided not to buy milk even though we're almost out - I have powdered milk at home so I'll just mix up a batch of that.
I added up my grocery totals and so far I'm at $57.44 for the month, which is awesome (my regular grocery budget is $300/month). I'm right on track for 50% of normal which is my goal :)
I had some plans to make hummus and do some baking to use up crap from the cupboard but as usual didn't get around to it :( I have a 3-day weekend coming up so maybe I can get to it then.