MPM – Operation: Eat All the Food, Week 6

by Elizabeth on September 23, 2013 · 4 comments

in Eat All the Food, Menu Plan Monday

This is it!  The final week of Operation: Eat All the Food.  I’ll post a wrap up and some “after” pictures next week.  If you participated, I want to hear how you did!

I did pretty well last week.  I did eat out once but that was because I got pink eye and couldn’t go infecting everyone at bible study so I ordered Chinese.  And then it took me 5 days to eat it all.  5 day-old sesame chicken is not advised people.  Take my word for it.  I thought I was going to have to eat out on Thursday but dinner was provided at my meeting and it included some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever eaten.  I usually don’t like fried boneless chicken breasts because they get dried out, but this was moist and delicious.  I could write a whole blog post about that piece of chicken; it was that good.

This weekend I took the opportunity to clean out my fridge, freezer, and pantry.  By clean out I mean toss old food and scrub things down.   My fridge is now nice and clean and smelling like Clorox wipes. 🙂  I tossed more than what I would like to have, but it made a huge difference and I feel like I finally made some progress.  I also reorganized my pantry and was able to get to something in the back corner without knocking everything else over.

Here is what I was able to use up completely this week:

  • mozzarella cheese
  • jarred tomato sauce
  • ground beef
  • most of a box of spaghetti
  • eggs
  • box of brownie/cookie mix
  • all my leftovers

Doesn’t look so great but I did make a huge dent in using up:

  • frozen spinach
  • quinoa
  • lunch meat
  • sliced cheese
  • large can of crushed tomatoes
  • bread

There are still a lot of frozen vegetables in my freezer, but I have plans for some of them plus that’s not something I really fear going bad or never getting used.  I’ll get to them eventually.  I also did some MAJOR baking yesterday, something that I haven’t done in quite a while as The Carpenter was kind enough to point out. 🙂  I made some muffins, banana-chocolate chip bread from a mix I had, and something for an upcoming blog post.  That took care of all my eggs as well put a dent in my flour and butter collection.

Okay, enough chit chat.  On to this week’s menu.

Sunday
Lunch: last of the Chinese food
Dinner: BBQ sliders, creamy corn, arugula salad
Using up: slider buns, frozen corn, arugula, pine nuts, leftovers

Monday
Lunch: leftover sliders, popcorn, apples and caramel dip
Dinner: chicken with green beans in lemon butter, cous cous
Using up: chicken, green beans, box of cous cous, leftovers

Tuesday
Lunch: leftovers from Monday
Dinner: bible study where dinner is provided
Using up: leftovers

Wednesday
Lunch: wrap, popcorn, apples with caramel dip
Dinner: hashbrown casserole (without the meat), biscuits
Using up: lunch meat, tortilla, frozen hashbrowns, eggs, cheese

Thursday
Lunch: leftovers from Wednesday
Dinner: spaghetti with meatballs
Using up: ingredients for sauce, pasta, meatballs, leftovers

Friday
Lunch: leftovers or buy (because I’m out of everything else!)
Dinner: sesame-ginger cous cous with stir-fried vegetables
Using up: fresh ginger, cous cous, frozen vegetables

Saturday
Lunch: whatever is around
Dinner: TBD but at my parents to watch the ball game

What’s on your menu this week?

This post is linked to Menu Plan Monday

 

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Andrea @the Distracted Housewife.com September 23, 2013 at 5:10 pm

I love your meme, It definitely made me laugh out loud. I am so impressed that you are able to do a challenge like this for so long. I would have given up in a very short amount of time. Way to go

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2 Elizabeth September 24, 2013 at 8:21 am

Thanks! I always try to find a meme or a lolcat or something cute when my posts don’t have real pictures.

The challenge wasn’t as hard as I expected mostly because I had SO much food. It it isn’t difficult to come up with meals when you’ve got half a grocery store in your house! lol

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3 Amber September 24, 2013 at 12:34 pm

Random confession: I love spinach, but frozen spinach scares me. Every recipe I see that uses frozen spinach requires you to like drain it or squeeze it or something like that and it intimidates me–what if I don’t squeeze it right and there’s too much water and it ruins the dish!? Ack, so much anxiety!!

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4 Elizabeth September 24, 2013 at 3:36 pm

lol It’s really not that big of deal. I like to thaw mine out in a colander under running, cool water. Then I put it all in a kitchen towel that I don’t mind getting stained green, or a lot of paper towels and squeeze it out. You’ll be able to tell when you’ve got most of the water out – the spinach will have shrunk up and clumped together and it will look pretty dry.

Unless you’re putting it into some sort of cream sauce, I wouldn’t worry about making sure you get absolutely all the water out (just most of it). A little water never hurt anyone. 🙂

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