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 }
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
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
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!!
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. 🙂