The menu I posted last week, is for this week, so this week my plan was to get rid of as much food in my refrigerator as possible. Of course, I replenished some of the staples, such as: milk and eggs. I bought some granola bars for my desk at work, for my 4:00 p.m. snack (see reason for the snack in a later post), but other than that, I didn't spend money on food at the grocery store this week. I am very proud of myself! :)
So yesterday, I ventured into the refrigerator and freezer to go through everything I had on hand, and yes, throw out everything from last year that was rotten or well past its expiration date. What I found seriously surprised and sickened me.
For instance, I had condiments that expired in 2008 in my refrigerator. (I think they came out from Iowa with us in a cooler when we moved to Los Angeles about 3 years ago, unbelievable).
There was also fruit left over from when my mother-in-law came to stay with us 4 months ago, but believe it or not the following fruit did not rot even though it was in the fridge for 4 months: 1 orange, 1 grapefruit (which my husband won't touch), and one apple (the apple was mushy). The fruit that had rotted in the fridge included: grape tomatoes and limes. The limes shrunk in size and were moldy, and the tomatoes were also moldy even though I had only purchased them about a week and a half ago (Hint: if you don't eat tomatoes in the first week, cut and freeze for tomato sauce or a stir fry).
When I went through the freezer I discovered, frozen strawberries and frozen peas that had been in there more than a year, and over a dozen frozen bananas. I threw the bananas in the freezer with good intentions: frozen bananas are great in smoothies or banana bread, but nonetheless I continued to buy new bananas instead of getting rid of the frozen ones I already had - not good.
At the end of my purge, I ended up with literally a garbage bag of food to throw away. It made me sick.
But my beautiful, clean refrigerator (pictured below) made me feel much, much better:
Okay, so that left me with a challenge, what to make for us to eat on Sunday without buying anything else. As you can see there wasn't much in my fridge. I went through all of my cupboards and found two hamburger buns that I had for a week, so they needed to be used. (Usually I would make french toast out of them, but that really has little nutritional value). In the veggie drawer there was cabbage and celery, the celery needed to be used because it was wilting.
hmm . . . egg casserole.
A's Egg Casserole Recipe: (hands on time - 6 minutes)
Tear two hamburger buns and line a casserole dish with them;
Scramble two eggs with a 1/4 a cup of milk and pour over the hamburger buns;
Sate two sliced celery stocks in a 1/2 tablespoon of butter, add salt and cracked pepper. Allow the celery to cool and then pour into the casserole dish;
Add a 1/4 cup of cheddar cheese to the casserole dish (or any cheese you have on hand);
and mix!
At this point you can bake the dish or cover and place in the fridge and put in the oven for breakfast.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes, and viola!
It was surprisingly -- really good!!
Okay, so now I had that mushy apple to get rid of, no one wants to eat a mushy apple, right? So I baked it in a Apple crisp. One apple was enough for two servings of apple crisp (just enough for M and I to have piece). This is how I made the apple crisp:
Apple Crisp
1 Apple peeled, cored and sliced into slivers and placed in small baking dish;
1 Tablespoon water - drizzle over apples
In a small dish combine 3 tablespoons melted unsalted butter, dash of salt, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/4 cup flour, and 1/4 cup oatmeal. Crumble the mixture over the apples and bake at 375 for 30-40 minutes.
I served mine with a little cream that was also going to go bad in the next two days! Yummy.
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