One life happening that delayed the systematic recording of 'using up' is that our refrigerator died. Died.... caput! We are fortunate to have an overflow fridge in the garage and a stand-alone freezer so we didn't lose anything... but we DID have to use out of both of them a LOT to make sure there was room for the fresh produce I bring home every week!
Anyway - long story short.... I didn't focus on finding ways to use up the Pantry Purge items I have written about before .... I just used what I knew :-) - and new ideas was NOT it! For some reason, cooking does not come easy to me and I need clear planning and direction to create ANYthing :-)
So I will wind up here with a 5th week.... and see what carries over!
I FINALLY made the pumpkin cranberry bread with this recipe
http://www.ehow.com/how_7350320_substitute-fresh-cranberries-dried.html
and it was really good! We ate one and froze one.... well I ate one :-) The boys wouldn't touch it and Don was too busy to think about it so, over the course of a week, I ate it. He'll get some of the second loaf. That used up a can of pumpkin and 1/3 of the frozen cranberries....... which sent me off looking for more cranberry recipes.... I found some on-line to try and decided to make muffins. (Sauces and jellies I KNOW my boys won't eat and I don't know how to preserve them)
When I went hunting for my muffin tins and cupcake papers, I discovered that I had 2 boxes (why TWO?) of the mini-muffin papers. Weird for a non-baker.... but anyway...
Back to the computer to figure out how to turn a muffin recipe into a MINI-muffin recipe! It turns out that you can alter either the temperature OR the time..... or both.... I ended up using the rest of the cranberries in both muffins AND minis. Bagged in sandwich bags (and again in larger bags), most went into the freezer for later. So I realized a side benefit of locating and using the mini-muffin papers and now my cupboard is in better shape and I still have plenty :-)
The second thing I did was locate a Citrus Marinade at www.cooks.com that I used for some frozen chicken breasts. During the last two weeks, the stores I have visited had the bags at half-price so I stocked up.
1 bag of frozen chicken breast made 2 dinner amounts of Orange Chicken for the freezer. What that does for me is offer me TWO Asian evening possibilities. I will pull one out of the freezer (either the night before or the morning OF) to thaw in the refrigerator and then at dinner, I can either cut them up for a stir-fry (family favorite) or grill them individually. I will pair them up with brown rice and vegetables... so TWO dinner decisions MADE and waiting for me..... AND 1/2 or the freezer orange juice and 1 (of 3) bottles of lemon juice are gone :-)
Menu items for next week to finish up:
Chicken grilled with Hoisin sauce with broccoli & rice
Quesadillas with the corn tortillas
Peanut butter cookies
Chicken Barley Soup
USED UP IN FINAL WEEK:
bag frozen cranberries
can pumpkin
1 bottle of lemon juice
1/2 orange juice
corn tortillas
1/2 jar Hoisin sauce
2 bags cookie mix (peanut butter - I bought Hershey kisses for them)
1/2 box barley
What's left for Pantry Purge 2?
PANTRY:
bag sundried tomatoes
FRIDGE:
3/4 jar wheat germ
2 containers lemon juice
FREEZER:
frozen orange juice
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