A dinner using odds and ends from the pantry and freezer

For the last two months I've been sorting through the fridge, freezers, and pantry. This is not the season to stock-up on foods, so I'm using this time to use up odds and ends as I find them. I almost have the small stand alone freezer cleaned out. I'm hoping to defrost that freezer before we get a new delivery of beef in March. Last summer I emptied and defrosted the large chest freezer, so I pretty much know everything that is in there. The kitchen freezer and old fridge/freezer need a good clean out. And I'm getting to those bit by bit.

Due to our mouse issue this week, I made sure to go through everything in the pantry and the cool storage room, put bags and sleeves of foods into hard-sided containers. I found a bunch of opened snack foods -- pretzels and the like. I piled all of those into a kitchen glass jar that sits on the counter. And I put all of the opened sleeves of crackers into a tall and narrow tin that also sits on the counter. 

I came across some dried fruit and one fruit snack stick (like a stick of fruit leather). These were a little long in the tooth, so I planned on using them right away. On the shelf with herbs I came across an extra container of dried thyme that I didn't know we had.

So, with all of these odds and ends, I planned tonight's dinner specifically to use as many as I could. I came up with a tuna-noodle casserole, bound by a homemade cream of mushroom soup (using soy milk powder, dried mushrooms, frozen celery leaves, frozen parsley, big spoonful of dried thyme, onion, garlic, butter/oil, salt, pepper, and a bit of flour). I added extra frozen celery to the casserole, along with two cans of tuna, frozen peas, fresh celery, mixed shapes of dried pasta, and topped with some aging saltine crackers crumbled and grated cheese.

To go with the casserole I made a stewed fruit, using 2-year old dried rhubarb, prunes (both 2-year old purchased and home-dried from last summer), and the dried fruit snack stick (a year or two past the sell-by date) cut into bits. Believe it or not, the stewed fruit was really yummy. I had also found some several year old dried apricots in the pantry. They smelled like socks, so I composted those. Perhaps, TMI?

Dinner was tasty and purposeful in use of ingredients.

My grocery spending has been relatively low for both January and February. We're really working on using what we have, especially the foods that have lingered longer than the rest. I'm so glad to have used all of these odd bits from the pantry and freezer. More stuff that no longer occupies space in my mind.

To recap,  the foods I found (that I didn't know were there) and used in tonight's dinner: 2 baggies of old prunes, 1 fruit snack stick, 1 bag of frozen home-dried rhubarb, 1 small bag of home dried prunes, a canister of home-dried thyme, stale saltine crackers, multiple mixed shapes of pasta (mostly macaroni, some shells, some wagon wheels), frozen celery, and frozen parsley.

How are you doing with using up odds and ends in your kitchen? Is this a time of year when you don't grocery shop as much or stock-up as much as other times? Hoping for low grocery spending for the month of February for both you and I this year!