What's been your most successful use-it-up meal?

You know how the fridge begins to look as your approach grocery shopping day? There are bits of this, bits of that, but not one single thing that jumps out at you from which to make a meal. For me, the day before grocery shopping I often have just a little of several types of fresh produce and a bunch of tiny containers of leftovers.

I've been doing our grocery shopping on Fridays or Saturdays this past year. I skipped a regular grocery shopping last weekend, as I was buying foods for our tea on Sunday. So, it'e essentially been two weeks since I did a real grocery shopping trip. When I opened the produce drawer in the fridge this morning I saw 2 carrots, a bunch of celery tops with leaves, 4 aging mushrooms, half an onion, and lots of garlic. I also had Brussel sprout greens from the garden I could use and small amounts of several types of frozen vegetables.

With the above, I decided to make a stir fry. I suppose I could have made a soup or a casserole. But stir fry sounded good to me today.

it doesn't look like anything special, but it was tasty

I think it was a good call because my family all said it was delicious, which is funny because all I did was combine the fresh veggies with ground beef, a cup of frozen peas, some powdered ginger, soy sauce, and a pinch of sugar. I tasted it at the end of cooking and thought it tasted good, so I didn't change anything. Perhaps the cool spring weather gave us all terrific appetites tonight, or perhaps it really did taste great. Anyway, I'd say this stir fry is one of my recent successes in use-it-up cooking.

So what has been one of your more successful meals using the odds and ends the day before you do your grocery shopping? Do you have a go-to type of meal that you like to make for those days?

I'll be doing the week's grocery shopping in the morning. I like the challenge of making do. But I can say with certainty that we'll enjoy having all of our favorites once again.