In Pursuit of the Hospitable Home: Upgrading the Appearance of Bagged Breakfast Cereal

Yesterday I had a dental appointment. It sort of knocked me off of my regular activities. I need more work done, unfortunately. Okay, back to regular life.

Keeping bagged breakfast cereal

I thought that I'd share this with you because I've been so pleased with how it looks and works in our household. This past fall I began buying bagged breakfast cereal. Up until this past year we haven't really been cereal eaters, but instead have opted for toast, muffins, and other highly portable breakfasts. For some reason I can't explain, one week I bought cereal at Dollar Tree. When I was shopping at WinCo later on, I discovered that WinCo's house brand of bagged cereal was less expensive per ounce than Dollar Tree's off-brand cereal. So I began buying bagged cereal. My family seems to really appreciate having this as an option at breakfast time, and it appears that we now have cereal about half of the time. (I still prefer cooked breakfasts, but will eat the cereal when I wake up tired.)

I know there are special plastic containers for storing cereal. I even have one, given to me by my sister-in-law. My container is currently in use holding paper grocery sacks in the trunk of my car, as it's the exact size to hold a stack of folded-up grocery bags to use at WinCo (where they give me 6 cents rebate for every bag that I reuse). So, I was looking around the kitchen to see what I could use for storing cereal and I came across my glass cookie jar, which I don't really use any longer. An image of the breakfast set-up at an inn at which I once stayed flashed through my mind.

The two glass containers just off-center on the buffet held cereal. I recall the breakfast buffet as being a very lovely way for the host to share the breakfast items with the guests. The glass jars were much more inviting than plastic dispensers. Although, I understand the practicality of plastic, and the need to keep food dispensers sanitary. But for home use, a large glass jar, such as a cookie jar, is a nice way to both store and display the cereal.

And here's our home cereal jar which has a permanent home on the kitchen counter. That's a shallow measuring scoop in the container for serving -- we leave it in there all of the time. This is just one of those little things in my kitchen that makes me smile.

Yesterday's Lunch: Letting Nothing Go to Waste

Since I don't plan to spend as much as usual on groceries for this month, I am making use of every leftover that is possible. For breakfast yesterday, I had the leftover serving of potato casserole that one daughter didn't finish. Usually, I won't eat someone else's leftovers. You know, germs and all of that. But hey, we are family, she did grow inside of me long ago. So, to get over the hurdle of "germs," I changed the casserole serving into a fried potato dish. Quite good. Lunch, though, is really where I excelled at using the leftovers.

This is what I used from our assortment of leftovers for my lunch yesterday. On New Year's day we had a ham dinner with asparagus (and that potato casserole). When I prepare asparagus, I break the bottom of the stems off at the tender point. This is the portion that many people discard. At almost $3 per pound, I was not about to throw these pieces away. So I saved the tough ends of the stems in a plastic container in the fridge.

Yesterday, I peeled the tough ends and was able to salvage all but the bottom half to one-inch of each stem after peeling. That bottom bit was still too tough to cut through easily, so those bits went into the compost, figuring their stringiness would be unappetizing.

Still, I had a nice pile of asparagus ends to steam and accompany my lunch. Going back further on the calendar, Christmas Day dinner was homemade pizza. I had mixed up a pizza sauce for the occasion, using herbs, seasonings, and tomato paste. There was a small container of this leftover sauce lingering in the fridge. Pushing the limits with how long to keep something, I wanted to use this up right away.

I took 3 whole English muffins from the freezer and made 6 mini pizzas for my week's lunches. I also used more of the wrinkly green pepper plus sliced olives that were lingering in the fridge to top the pizzas. There was also a bit of soft tofu leftover from our tofu and chocolate pie dessert on New Year's day. The tofu was bought on markdown and was past its expiration date, so I knew it was use it or lose it time. I melted a small amount of chocolate chips in the microwave and pureed the tofu with the chocolate, adding in some honey and vanilla extract for a creamy chocolate dessert.

My lunch made use of several of the lingering foods in our fridge, and it was very delicious, to boot!