Mid-January State of the Pantry and Fridge

One of the things I love about mid-January is the manageability of our food storage. While these spaces are by no means lean, I can actually find what I need easily again.

Earlier this week, I took a few minutes to take inventory and tidy up the shelves and compartments of both the pantry and fridge. I deliberately skipped grocery shopping for about 10 days so our stock would dwindle enough to quickly do this work.

I'll need to grocery shop again over the weekend, but I won't be buying as much as I did November through December. That's a win for tidy food storage as well as my wallet.

Meals we've gotten out of a leaner fridge, freezer, and pantry this week:

• chicken pot pie, using a chicken breast, garden carrots, celery, potatoes and herbs, topped with pie pastry, and a side of watermelon pickles
• homemade pizza, beet salad (canned beets in dressing), lettuce and avocado tossed salad
• chicken stir fry, sesame noodles, homemade egg rolls (my daughter was ambitious that night)
• pot roast and gravy (from the freezer, last week's cooking) over cubed stale bread, roasted yams, apple wedges
• frozen fish sticks (with homemade tartar sauce), roasted garden potatoes, roasted yams, sautéed frozen garden Brussel sprout leaves and onions
• vegetable-beef soup (garden vegetables from the freezer, pantry, and fridge), cheese biscuits
• bean burritos, carrot sticks, sautéed misc. garden greens from the freezer

In addition to a tidier fridge, we've been making room in the freezer, too. I hope to get the small freezer emptied later this winter so that I can defrost it.

My digestion thanks me for the return to more basic meals after a long holiday period of goodies and rich food.

How do you feel when you open your fridge or pantry in January and it's not as full as it was during the holidays? Does this spark creativity in your cooking? Perhaps a sigh of relief? Does it prompt a bit of anxiety over having less? Or something else? Tell me what you think in the comments.

Have a great weekend, friends!

Fun Game We Played On Christmas -- Saran Prize Ball

I know that Christmas is over two weeks in the past, but I wanted to tell you about the game we played after dinner on Christmas Day. 

I put together a Saran Wrap prize ball. Prizes included individually-wrapped candies, pocket-size tissue packs, socks, travel-size toiletries, a device charger to be plugged into a car's 12 V cigarette lighter socket, dishcloths, individual packages of snacks, and low-denomination gift cards. In addition, there were notes wrapped up in the ball with or without prizes, saying "skip one turn," "take an extra turn," "everyone pass their last prize to the person on the left," "swap one prize with someone else's," etc.

To make the prize ball I wrapped the prizes/notes in between layers of Saran Wrap, forming a ball by the end.

To play the game, one person unwraps plastic wrap until they come to a prize and/or note. They then pass the ball to the next player. This continues until the wrap is completely undone.

You should also know that when we finished the game, we rewound the plastic wrap. My plan is to wash lengths of it, dry, then use in the kitchen as needed. No waste on this front.

It was a fun game. You could see what upcoming prizes were, but didn't necessarily know when they would be "found."