A day of cooking for two weeks of dinners

Welcome to March, everyone! I'm so glad that January and February are now behind us for this year. 

March is such a fun month in my family. It's my daughters' birth month. We always do something fun to celebrate. In addition to other gifts for my daughters, I'll be taking over their cooking nights for the whole month. So today I spent the morning and early afternoon cooking and prepping for the next two weeks of dinners. 

I started by choosing the protein sources for several days of dinners, about 3 pounds of boneless chicken and 3 pounds of boneless beef, plus some frozen eggs one night, a couple of cans of tuna for another night,  hot dogs, a pound of ground beef, and cheese plus pepperoni for two nights of pizza. I simmered the chicken in water for an hour until cooked, then divided the chicken into 3 meals. I also braised the beef with spices and a little water, dividing it between 3 meals once cooked. 

I had a green and a red pepper to use and 3 large onions. I sautéed those and divided between the meals planned for them. I made a batch of scratch cream of mushroom soup for the tuna casserole. Following the soup, I used the same pot to make the gravy for chicken, stuffing, and gravy. 

I used the chicken cooking liquid in the bread dressing, the gravy, topping off the containers of chicken/peppers/tomatoes and the chicken for bbq chicken over rice, and as part of liquid for the scratch cream of mushroom soup. I have about a pint of chicken stock leftover, now in the freezer. And I made a quadruple batch of rice, which I divided into 4 portions, freezing 3 and will use the 4th tomorrow evening. 

Seeing what I had to work with, I made up a dinner menu for the next two weeks.

• beef in BBQ sauce (I'll serve over buns along with oven-roasted potato wedges)
• Tex-Mex beef and peppers, served with rice
• beef and vegetable soup with dinner rolls
• chicken, bread dressing, and gravy
• chicken, peppers, onions, canned tomatoes, and herbs, served over rice
• chicken in BBQ sauce over rice
• tuna noodle casserole
• two nights of pepperoni pizza
• egg, pepper, onion, cheese frittata
• 1 hot dog cook-out
• 1 burger barbecue

In addition to these meals, one night we'll be eating at my brother's, and another night we'll have a birthday lunch or dinner (menu to be determined). Almost all of what I cooked today is in the freezer, marked with the date when to use each. 

The cooking and clean-up was extremely efficient. I cooked multiple nights of various ingredients in one go, reused pots, pans, cutting board and knife before washing. And I let the mess get big then did a huge clean-up at the very end. I spent about 5 hours planning, cooking and cleaning up. The house was quiet today, so I had the kitchen completely to myself for my work. Today's work was well worth the effort.

Tomorrow I'll do some baking for the next couple of weeks, to include a batch of cookies, some hot dog buns, some burger/sandwich buns, and a batch of dinner rolls.

I'll still need to prepare vegetable side dishes/salads/fruit each night and put the finishing touches on the meals that I partially prepared today. But I've got a good start and a plan for each night for two weeks.

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!