I have declared the end of February and the entire month of March as:
"Use What I Have" months.
I have a freezer and pantry full of food, but don't often make sure to rotate as well as I should. So this month, I am making an effort to use up a bunch of the stuff from both the freezer and the pantry to help clear out some room for new items that will be grown this summer.
I hope to get rid of a bunch of "freezer meals" that I already have stored (such as four containers of leftover chili, pre-made beef taco meat, homemade soups/stock and a large ham that may (or may not) be any good as it has been in the freezer well over a year. We just don't eat that much ham. Bacon, yes. Ham, no.
So this week our dinner meals will look like this:
Sunday ~ Homemade Baked Beans (using dried beans from the pantry) - recipe to come!
Hamburger Patties (1/4 cow in the freezer)
Coleslaw
Monday ~ Hamburger Vegetable Soup (pre-made in the freezer)
Italian Breadsticks
Tuesday ~ Nachos & Fixings (taco meat in the frezer)
Wednesday ~ Mexican Stackers (using leftover taco meat from last night)
(hashbrowns, taco beef, scrambled eggs, cheese, black olives, sour cream & salsa)
Thursday ~ Scalloped Potatoes & Ham in the Crock Pot (package of ham in refrigerator)
Vegetable (from the freezer)
Friday ~ Homemade Pizza (shredded cheese from the freezer)
Smoothies or Fresh Juice (juice to use up veggies/fruit from refrigerator)
Saturday ~ Curry Chicken
Brown Rice
Vegetable (from freezer)
Hopefully, after a couple weeks of focusing on using up what we have, our cupboards will start to look bare and I can start with buying on sale again to re-stock.
This menu plan is shared at Org Junkie's Menu Plan Monday. Head over to find lots of inspiration for your menu planning needs!
Looks like a delicious line up of meals at your house this week!
ReplyDeleteI'll be 'shopping the pantry' to put meals together this month as well. It's always a good thing to get things cleaned out. I'm always surprised at how many meals I can pull together, when I thought I was "out of everything".
We recently did this last month, and it helped a lot with our monthly grocery budget! We cleared out quite a bit from the freezer and it felt good to use the ingredients and pre-made meals.
ReplyDelete