Stay out of the store! -- Cooking with what's on hand...

So.... the gradgreen family is trying to save some money. That basically means 2 things:
1. Stop buying stuff
2. Cut down on grocery shopping

#2 seems kind of harsh. C's usual response is "but we have to eat!" I agree. I LOVE to eat, but I think that we can cut some of the expenses. We looked over our bills (don't worry, we pay the card off every month) and found that we had 23 separate trips to the grocery store last month. Holy Canoli. That's not how I want to spend my time.

So we agreed to work with what we have on hand... to the greatest extent possible. We have made a couple of trips to the store to re-stock milk, bread, peanut butter... you know... the staples. But the trips have been far less expensive than normal.

Here are some of the meals we've had:
1. Chicken pot pie. Thanks to S for the inspiration. We had frozen chicken and peas and some funky carrot sticks and broccoli. Chop chop chop with some onion. Make a delicious gravy. I'm not up to a pastry crust, but I made some homemade biscuit dough and baked it on top. Yummalicious.

I was really proud of myself for the biscuit dough, because I was SOO close to calling C on his way home and asking him to pick up a popping package of frozen biscuits. But that would have been lame. Homemade biscuits, especially the drop biscuit kind, are very easy to make.

2. Baked potatoes. This was an emergency dinner, so we microwaved the potatoes. They were organic russets, so a little smaller than the norm, which is perfect for the microwave. We had steamed broccoli on the side as well as a couple of veggie chicken patties that I cut into triangles. This dinner was a big hit and it was made out of true desperation.

3. Chicken soup. This is best made with chicken thighs because they have the most flavor, but I had a couple of chicken breasts. Add some onion, carrots, peas, rice.... wait a second... this is remarkable similar to chicken pot pie! Yet different, somehow.

4. Spaghetti and meatballs. I had spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, some leftover sauteed peppers and onions from a cookout and a couple of leftover hamburgers. Cut up the hamburgers -- cook in the sauce. Voila! Nobody even mentioned the fact that the meatballs used to be hamburgers.

Those of you who have kids have probably noticed that so much of what kids like depends on packaging. They don't like Kix, but if it has Shrek on the front, they do like Shrek cereal, etc. The same is true for leftovers. I fix the plates in the kitchen and nobody has to see all the parts coming together. Sometimes the result is even tastier than the first thing I made.