Claire Tastes

This post is sponsored by Duke University Doctor of Physical Therapy Division, The Hilton Hotel in Durham, NC. Also, a very special thanks to Miss Sarah Dickey, Laura Good, Haley Harrell, and Elizabeth Schuppert for their donations in support of this endeavor. 

Today I made BANK in the food world. Why, you ask? Well, we had a career fair for school and at the end of the fair, they served us boxed lunches. Know what that means? That means lots of leftovers. And lots of prepackaged food items that my friends didn’t want. Proof of this lies in the image below. And no, I was not just REALLY hungry today. I knew that I could stretch the bajingles out of that meal, ya’ll! For some reason they didn’t like their green apples and oranges, so I reaped the benefit. Then, when I saw students walking out with two or three extra boxes in their hands, I jumped on the opportunity to take an extra box (or two), knowing that it would make my life all the easier when packing lunches for the rest of the week. Hey- free is free, right?

I ended up hauling three wraps- one roasted veggie, one turkey/swiss, and one turkey/cheddar, about four bags of chips, about 6 apples, and three oranges. And two cookies. And like six little packets of mayonnaise and mustard. I even saved the three plastic knives.

Oh, and the tomato slices that Laura didn’t want. Yes, really. I pulled out a ziplock bag from my purse, wrapped those babies up in some napkins so they wouldn’t get too soggy, and added ’em to the mix! If you’re wondering why I would go so far as to even take someone else’s discarded sandwich tomatoes, you can read about the Great Tomato Shortage of April 2014 here. 🙂

My goodie bag, thanks to some very precious friends and obvious supporters of this post! (Ok, they only made fun of me a little bit). I’m mostly not crazy.

Lunch: half of a marinated veggie and hummus wrap from the career fair lunch, toasted, on top of some spinach and peeled carrots. Drizzled with balsamic reduction, with leftover pita chips and fruit on the side.

Now, I’m pretty stoked about my dinner creation tonight. As I was sitting in Starbucks this evening, thinking, what should I make for dinner? I made a mental list of the things that we had in our fridge. How can I use up all those green apples? What about the mustard packets? It dawned on me to make a honey mustard apple chutney of some sort, and I began racking my brain (and google) for inspiration. I decided to use up the frozen pierogies that we have in our freezer to make a sort of lasagna-esque chicken casserole with brown butter apple chutney and maple dijon mustard sauce. What better way to recombine ordinarily boring ingredients into something new and tasty?

Here’s what I started with (plus some frozen chicken breasts).

I started by browning some of the apples in butter, and added some cinnamon, nutmeg, apple cider vinegar and a drizzle of soy sauce.

Then I added the piergoies to sear them a bit so they didn’t take so long to bake.

I removed the pierogies and apples from the pan and set aside for later. Then I split the chicken in half (after defrosting) so that the breasts were half as thick. I salted/peppered the chicken and seared them on both sides- about 3 min each.

I deglazed the pan with some leftover moscato wine, and continued to cook the chicken with heat reduced to low.

Mixed up the maple dijon sauce with some spicy brown mustard, whole grain dijon, regular dijon, a bit of soy sauce, and maple syrup. I wish I could tell you how much of each, but I just eyeballed it!

I added the apples back to the pan with the sauce, and tossed in a few raisins for plumping.

To prepare the lasagna, I first layered the pierogies in the bottom of a sprayed casserole dish. I sprinkled a little of the leftover fontina fondue cheese on top.

Then I topped it all with the chicken and apple chutney mixture and sprinkled some mozzarella cheese and walnut pieces on top.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes or until bubbly.

And here you have it- Maple Dijon Chicken Pierogie “Lasagna” with Brown Butter Apple Chutney! Served over spinach and peeled carrots (I bought more spinach today- it’s one of my exceptions, remember?)

Thanks for following my journey so far- Day #3 and another mash-up in the books!

Well, ya’ll, it’s only been one day since I started the “Spring Clean Your Fridge” Challenge, where I’m challenging myself (and Ben, by default :P) to only cook with the things we already have in our house, in an attempt to clean out our refrigerator, learn a bit more moderation with grocery shopping, and save a little moo-lah. If you missed my original post, you can catch up here!

So far, I’ve had the following thoughts/observations:

1) I’ve noticed that I’ve become more moderate in how I use my ingredients. When normally I would dump half the package of grape tomatoes into the basket to steam for my salad, this time I careful counted out five tomatoes before adding them. Poor Ben got the stink eye when he reached out to snag one before dinner, and I almost jumped out of my skin trying to shield them like a mother hen protecting her nest. “I have to make these last for the whole week!” I exclaimed forcefully. Hey- grape tomatoes are prime real estate in this house!

2) Because I’ve been assigning more value to those precious ingredients (like the tomatoes) that have to last for the next five days, I’ve noticed that I’ve become a bit more attentive to the prices of regular items that I’m not necessarily vowing not to buy. For example, seltzer water. I purchased a bottle of seltzer this morning at Whole Foods, and while I really wanted the raspberry-lime flavor, it only came in the Poland Spring brand. And the generic mandarin orange flavor was a whole $0.29 cheaper! Well, of course I had to go with the generic.

3) I’ve actually felt a sense of relief when thinking about cooking. Whereas last week I would have said “hmmm, what new dish can I conjure up tonight? And what groceries will I need for it?,” this week I am forced to deal with the things we already have on hand. I guess by having more limited options I’ve relieved a bit of the pressure on myself to come up with something spectacular. Instead, I get to just use up what we have in a new way- like you’ll read in the post below!

4) The thought has actually gone through my mind more than once: “Yes! I don’t need to stop at the store on the way home and lug a half dozen heavy plastic bags full of groceries into the house and then unload them!” For some reason it always stresses me out to come home after a long day of school and have to put away about a gazillion bags of food. This week, I’m not allowed. 🙂

So what’s on the menu tonight? I decided to use up the pie crust, what was left of the smashed potatoes, some frozen peas, eggs, and the rest of the pork to make little mini shepherd pies! Delicioso! Better yet… more leftovers! Who knows what leftovers I will make tomorrow out of THESE leftovers! heh heh. My poor husband.

Started with these things, plus some eggs and milk.

Filled up muffin tins with pie crust, some potatoes, peas, and pork. Added a bit of whisked egg/milk and some cheese on top!

Into the preheated 350 degree oven for 20-25 min or until egg is set, and cool.

Yay for MORE leftovers!

Some pasta salad leftover from our trip to Asheville, mixed with spinach and steamed veggies. Topped with some balsamic dressing and parmesan. This was my dinner cause I don’t particularly prefer pork. And we had a lot of pasta. On a more negative note, that was it for the spinach. Good thing I’m allowing it as one of my exceptions! 🙂

“Spring Clean Your Fridge” Day #2, in the books FTW!

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now. But I’ve been too scared. Or maybe I enjoy going to the grocery store too much. Something about lollygagging my way down aisles of pickles, dried fruit, crackers (seriously though, why do we need an entire aisle of every single cracker known to man?!), browsing the shelves for the latest “natural” cereals and granola bars. Grocery shopping relaxes me.

Apparently I’ve needed a lot of relaxation recently, because our grocery bill has crept up and up over the last few weeks. Part of this is the fact that I was on break last week. Whenever I have a few days off from school, I say to myself, “Ooooh, now I can make this soup and this chicken dish and try this muffin recipe and make my own granola bars too! And I’ll post them all on my blog because I CAN!” The result? A very full refrigerator, a happy husband, and an exploding facebook newsfeed. Oh, and a  ton of dishes in the sink and a very large pile of receipts sitting on my kitchen counter. Oops.

This week I’m back to school, and I’ve decided to challenge myself in the grocery area. Why not try to make all of my meals for the entire week from things that we already have in the house? I’ll bet if I really tried, I could come up with about a dozen different meals from ingredients that have been pushed to the back of the pantry and leftovers that have become a tad bit sad and droopy. Not only would I be saving money on groceries (since I feel like I’m constantly walking in and out of Harris Teeter… and not just for the samples!), but I’d be forcing myself to become a bit more creative with my time and meal prep. Let’s just think of this as “spring cleaning,” foodie-style. 🙂

Yes, this is a scary thought to me. And yes, I think it will be harder than I think. And I think it will be hard.

Ready? Let’s do it!

Let’s look at what we’re starting with… here is my refrigerator and freezer in “real-time”- today, April 28th, 2014. This day will now go down in history.

Ok, maybe a bit dramatic. Anyhoooo, here it is. Freezer stocked with a few bags of frozen veggies- about a third bag of corn, quarter bag of broccoli, one leftover lentil dahl burger, a bag of frozen chicken breasts, frozen fruit, some freezer-ready meals from TJ’s, and two frozen carrot cake cupcakes that we never finished at Easter. On the fridge front, from top left to bottom right, we’ve got some OJ, 1% milk, my lunch bag for tomorrow, leftover muffins, salsa, pickles, clementines, some deli turkey, baby spinach, leftover pork and ham, red grapes, strawberries, leftover smashed potatoes (also from Easter) and enchiladas, sweet potato fritters, leftover succotash, leftover chickpea and lentil salad from Indian food night, some whole wheat pita pockets, sandwich bread, an almost-full carton of brown eggs, a few (probably stale) bagels, and in the bottom drawers some raw veggies (carrots/broccoli/tomatoes/parsley) and fruit (apples, oranges, and a pear). In the side doors are butter, some yogurts, various sauces and mustards, some homemade balsamic, a leftover pie crust (quiche, anyone?), cheese, and adult beverages.

The pantry (not shown) is stocked with some canned beans, pasta, cereal, crackers, and odds and ends of chips, lunchbox snacks, and dried fruit/nuts. Also one yellow onion and one sweet potato. I’m probably forgetting a few things but will edit this post later in the week if I use something that I neglected!

Not a bad starting line-up. When I see it on paper the computer screen, it honestly seems like a lot of food, and I wonder why I would ever decide I needed to go to the store for more. It’s humbling to write down all of the foods that we already have on hand, and convicting to expose my seemingly- insatiable desire for “more” that too often I just ascribe to my creative ‘cooking juices.’ Not only will this week’s challenge help me to “spring clean” my refrigerator, but it will hopefully also help me to overhaul my outlook on materialism as it relates to food.

However, I couldn’t start this challenge without being brutally honest. There are a few things that honestly, we can’t really go without buying mid-week. Whether this is due to our my own food addictions preferences or simply the fact that they go bad so quickly, I will let you decide. For this, I decided to allow five exceptions to the rule. Three of them I can name right now: apples (because I don’t have enough on hand to last me through the week, and yes, I still have an apple every single night after dinner), bananas (Ben and I both grab a banana pretty much every morning for breakfast and they go bad so.dang.quick), and spinach (because I couldn’t very well turn all of those leftovers in our fridge into a salad without some leafy greens, right?). The other two exceptions I’ll decide later, but I imagine they will probably be something in the produce arena.

So what did I decide to make for Day #1 supper? What better way to stretch leftovers in a creative way but with pita pocket pizzas!

Ta-da! I used up some pita bread and one leftover slice of naan to make these personal pizzas. Two of them I topped with a mixture of BBQ sauce and ketchup, followed by some of the leftover pineapple ham, broccoli slaw, broccoli florets, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and a sprinkling of cumin, brown sugar, fresh parsley, and shredded mozzarella. The last pizza I topped with salsa, and all of the other ingredients remained the same. Popped ’em in the oven at 325 for about 20 minutes, and out they came, all toasty. Delish!

I was in a Meatless Monday mood, so I chose to have some leftover power salad from last week, with some added spinach, broccoli/carrot slaw, sliced strawberries, a few almonds, half a pita pocket, and a fried egg on top. (I’ve gotten really into fried eggs on top of my salads recently- more protein to satisfy, but without the meat!)

Stay tuned to find out what I’ll dream up for tomorrow’s edition of “Spring Clean Your Fridge” Challenge!