30-Day Challenge Update II

Though late, here is an update!

30-Day Challenge Official Food List

- chickpeas (2 cans)
- vegetable broth (2 can)
- refried beans (1 can)
- black-eyed peas (1 can)
- sweet corn (1 can)
- baked beans (humungo can)
- jasmine rice (1 large bag)
- light red kidney beans (bag - 16oz)
- white albacore tuna (3 cans)
- pasta sauce (2 jars) (1 jar)
- orzo (1 lb)
- spanish flavor boxed rice (2 boxes)
- tomato sauce (8 cans, size 8oz) (4 cans)
- corn muffin boxed mix (1 box)
- flame roasted peppers (used, approx. 4oz)
- diced jalapeno peppers (used, approx. 9oz)
- buffalo wing sauce (used, approx. 14oz)
- Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (used, approx. 12oz)
- SBR's Hickory Brown Sugar (used, approx 9oz)
- SBR's Hickory Brown Sugar (18oz)
- Texas toast (6 slices) (3 slices)
- chicken tenderloins (6 pieces)
- chicken tenderloins (full bag, 32oz)
- salmon (1 fillet)
- green peas (18oz bag)
- cut broccoli (16oz bag)
- Green Giant Valley Fresh Steamer (1 bag)
- peaches (29oz can)
- fruit cocktail (15oz can)

Meal Breakdown
A. Using the last can of vegetable broth (and some newly purchased orzo), my husband made some more of the basil-parmesan orzo. This stuff was even better the second time around, and if you guys are interested in the recipe let me know. The orzo accompanied some fresh salmon and the whole meal was the yums.

B. Using the refried beans, sweet corn, black-eyed peas, and last box of spanish flavor boxed rice we had a great [vegetarian] burrito night a few weeks ago, which replaced our typical Moe's Monday venture (saving us about $15 we would have normally spent).

C. The white-albacore tuna has been supposedly consumed by my husband during work lunches. I say supposedly only because sometimes he's out of his "tuna sandwich" mood; whatever, it's out of our pantry and may or may not have been in his belly.

D. The rest of the chicken tenderloins were used one night along with the buffalo wing sauce to make Crockpot buffalo chicken sandwiches (to diiiiieee for).

E. The hotness of the above meal is too much for JP's delicate tongue, so the same night he cooked up the last salmon fillet (also using some pesto that we have way too much of).

F. The two cans of chickpeas were used as a substitute for our homemade falafels -- sounds funny because they traditionally made using chickpeas, but my recipe uses pinto beans which are more pliable for the patties.

G. The Thursday before we left for vacation, I made a special meal of Chicken Parmesan. My brother ended up hanging out with a friend while we ate dinner, so it was nice to spend time alone together on our porch enjoying one another, the food, and a glass of wine. To aid in the making of the sauce, I used two cans of tomato sauce.

H. Tonight I am making mashed potatoes with grilled chicken to use up the last of the SBR's Hickory Brown Sugar BBQ sauce. To accompany our meal, we will finally be eating the bag of cut broccoli. This meal is also fun because JP gets to use his early-birthday-gift grill!


I know I should have taken before photos, but this is what our pantry was looking like as of June 29th, prior to cooking the Chicken Parm:


last of the Great Value Lemonade used; two of those cans of tomato sauce + crushed tomatoes used; spaghetti used; dried cranberries & blueberries + rolled oats used for homemade granola bars; andddd I totally caved and bought Near East boxes of couscous to be used later -- they were B1G1 @ Publix!

All in all, I think we're doing great. I am just 3 days away from the end of our 30-Day Challenge, so I would say this was a success considering we pretty much emptied our pantry, and aside from the one sad bag of peas (which I plan to make soup out of this week), we completely devoured our frozen foods.

I have plans for using a large portion of our pesto reserve (again, not mentioned on the original 30-Day List) with a great recipe my best friend K forwarded me today. I will share that this week. Otherwise, I plan to make a meal out of the leftover pasta sauce and Texas toast. I think I will have to hang onto the cans of tomato sauce past this week, and the large bag of jasmine rice is here to stay for now. We'll eat up the Green Valley Steamer this week as a side item to one of our meals, and perhaps the fruit cocktail can will be a small dessert for us.

Have you made use of the food that has been sitting in your pantry for months?

P.S. This is the big Southern meal we had with friends a few weeks ago:

30-Day Challenge Update I

Remember our challenge to use pantry odds and ends to both deplete continuously unused items in order to gain storage space, and also possibly rid ourselves of "inorganic"/non-ecofriendly foods and switch to a more local variety? Well we have been working on it. I thought I would go ahead and re-share the list of items we're fiddling with and cross off the foods we have been using in some meals:

30-Day Challenge Official Food List

- chickpeas (2 cans)
- vegetable broth (2 can) (1 can)
- refried beans (1 can)
- black-eyed peas (1 can)
- sweet corn (1 can)
- baked beans (humungo can)
- jasmine rice (1 large bag)
- light red kidney beans (bag - 16oz)
- white albacore tuna (3 cans)
- pasta sauce (2 jars) (1 jar)
- orzo (1 lb)
- spanish flavor boxed rice (2 boxes) (1 box)
- tomato sauce (8 cans, size 8oz)
- corn muffin boxed mix (1 box)
- flame roasted peppers (used, approx. 4oz)
- diced jalapeno peppers (used, approx. 9oz)
- buffalo wing sauce (used, approx. 14oz)
- Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (used, approx. 12oz)
- SBR's Hickory Brown Sugar (used, approx 9oz)
- SBR's Hickory Brown Sugar (18oz)
- Texas toast (6 slices) (3 slices)
- chicken tenderloins (6 pieces)
- chicken tenderloins (full bag, 32oz) (half bag, ~16oz)
- salmon (1 fillet)
- green peas (18oz bag)
- cut broccoli (16oz bag)
- Green Giant Valley Fresh Steamer (1 bag)
- peaches (29oz can)
- fruit cocktail (15oz can)

Meal Breakdown
A. Chili, Cornbread & Rice, using the light red kidney beans, box of spanish rice, and the cornbread mix. Jonathan created the chili through a medley of spices, including our diced jalapeno peppers, and everything turned out delish.

B. Arugula Salad & Parmesan Basil Orzo, using the box of orzo and vegetable broth. The orzo was one of my favorites...so good, in fact, I bought more orzo this morning for us to cook up with the last can of vegetable broth!

C. Bow-Tie Pasta with Texas Toast, using, of course, the jar of pasta and three slices of the Texas toast. The bow-tie pasta was also in the pantry, though I didn't include it in the original Official List because we have a lot of half eaten boxes of pasta that really does get eaten.

D. BBQ Chicken Sandwiches with Eileen's Mac & Cheese, Baked Beans, and Paula Deen's Peach Cobbler -- This was the most Southern meal I have ever cooked, but with the ingredients sitting in my cupboard, I saw no other way around it. To help me feel like less of a cow, we had friends over on Saturday night for dinner to share in all of this food. We ended up using the SBR's BBQ Sauce, the rest of a bag of chicken tenderloins, the humungo can of baked beans (which we still have leftovers of, by the way), and can of peaches for this whole meal. We didn't have any of the main ingredients for Eileen's M&C, so those were purchased, along with hoagie rolls for the sandwiches, and some Magic Hat #9. The cobbler was only so-so because I sort of forgot about it while eating dinner. Baking fail.

I went grocery shopping this morning after work to get a few things for this week's meals and I can't wait to share our further progress with you all later! For now, I need to sleep.

30-Day Challenge

Everytime we go out "west" (which can be as central as Texas), we are overwhelmed by each consumer's sense of responsibility: responsibility to their health, well-being, and their environment. We see this through the vast amount of recycling bins throughout the city in Austin. In 2009 we were in Seattle and there was a newly imposed citywide law that would charge for every plastic bag used in a grocery store as a way to encourage people to stick with cloth totes. While in Salt Lake City, we were overwhelmed by the cleanliness and folks' attitudes towards organic and local food. I read many blogs from the midwest areas that really encourage composting, using rainwater, and growing your own garden with those tools. People are athletically fit, preferring long weekend hikes over bar-hopping and couch potato-ness.

When we see all of this progressive action toward the environment and personal health, which is such a stark contrast to the places we have grown up in and now live, I get really motivated to make major changes. A lot of it falls through eventually; we are creatures of habit, and it is difficult to facilitate change without the support of your friends and family.

Most of you know that about six months ago (actually, maybe longer?), I started diverting from the vegetarian diet. I am living in a culture that generally promotes fried and buttery foods. Most restaurants cook their vegetables in animal fat or include meat in the mixture of greens. While living here, it has seemingly become impossible to keep up with any sort of healthy lifestyle [though this might be out of my laziness to seek healthier alternatives; I lived with a girl during my externship who was a devout vegetarian, but then again, she was surrounded by her supportive and like-minded vegetarian friends]. So, I've been eating chicken and turkey mostly and still feel wary about cooking it at home. With that said, I have created delicious Chicken Parmesan dishes and different Crock Pot varieties of sauce-based flavored chicken. I sometimes forget that I was vegetarian for three years because it has become so commonplace to not even think about what I am putting in my mouth. It is not until I am around older friends that I am reminded of my former sense of responsibility.

With all of this in mind, I am really wanting to make our household more progressive like those wonderful cities we have encountered. For most of our friends "in the South," progression is a scary, communistic word. We kind of think that's funny, but I know people, in their learned habits, are afraid of change and what that could mean. I think living in a progressive way makes more financial sense; the increased price of organic food now may save you the cost of health ailments in thirty years.

My mind has been festering with all sorts of ideas. Our friend, April, who writes about the sufferings of a corn allergy (which I believe is a result of this corn country we live in), recently rid her pantry of anything with corn in it. You should go to that link just to see the food products that each of us probably buy with some type of corn-based product in it. It's just weird. Anyway, April has inspired me to do some of my own pantry (and fridge) cleaning.

I don't know if every household is like this, but I definitely grew up with this problem: We tend to keep food in our pantry/fridge for inordinate amounts of time. The food was probably purchased with the purpose of using it for a meal, but maybe we changed the recipe or bought too much, or now we have part of a product leftover because we didn't need all of it. The food in our fridge tends to be half-used condiment bottles (other than ketchup or mustard) or items 1/3 used for a specific recipe that has now become forgotten behind the egg carton.

I would like to make use of these odd items, so I spent an hour after Sunday School cataloging each and every one of the things that I have been opening the door to for way too long, that has been sitting there collecting dust. My challenge is to use each of these items within the next 30-days. I am hoping that in that time frame, J. and I can think about what we want to do for future grocery purchases (do we want to switch to all organic?), which is one out of the many changes I want to make in our household.

Here is a list of the "odd items" I have identified in our cabinets/fridge. (Please note that I did not include arbitrary items that we do use frequently enough, such as... bread crumbs or peanut butter.)

- chickpeas (2 cans)
- vegetable broth (2 can)
- refried beans (1 can)
- black-eyed peas (1 can)
- sweet corn (1 can)
- baked beans (humungo can)
- jasmine rice (1 large bag)
- light red kidney beans (bag - 16oz)
- white albacore tuna (3 cans)
- pasta sauce (2 jars)
- orzo (1 lb)
- spanish flavor boxed rice (2 boxes)
- tomato sauce (8 cans, size 8oz)
- corn muffin boxed mix (1 box)
- flame roasted peppers (used, approx. 4oz)
- diced jalapeno peppers (used, approx. 9oz)
- buffalo wing sauce (used, approx. 14oz)
- Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (used, approx. 12oz)
- SBR's Hickory Brown Sugar (used, approx 9oz)
- SBR's Hickory Brown Sugar (18oz)
- Texas toast (6 slices)
- chicken tenderloins (6 pieces)
- chicken tenderloins (full bag, 32oz)
- salmon (1 fillet)
- green peas (18oz bag)
- cut broccoli (16oz bag)
- Green Giant Valley Fresh Steamer (1 bag)
- peaches (29oz can)
- fruit cocktail (15oz can)

Do you shop organic? Do you find it silly or does it have some real benefits? Have you seen Food Inc.? I haven't, but our friends seem convinced after watching it. What ways are you trying to be responsible to your health and environment? Does your kitchen pantry have odd items that should be used or donated soon?