"Eating Down the Fridge" (and pantry)

I stumbled across this, via Obama Foodarama, and I'm in -- but it's going to take me more than a week to run through the contents of my larder! I've got plenty of frozen veggies (peas, green beans, corn, collards, kale, green peppers, onions, edamame, broccoli, cauliflower), so when the fresh lettuce is gone I will not be deprived. Plus canned tomatoes & mushrooms, and dried sea veggies. More incentive to get the garden prepped and started, too, get those early greens in! I've got way more proteins than I realized, and starches out the wazoo, and plenty of beans and nuts and seeds. I'll be sorry to run out of fruit -- but I have raisins, and some frozen cranberries I could grind up and do something with, and some jam I could get creative with (mmm, crêpes anyone?). I'll miss the cheese when it's gone, too, and I'm already almost out of butter, but I've got almost a whole bottle of olive oil so I'll deal. The celery, unfortunately, had to go to the compost, but surprisingly nothing else did. Wow. I have celery seed, does that count? I mean, for soups and stuff? Oh, well.

This will be a great, fun challenge. I don't have a clue what to do with a lot of this stuff. Luckily I have plenty of onions and a whole head of garlic, and lots of dried herbs. But hey, my Lenten resolution was to FAIL (i.e., to get out of my safe zone and try things I don't already know how to do), so I will have fun experimenting.

I'm a serious foodie. If I could get this mortgage off my back and start all over somewhere cheap, I would probably go to cooking school. I'm all about the organic, the local, the home-grown, the whole foods..... Oh, and speaking of home-grown, it looks as if I will be adopting another hen -- a R.I. red in need of a new home. Nice: R.I. reds lay brown eggs, I already have a white egg layer (a silver Polish) and a blue egg layer. Yep, blue. She's some kind of an Ameraucana, doesn't fit the APA standard but does lay lovely sky-blue eggs. I went to a talk last weekend on backyard beekeeping. *sigh* oh, I would love to spend all my time at home, and be able to give up this job hunt. OK, OK, I'll quit the b*tchin, I'm better off than a whole lotta people, I know. Actually, most of the people in the world are dirt poor, but I'm even doing better than a whole lot of Americans. Anyway, today I'm in a better mood, and getting ready to start cooking. Something. Probably arborio rice with chicken legs, sausage (because I have both defrosted already), canned or sun-dried tomatoes, and olives (a variation on a saffron rice recipe my dad sent me, though I'm out of saffron....).

Then soup, with some of those beans and grains and stuff. Though I have a lot of small grains: couscous and quinoa, and hot breakfast cereal stuff like wheatena & cream of buckwheat & cream of rice, grits (that's just a sample!). I dunno ... I'll figure it out as I go along. Cook some of them up and use cold in salads, with shallots and radishes or something. And cold marinated beans! I guess I'll be eating hot cereal for breakfast, with raisins, when I run out of fresh fruit and tofu for smoothies. Happily, I have some goat's milk, ultra-pasteurized so it should last plenty long enough to use with the oatmeal. I already bake my own bread.

And I promise to spend at least an hour or two on the job applications today, too!

Blessings to you all.