Gathering the Holiday Fragments

We are eating leftovers and consuming whatever can't be frozen this week.  I might throw in a couple of almost freshly made meals, but only because I had a pound of ground chuck and 2 pounds of chicken breasts that were in the back of the meat drawer (How does this stuff manage to hide so well?) and had to be cooked or tossed today.  Since I am trying to be a competent food steward I had to do a bunch of emergency cooking.  We now have a large pot of chili and an equally large pot of white chili, along with the innards for a chicken pot pie.  I will decide which chili we are going to eat this week and freeze everything else.

To try and keep myself honest I am going to post only our main meal for each day of the week. (Trust me, no one wants to see the teaspoons of leftover stuff I eat for breakfast and lunch, unless you really care to see a meal like this: 1 tablespoon baked beans, 2 tablespoons green beans, 1/2 chicken tender, 1 tablespoon mac and cheese, 1/2 apple. Lunch for me is just scrapping something edible that is leftover and either nuking it or just eating it cold straight from the fridge)

Saturday: Leftover empanadas, black beans and rice (all remaining beans and rice went to the freezer future soup container)  Not bad and the empanadas were surprisingly good just rewarmed in the oven. Used: All the leftover empanadas, 3/4 of the black beans and rice

Sunday: White chili, tossed salad.  The chili was fantastic, the tossed salad was leftover undressed salad that was maybe 1 1/2  days from being inedible. Neither good nor horrible, but gone and that is the most important thing right now.
Used: 3 chicken breasts hiding in the meat drawer, dried navy beans used as packing material to make a gift rattle,  leftover tossed salad

Monday: Smoked sausage, cabbage, onions and potato one pot meal.  Really tasty way to use excess sausage
Used: 1 lb smoked sausage (overbought for the holidays) 2/3 head cabbage leftover from cole slaw made for slaw dogs earlier, 5 potatoes about to sprout

Tuesday: Pizza lasagna, leftover lettuce, sliced tomatoes and cucumber slices
Used: 7 slices cold pizza, 1/2 cup spaghetti meat sauce, 5 tomato slices, 1/2 cucumber 1/4 head lettuce, (maybe?) 1/2 block leftover mozzarella, rest of the parmesan (about 1/4 cup grated)

Wednesday: Chicken and asparagus in creamed rice, lettuce and tomatoes
Used: The other 3 chicken breasts that I cooked a few days ago, 2 cups leftover rice, 1/2 bunch leftover asparagus, 3 ounces leftover cream cheese,  1/3 quart  of leftover chicken broth, 1 slightly soft huge tomato.

Thursday: Black eyed pea casserole, side salad
Used: 2 cups leftover black eyed peas, 1/2 can (leftover) mushroom soup, 4 ish ounces grated cheese salvaged from the lake place, 1 cup leftover collard greens, 3 slices regular bacon, 5 slices turkey bacon (Son1 and family eat this stuff), 1/2  head leftover lettuce
Bad:  Threw out about 2 cups of this.

Friday: Nothing. I am as sick as a dog so everyone here is on their own.  It's hot tea for me

Saturday:  Ditto, though I did heat up a can of chicken noodle soup, had some crackers and an orange. TheHub went out to a basketball game and stopped at our favorite late night place and brought me Mint tea and fries.  Not healthy but I could stomach it.

So this was my attempt at using stuff we had.  This week I stopped by they grocery store once and bought a jalapeno, onions, a tomato, and a cucumber. TheHub stopped on the way home from work and bought me a Sprite, Son2 brought me some Constant Comment tea and that is the total of my grocery buys for the first week of 2016.

The excess holiday food (minus one carton of sour cream) has been used, and I almost feel like a human again, so this week should be back to normal.  I am hoping to spend about 50 dollars this week unless there are some seriously good stock up prices in the food ads Wednesday

And yes I know this is lame but I really do think it's lovely music and, come on, it's the  opening theme song from The Leftovers