Foiled

I've been spending a lot of time at The Boy's house the last little while, and I can't help but make some observations. When you look at two different people you're probably going to find that they approach things differently, and in our case two of the things we approach differently are grocery shopping, and expiry dates.

While he's probably the most competent bachelor I've ever met, he leans more towards the frozen/canned foods in his shopping. I'm more likely to grab the veggies and make things from scratch. I made him a pot of chicken noodle soup a month ago when he came down with a cold. It was somewhat comical cooking for him, because he was sitting on a kitchen stool watching what I was doing with all the intensity a sick guy could muster. I know his mom cooks from scratch, but by the look on his face you'd think he'd never seen it done before.

Anyway, I went to make a cup of tea yesterday and found out that the milk had gone sour before the expiry date. Not a big deal, just kind of irritating. The milk is still useful, but I know he'll throw it out. He's a firm believer in expiry dates. Bread is past the expiry, but nothing appears to be growing on it? It gets chucked. Grated cheese in the fridge has been open for a while, but nothing appears to be growing on it? Gets chucked out. Milk soured? Chucked.

My jaw dropped the first time I watched him do it.

So this time I figured I'd use it up before he could get around to throwing it out. He has a small assortment of baking supplies, so I figured I'd do up some sort of a cake/square, or some cheese muffins while he's at work. 2 birds with one stone! yes!

The only problem is that every recipe I could find required a) eggs b) shortening or c) butter.

The Boy is overdue for a trip to the grocery store, as he currently has none of those items.

So, I've been foiled in my surprise frugality attempt *sigh* The milk will probably make it to the garbage can before I can get my hands on those ingredients.

Next time though, I'll come prepared.

Chugging Along

Well, despite the fact that I feel more or less like crap, it was actually a pretty productive day.

I paid my bills... and I'm longing for when I can either watch my savings balance grow or debt balance shrink again.

I got the front lawn raked with the help of a friend (thanks again), then mixed the old lawn clippings into the strip of soil I'm working along my sidewalk (for putting edible plants in). I pruned the bushes in front of the house back into shape, drove some fertilizer spikes into the ground, and then hacked back everything at the base of my tree.

There is a noticeable height difference between my tree and every other one on the block. You can tell it was severely neglected before I bought the place.

I figured I could probably use a boost of vitamin C, and decided the best way to do that OBVIOUSLY was to bake lemon squares. You'll have to accept my fuzzy logic on that one. I had purchased all of the ingredients for a bake sale at the company I worked for before being turfed... they're aaaaaaaaall mine now ;)

I've been cleaning and polishing up my winter boots to be packed away for winter. I know we'll probably get another good dump of snow in May, but until then I'd like to get this out of the way. I'd like to be working again before then anyway.

Speaking of work, I've been kinda quiet on the job hunt so far. I'll continue to be pretty mum on the details until I actually have something in writing somewhere. In general terms so far I have a company up north that has expressed some interest, a company in town that called and requested I send them my resume (which I met casually last week), and another place that knows I'll be calling tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

For now I'm just keep my eyes/ears open. Here's hoping I'll have something noteworthy soon.

Leftover leftovers?

Okay, so it's really freaking cold outside, and I don't really want to go out there right now.

Which kinda sucks, because I need to pick up groceries soon.

I looked over my fridge, tossed the items that needed tossing (how did 4 month expired yogurt get missed in the last clean out?), and assessed what was left. Not much. A couple eggs, a splash of milk, some mouldy cheese and a container of spinach cheese dip from going out with a friend a couple days ago. On the counter was some bread crusts leftover from having some friends over for an english tea a little while back.

My fridge is not usually this barren. I blame the weather.

I have a reasonably stocked pantry, but I was feeling the need to use up what was in the fridge before tapping that. Well, tapping that too much anyway.

I trimmed the mould off the cheese and cut into small, meltable pieces (there was too little to shred). After cooking a pot of penne and draining it, I threw the cheese pieces to melt, and added the remaining spinach cheese dip. The result was a cheesy spinach pasta, with a little kick. For whatever reason the restaurant we got the spinach dip from does theirs with a tex-mex edge. If I find the pasta is too dry when I reheat it, I can throw some salsa in quite easily to fix that.

The bread crusts (about 1/2 a loaf's worth?) were torn up into little bite sized pieces and spread out in a baking dish. My last 3 eggs and splash of milk were whipped together with a few handfuls of homemade vanilla sugar and vanilla extract. I say handfuls, because I was too lazy to get a measuring cup out of the cupboard. 3 handfuls - That's about as precise-ish as I can get on this recipe. On top of the crust pieces I liberally sprinkled nutmeg and cinnamon, as well as a few handfuls of crushed walnuts and a handful of dark chocolate chips, before pouring the egg mixture over it. I pushed the bread down to make sure it all soaked up some egg mixture, covered the dish in tinfoil, and put it in the oven at 350 Fahrenheit for about 35 minutes.

Om nom nom.

I have some Devon cream in the fridge at work to put on that bad boy.

I now have breakfast and lunch for the rest of the week :)

Then I really have to go get groceries :s

Has anyone made anything interesting out of their leftovers lately?

Pre-payday Cookery

As joyous as I am when payday arrives, I'm equally less than joyous the week leading up to it. Why? Money is tight. Of course. If it wasn't, I probably wouldn't even blink on payday. Such is life.

Speaking of life, I would kind of like to sustain it. That means I need to eat. With $6.46 left in my checking account, I don't exactly have the capacity to be eating out for the next 5 days, nor do I want to be. Instead, I'm turning my sights to my cupboards. That onion hiding in behind the pasta boxes at the bottom of the pantry, and an ice block of beef stock I made a while back will turn into french onion soup with the help of some stale bread courtesy of thanksgiving, and the last of the shredded cheese in the fridge. The remainder of the pumpkin from Thanksgiving will be turning into soup and possibly some muffins for the morning. Frozen stir fry veggies (when did I buy these? When I bought my freezer??) will be turning into a non-frozen vegetable stir fry that can go over rice or soba noodles.

It occurs to me on a regular basis that the only reason I eat out is sheer laziness (or cravings, but that's another story). It certainly isn't due to a lack of food in the house. Something to work on.