pantry & freezer week - day 1

Success!  Well, that might be going a little far - we were forced to eat only the food that we had at home since we had absolutely zero time to hit up the grocery store.  I imagine the first few days of this challenge is going to be relatively easy - the creative juices will have to really be pumping by the end of the week.

I am really going to focus on lunch and dinner for this challenge as breakfast is usually oatmeal or cereal.  But today's oatmeal was all sorts of orange and I just have to tell you what I put in it.  Ready...?

• 1/4 cup steel cut oats - pulverized in the food processor for 2ish minutes
• 1/2 frozen banana
• 1 carrot - grated
• 4 dried apricots - chopped
• chia seeds
• 1 orange - squeezed to death with some pulp
• enough soy milk added to orange juice to create about 1 cup
• splash of vanilla

Weird, right?  Seriously the carrot kind of disappears into the oatmeal as far as taste is concerned and the everything else came together to create a naturally sweet breakfast!  The orange juice and soy milk reacted just a bit when I mixed them - but nothing tasted off after I cooked everything.  Plus check out the stats - I got at least 2 servings of fruit and one big veggie serving before 9AM!  Score.

I rolled up a wrap for lunch today with all ingredients found in our fridge

• whole wheat wrap
• hummus (left over from Sunday's brunch - thanks Leah!)
• spinach
• fried egg 
• slice low sodium turkey
• whole roasted carrot (just peeled and cooked the carrot right on the oven rack at 350* for who knows how long)

Alongside I served up a pretty battered-on-the-outside grapefruit that I got in a huge bag of citrus in reduced priced cart at Hy-Vee.



Battered on the outside usually means super juicy on the inside and this guy didn't disappoint.



And although dinner wasn't photogenic, it was simple to throw together and tasted great - especially after a 2+ hour Relay For Life committee meeting. Fail.

Chipolte Corn & Carrot Soup

• 2 chilies in chipolte sauce (freezer item)
• 3 cups corn (freezer item)
• 2 carrots - grated
• 2 cloves garlic - peeled
• 1.5 cup water
• 1 cup soy milk
• sprinkle cumin (pantry item)
• salt and pepper to taste

Throw everything in the crockpot on high for 3ish hours and then blend until smooth.  I used an immersion blender as the last time I made soup I kind of broke our blender...so this wasn't as smooth as I would have liked, but it worked.



We served this up with just a wee bit of brown rice (pantry) and some left over corn muffins (freezer).

Hmmm - looking back on my main meals today, think I ate enough carrots??

Snacks throughout the day consisted mainly of left over biscotti from Sunday's brunch (post is coming soon!!), grapes, more biscotti and then two frosted sugar cookies at the end of our Relay meeting.  Hey - nothing says you cannot decline sugar cookies made by your volunteer more than having to sit through a two hour committee meeting on Valentine's Day.

Speaking of work meetings - how should I handle meals that I usually eat on the road (on work's dime) because of late meetings in regards to our eat-in month challenge?  Do I pack dinner or grab something since I am not technically not paying for it?