Junque Food

This past Sunday, I went through my fridge to salvage leftovers before they went south, then cooked up a bunch of meals or parts of meals to be used this week. I’m pretty proud of what I managed to accomplish with the odd assortment of what I had on hand:

 

• A tub of cooked plain elbow macaroni – leftover extras from Mac-n-Cheese,
• A bowl of leftover homemade pizza sauce,
• Half of a large pot of bean soup, made by Da Hubster, that needed to be portioned and frozen as well,
• A bag of shredded broccoli & cabbage for slaw making that was nearing it’s expiration date
• 3 lbs. of green bell peppers that I got on sale (have you seen the how the price of peppers has risen lately??)
  What would you do? Here’s what I did:

• The elbows were re-incarnated into a tuna casserole, and portioned for take-to-work lunches and dinners.
• The leftover pizza sauce got portioned into individual baggies and frozen.
• Portioned and froze the bean soup.
• The brocco-slaw was made.
• The bell peppers were washed, diced, and frozen to be used in recipes later.

 

For extra credit (or because I love to make ahead for the week):

• Another loaf of bread was made
• 2 lbs of taco meat cooked up and ready for tacos, nachos, enchiladas, etc…

 

I have to tell you, I had a hard time choosing what to have for dinner Sunday night.  I settled on tacos topped with the brocco-slaw. OMG. NOM!

 

I do this on Sundays often because it’s a great way to use up what I’ve got, and because I really don’t like cooking a full meal when I get home from work. If most of the meal is already made, then I don’t mind throwing dinner together. It keeps us from ordering out, or running through a drive-thru.  And let’s be honest, it tastes better.