This is really cool; A Mighty Appetite‘s Kim O’Donnel has issued a challenge; Eating Down the Fridge. From Monday, March 9 through Sunday, March 16, the goal is to clear out what’s in your fridge and pantry, use this for a week’s worth of meals, and do zero food shopping. That’s right. Zero. A tricky challenge indeed, but one I totally want to take on.
I love this. Chances are a lot of us have too much food in our fridge and shelves anyway. We keep saying we ‘have nothing to eat’, but we really we do. This little EDF challenge will ask us to be a bit more nimble and lateral with how we cook and what we eat. Plus we’ll save some money along the way. Also, as Kim realized, we’ll look a bit more inward into how we consider food; food shouldn’t be wasteful and we should think about using what we have. I implore you to take this challenge with us!
I took a quick look at stuff in the fridge and here is what’s in there that we could build a meal around:
- Frozen lobster tails
- Bacon
- Mangalitsa pork shoulder
- Mangalitsa pork chop
- Tomato ragu
- Frozen shrimps
- Shredded chicken
- Longanisa
- Frozen salmon
- Oxtail
In the cupboards, there’s some pasta, rice, oats, quinoa, cornmeal, rice noodles, rice paper wrappers. An area we are lacking is in the veggie department; some fennel, kale, potatoes, carrots, onions, and that’s about it. I’ll definitely make some kale chips. Maybe we’ll swing by the Ballard Farmer’s Market to grab a few things and say “hi” to Janna and the Secret Stash Salt crew.
But we don’t want to buy too much stuff; the idea of EDF is to use what you got, not buy to fill the week. On the surface, I think we’re in good shape. We could do a lobster pasta or lobster rolls; the ragu could be used for lasagna, and I love oxtail, so there is a ton of stuff we could do there. We’ll do Filipino-style shredded crispy chicken. We may have dinner covered, but lunch could be tough. Breakfast is easy. Tons of steel cut oats and we know how much I love that stuff. Longanisa is a breakfast food staple from the Philippines that’s spicy, bright red, and delicious. Lots of bacon too. Make sure to save the bacon fat…
There’s lots of stuff to make baked goods with too. I think I’ll whip up some cornbread, maybe make some chocolate chip cookies, fudge, what else…
Ok, I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea; have fun with what’s in your kitchen! I think the next thing is to have a big dinner party on Friday; who’s down?
going for seconds 