Pantry Challenge Update

The challenge is going great! Somethings I’ve used and made; 

Sweet potatoes. I bake these, allow to cook, wrap in tin foil and freeze in a freezer zip lock bag.  They’ll last for months this way.  To eat, remove foil and microwave. They taste like you’ve just baked them.  I like taking these camping. 

 

Back on Sept or October, several grocery stores had 5 lb bags of russet potatoes for $0.88-0.99 each. I bought a couple of bags. I ate them for lunches with cheese and butter and I made some into potato soup. I might have used them another way. This is what I had left and they were beginning to look bad. I baked them, cooled them, cut off the skins and made twice baked potato casserole, which I froze for another day. 

I baked 3 packages of bacon. I hate frying it and rarely do I make bacon that isn’t the fully cooked kind you can microwave, but these packages had been on sale. I froze the cooked slices between wax paper overnight and then filled freezer quart bags with slices to use for future recipes. 

I made crock pot teriyaki apricot pork chops. The apricot preserves were best by October 2022 and the pork chops were frozen in February 2022. I made a box of Rice-a-Roni fried rice (best by 7/22) and added a small can of peas and carrots (best by 12/22) to eat along side the pork chops. 

With the remaining pork chops, I made Swiss Pork Chop Casserole. This was SO good! I’ll make it again, but alter the recipe some. I thought it was too salty. I think I’d spray the casserole, rather than melt the butter. I would not season the pork chops. And I’d probably top each pork chop with a TBSP of crushed croutons, rather than use the entire bag. Oh, and I subbed sliced from a block Mozzarella cheese as I didn’t have any Swiss cheese. My slices were thicker than sandwich slices as the recipe calls for, but cheese is never a bad thing! Click on the link below for the recipe  

Swiss Pork Chop Casserole

I had a large tub of sour cream to use up and made my families sour cream sugar cookies (sorry no picture) and Pryaniki or Russian Sugar Cookies (shown in picture). The recipe calls for a glaze that called for powdered egg whites. I debated making a different type of glaze as I didn’t have powdered egg whites, but decided to leave them unfrosted. My sour cream sugar cookies call for frosting, but I prefer them unfrosted too. Pryaniki link below; 

Pryaniki

With that sour cream, I made a chicken casserole with two boxes of Stove Top (one of the boxes was best by 10/22) and a taco casserole that used taco meat I had prepared and froze in August 2022 (sorry, forgot to take a picture).

I made an apple crisp using apple pie filling I made and froze in September 2021.  I used up several items and made a batch of breakfast burritos.  I’ve been enjoying them for breakfast. 

Using crescent rolls that were best by 12/22, pepperoni I had frozen from a Managers Special at Dillons last fall and am open bag of mozzarella cheese, I made pepperoni roll ups. The idea came from Mama Sue’s YouTube channel;  

Pepperoni roll ups

Not bad, if you ask me! I cleaned out the refrigerator last week. I have enough blocks of cheese to last me a long while! I have two more cans of crescent rolls that I need to use (best by 1/23). Oh and I found a snack pack of applesauce, the six count cup size package, in the fridge that is best by 1/23 that I need to eat or use. The fridge freezer is next. Haven’t been to the grocery store all month, but have gotten lettuce and tomato at Sam’s.