30 day challenge, day 27

November 13, 2012

I spent way too much time playing around on pinterest, facebook, and on here this morning. Before I knew it, I was starving for lunch. Have you heard of dump cake? The recipe where pie filling and a cake mix are dumped together? (It is amazing by the way). Well, I made dump soup for lunch. Ha, that sounds awful. Maybe I should call it toss together soup.

I had a small container of leftover hamburger gravy and about 3/4 of a can of beef broth. I wanted to use them up but didn't want it to feel like leftovers. I dumped  (oops, I mean tossed) them into a pot. I added a big scoop of the jasmine rice with edamame leftover from last night. There was a tiny bit of corn in the fridge. In it went. I grabbed a bag of green beans that I had frozen from my garden. I just broke off a little handful of them and threw them in the pot. I found a half of a bag of frozen carrots. Ugh. I hate store bought frozen veggies. When will this bag of carrots be gone already! In went a handful. It just had to simmer for a few minutes to heat everything through. It was so delicious! I'm actually excited there are leftovers of it for my lunch tomorrow!

Yesterday we made chicken marsala. I bought a pack of three chicken breasts but we only used two. I figured I would make a stir fry tonight with the other piece. I used up the end of a bottle of teriyaki marinade. I chopped up half of the broccoli that is in the fridge, the rest of the cauliflower, the end of the bag of carrots, the rest of last night's edamame, and some celery. I love stir fry because you can just use any veggies you need to use up. My kids love the little baby corn on the cob in stir fry. I didn't have a can of them for tonight. However, I tried to get sneaky (notice I said tried). I had bought a jar of pickled baby corn from an Amish store. We weren't really thrilled with them. I thought maybe if I rinsed them it would take away some of the bitterness. Once they are covered in teriyaki sauce, the kids won't know the difference. Right? My daughter took one bite of her corn and asked,"why does this taste like a pickle?" Ha. Oh well. They ate it for tonight but I doubt I'll ever put it in stir fry again. We put the stir fry over a bed of the jasmine rice with edamame from last night. We topped it off with cashews and rice noodles for some crunch.

One of the biggest parts of this challenge is for me to use up leftovers. None of us in my family like them. Looking over at my counter, I see the cake pan of leftover raspberry brownies (made with raspberry pie filling in the middle of the batter). It's a dirty job, but I guess we better eat some more leftovers! Yesterday we had it with extra pie filling and ice cream. Tonight we changed it up and had a piece with fresh berries. Yum.