Rubber Chicken and Green Bean Casserole

Very successful cooking and planning today. Those five chicken legs stretched a looooong way (rubber chicken, ha ha). I boiled them with the onion and carrot tops and some garlic and came out with about a litre (quart) of chicken stock and a good two cups of chicken meat. About a third of that went into a green bean casserole (mushrooms, green beans, sour cream, milk, red pepper, onion, swiss cheeese) topped with cheese and bread crumbs, bake bake bake, brown on top, delicious! That fed us dinner tonight (Tuesday), plus lunch tomorrow.

photo by scot2342 on Flickr

We used some strawberries, milk, and cereal for breakfast. For lunch today, linguine in veggie sauce used up about 1/4 of the pasta, one can of tomatoes, some ketchup (what? I didn’t have any tomato paste), some garlic, an onion, a pepper, a carrot, and some butter. Leftover veggie sauce is dressing up for dinner tomorrow night with half the remaining chicken, a nice dose of sour cream, a sprinkle of peas, and a few more canoodles.Ginger Man will probably get Thursday’s lunch out of that with a side of strawberries and cheerios. I’ll have a grilled cheese at home and make chicken noodle soup. Since I can’t make dumplings (no flour), I’ll go with adding some linguine to the chicken stock, throwing in a wee bit of chicken, some carrot and onion and peas. I might save a little carrot for sticks in Ginger Man’s lunch on Friday.

So, I’ll be cooking the chicken thighs on Thursday afternoon with a side of roasted potatoes. I guess I could throw some peas in there for color and nutrition. We’ll eat half of the potatoes, and I’ll use half for breakfast the next morning. I really wish I had eggs instead of ketchup. I’ll split up the meat from the two leftover thighs and mix that with the beans, the other can of tomato, some garlic, onion, a pepper (maybe both of them), and some cheese and sour cream. Use the tortillas with that, get a little burrito action going on, maybe quesadillas. That mixture should get us through lunch and dinner on Friday.

I expect we’ll use up the tortillas and bread, the strawberries, milk, juice, and cheerios filling in snacks and breakfasts the next few days. Except for making the berries a little sweeter, the sugar has been a useless waste of $5. What was I thinking?That I’d be baking, of course. But the best I could do would be make caramel, since there are no other ingredients for anything. By the end of Friday, I will be down to peas and ketchup and butter, maybe some onion and garlic. I should probably stretch out the linguine and save some cheese. I can use the sour cream and some milk to make . . . what . . . a sort of fettucine alfredo? The ketchup might actually make it a nice rosy color and add a little tomato flavour.

I’m really wishing I could have a banana or a salad, but the 50¢ I’ve got left won’t cut it, not even in the sale bin. I guess I kindof take for granted that I can just go out and get whatever ingredients I want, pretty much. If this wasn’t a challenge, if this were actually all the money we had and all the food we had, we’d be hurting for food by the weekend.

I can tell you that if this were the real thing, I’d be meal planning my ass off and trying to buy more veggies on the next trip to the market. I looked in the fridge today, and since I cleaned out most of my food getting ready for this challenge and used up a fair bit of my ingredients prepping and cooking today, it’s looking a little more sparse than usual.

Right now, I’m hungry, and in all likelihood, Ginger Man is, too. Time for some toast and milk. I could kick myself for not buying peanut butter. Oh, and note to self: Buy plain yogurt instead of sour cream and get double the mileage from it. Use it as a potato topping, in soups or stews, with fruit and honey for breakfast, etcetera and so forth.