Potato Soup

Last week my mom gave me most of a 10 lb bag of potatoes. I made Crash Hot Potatoes with some of them and decided to make Potato Soup with the rest of it. Here is the recipe I made up with what I had on hand:

~6 lbs of potatoes, peeled and cubed
1/2 onion, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
1 T minced garlic
2 T butter
2 cans of evaporated milk
8 oz cheese, shredded
salt and pepper to taste

Cook potatoes in water until tender. Saute onions and celery in the butter just until brown, then add garlic. Heat through until you can really smell the garlic.

Once potatoes are tender, drain off half of the liquid and half of the potatoes. Use your hand mixed (or masher I suppose) to create a puree right in the pan with the remaining water and potatoes. Stir in sauted vegetables, evaporated milk, and cheese. Stir until the cheese is melted then add in the remaining potato cubes.

***
Apart from the time spent peeling and cubing the potatoes, this was very simple to make. If I had it, I would have tossed in crumbled bacon and then topped with green onions. But they weren't on hand today. You could also use heavy cream instead of evaporated milk.

This recipe is one that is hard to mess up though. So, if you have less or more of something it probably wouldn't matter much.

What do you do with extra potatoes?

Week 1 Progress Update

So far we are doing really good with the January Eat From the Pantry Challenge. I went to the grocery store Sunday night and spent $28, including 2 newspapers. I hadn't planned to buy clementines, but since the 5 lb box was on sale for $5.99, I picked it up. That is a good price where I live.

Our meals so far haven't been too far off the reservation, though tonight's dinner was a little unusual for us. My mom had a 10 lb bag of potatoes she wasn't going to use up so she gave them to me yesterday. I made our favorite potato recipe, Crash Hot Potatoes. That was the star of the meal, along with some appetizer type foods I had around - mini frozen crab cakes, summer sausage, crackers, and block cheese.

I did realize though, I will need to buy sliced bread. We eat way too many sandwiches around here to give that up and I don't have time this month to learn how to make an excellent sandwich bread. But I am still collecting recipes and tips in case anyone wants to chime in.

The more I look into our pantry, the more I know we can do this. There is just so much food in there!

Have you had to start stretching yet, or are your menus still pretty normal?

Week 1 Menu

After browsing through my pantry and trying to figure out what we might eat that doesn't require a trip to the grocery store, I came up with a week's worth of dinner menus.

1 - Spaghetti w/ jar sauce
2 - Summer Sausage w/ crackers, cheese, and fruit
3 - Canned soup w/ crackers
4 - Caribbean Bean's & Rice (from recipe on light kidney bean bag)
5 - TBD Prepared meal from the freezer (I have several to choose from)

I realized that I don't have a very wide variety of items in my pantry. Spaghetti, soup, and rice dishes will likely be on the menu every week because I have a lot of those.

There are several cans of tomatoes - crushed, diced, whole, etc... that need to be used as well. I think they will work for chili a few nights. I wonder if my husband, Bruce, will miss having meat since I don't have a lot of that stockpiled.

Eat From the Pantry Challenge - January 2009

I have once again accumulated more food than my family can reasonably eat so long as my food buying habits continue. My pantry items are spilling out and being stored in grocery bags on the kitchen floor. Because of that, I am delighted to participate in Crystal's (of Money Saving Mom) Eat From the Pantry Challenge.

I have created my own customized set of rules to set my family up for a healthy, frugal January. The timing of this is good too, since we go a little more than 5 weeks between paychecks this time of year.

Here are my three rules for January 2009:

1. Only buy produce and dairy items at the grocery store or farmer's market.
2. Go to the grocery store no more than once a week.
3. No eating take-out food because I had a busy day and forgot to defrost something. (Planned dining out for dates or social occasions is acceptable.)
   

And here is my first exception:

1. January 2nd is my dad's birthday and the party is at my house. I'll be providing the meal and dessert so those groceries and that trip to the store won't count - it is one of my gifts to him.

I already know I have a lot of canned tomato products in my pantry so I will specifically be looking for yummy recipes to use those up. If you have any, pass them along by leaving a link (or the recipe itself) in the comments.

Check back in a couple of days to see how well I am doing and if I can master homemade sandwich bread!

Hello Again!

I have been absent from posting on this blog for awhile. You can read my excuses over at my family blog if you like.

I also have a new food website that I L-O-V-E! It is from Alltop and has everything to do with food. If you aren't familiar with Alltop, let me tell you about it. They take the top 100 sites in any given category (Food, Mom Blogs, etc...) and share the 5 most recent posts with the world.

It makes browsing the top content in any category perfectly easy and way too time consuming! The variety of their food coverage is amazing... everything from ethnic food and stories to southern cooking, as well as NPR Food coverage and the regular home cook.

Click on over today and check it out!

(By the way, this isn't a sponsored post, just something that I found through Buzz Agent and loved!)

One Million Blogs

I am not sure how many blogs there are in the world. One source said that there are as many as 70,000,000. Whether or not those are active, who knows? But I do know that someone has started an interesting wiki to try and collect links to at least 1,000,000 of those blogs.

I did my part to help by adding both of my blogs to the list. My main blog, Family Musings, is number 1511. This blog, EatingItUp, is number 1512.

If you keep a blog, join the social experiment and head over to add it yourself. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and click,"Add your blog to the list."

F is for Fruit

This list, my 9th edition of Thursday Thirteen, wasn't too difficult. I came up with it pretty quickly.

1. Fruit Loops - Not my personal favorite cereal, but I did see it featured on a poster I liked. It said, "Be the Fruit Loop in a bowl full of Cheerios."
2. French Fries - Is it safe to assume that we all know they aren't really french, they are Belgium?
3. French Toast - This isn't really French either, I don't think.
4. Funnel Cake - Greasy, fattening fair food doesn't get better than this. Unless it is topped with powdered sugar and mascerated strawberries.
5. Flounder (or just plain fish) - This was the only kid of fish I remember even knowing about as a kid. I didn't discover salmon or tilapia until after I graduated from college.
6. Fudge - I am not a huge fudge fan, but I do like fudgey brownies and fudgey cake frosting.
7. Frosted Flakes - Another cereal! I like these better than #1, and they are best with bananas or strawberries on top.
8. Fruit Salad - Just like with a regular vegetable salad, this tastes better when someone else makes it. One time a long time ago, my friend Barbara made one with sour cream in it. I think it was the best fruit salad I ever tasted.
9. Filet Mignon - Beefy heaven. I can't afford these at restaurants anymore, but oh man, these are good. Makes me wanna go and grill something.
10. Fruit Juice/Punch - I don't drink this sort of thing because it has a ton of sugar. I'd rather waste my sugar on chocolate.
11. Flour - OK. Technically, not a food in and of itself, but it makes all the baked goodness in the world possible. And who wants to live without baked goodness?
12. Figs - The first time I tried these I was an assistant teacher for a 3rd grade Vacation Bible School class. We were sampling biblical foods. I was surprised that I liked them, though I don't think I've had then ever since.
13. Flapjacks - Hey, no one said I couldn't use slang terms in my list. Who doesn't love a stack of fresh and fluffy flapjacks?!

Can you think of anymore F foods to add to my list?

Visit the home of Thursday Thirteen for more list fun!