meal plan: bottom of the fridge

I was debating between posting my back-of-the-freezer meal prep I did today and just laying on my bed watching another episode of MST3K when my friend Cara posted this on Facebook:

It's a sign. A sign to food blog!

This was me earlier today, staring into my fridge, then freezer, then cabinets, making this circuit a couple more times until saying "fuck it" and pulling out everything to see what I could make happen for dinners this week. Saturdays are usually my day to shop and meal plan, then I get all my cooking done for the week on Sundays (as much as I can, anyway). I had done a bit of planning in a post I shared the other day, but spent all of Saturday at a rap show in the park and woke up this morning with neither the desire nor the energy to go to the grocery store (which is so close to me I could walk there).

To avoid turning self-imposed home-bodiness into an excuse to shirk my culinary responsibilities, I took it upon myself to satisfy my domestic duties, initiating my weekly ritual with self-inquiry:

"Dafuq are we eatin this week?"

I started by pulling out every frozen item in my freezer that had entree potential, usually meat: couple bags of pork chops, a couple bags of chicken (thighs in one, legs in another), and a pack of andouille sausage (they're like cajun brats, I use them in my slow cooked red beans). There was a bag of broccoli, and a bag of peas and another of carrots, some broth cubes, and a shitload of frozen bananas. I pulled up some recipes for the bananas for later on this week (pancakes and pie, if I can manage it!) and began thawing out the assorted animals.

I had saved a post on Facebook for honey mustard chicken, so I thawed the thighs first, salted them and put them in a roasting pan. In another dish, i made some dijon mustard out of mustard powder, white wine, garlic, onion, honey, cumin, oil, mayo, salt and pepper. poured this over the chicken and sprinkled some rosemary on it before shoving it in the oven at 350 for 45m. Once this baked, I packed the thighs (skin-on) into a deep tupperware container and shoved it in the fridge for later on this week. I saved the liquid at the bottom of the pan, the sauce and schmaltz, and added it to some rice I had rinsed and shoved in the cooker. That's one meal, squared away.

I saw a big bag of tilapia in my freezer and realize I write FISH down for dinner every damn week and never make it. I make really good fish, too! I make a quick tartar sauce of mayo, relish and lemon, garlic or whatever, and paint the fish, then dip it in panko and bake it brown, serve it with some of that chickeny mustard rice i just made and some broccoli. There's two!

Since I have so much rice and pork, combining the two just seemed...natural? Also I bought the carrots and peas for it last week, but got bronchitis and was in no mood to cook. Marinated the chops for a couple hours in soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, chili paste, cumin, brown sugar, onion, garlic and a little oil, baked them for a bit and chopped them into chunks, saving the bones in my freezer to be turned into broth eventually. Mixed the meat with the veg, added some soy sauce, garlic and onion, and lined two larger deep tupperwares with rice and split the stir fry over each. One went in the freezer, the other in the fridge. That makes three meals.

I thawed some chicken legs and kept moving my bottle of basalmic vinegar out of the way as I was making the first three meals, so I figured I'd find a marinade calling for it. Added honey to the vinegar, with some brown sugar, garlic and onion, whisked it all up and poured it over the chicken in a deep tupperware in a single, alternating layer. These are still in the fridge, so tomorrow I'll bake the legs for a half hour, reduce the glaze and paint it on the legs. It'll be good with rice and broccoli. Four meals so far!

I love kielbasa, so when I saw this insane looking cheesy noodle kielbasa skillet pop up on my Facebook feed last week, I knew I had to make it. Had all the ingredients on hand, too! I had these little tiny circles of pasta I threw into the skillet with the meat, peppers, green chiles, canned tomatoes and cheddar. That's five meals.

We have company catered lunch each Wednesday at my work, and this week there was this VAT of spinach artichoke sauce. Nobody puts it away, it just gets trashed, so I boxed it up and brought it home with me. Boiled some spaghetti and linguine and split it into three deep tupperwares, then poured the sauce over it. Six!

So that's my magic act, turning "I have no food in my house" into "LOOK AT ALL THIS FOOD WE HAVE" in an afternoon. I definitely recommend combing through your ingredients and doing the same thing when you're a day or two before your check or you're having one of those evenings where you're just incapable of heading to the store. Been there. Pull it all out of the fridge, freezer, cupboard, lay it all out, and make it happen. There are ingredient recipe sites, as well, if you're really stuck. Beats eating beans right out of the can with some stale ass bread heel, that's for sure.