I bought the largest package of Italian sausage I had ever seen. Three dinners? Four dinners? Three dinners. I can get three dinners out of this package. The first dinner I had planned to make was sausage & peppers, but green peppers weren't in this week. Meat sauce it is. I added shredded cheese under the sauce for this plate. It's not even close to tasting like baked ziti, but at least I won't have so much cheese left to expire.
There was leftover pork roast in the fridge and lots of pasta in the cabinet. That didn't sound particularly good together until I decided to toss them with the leftover broccoli-slaw.
Bunches of fresh broccoli's been on sale around here the past few weeks. I didn't feel like dumping raw broccoli on everyone's plate, but I also didn't feel like getting more pots dirty than necessary. So when the chicken was almost ready, I dropped the broccoli into the roasting pan and let it steam/boil in there.
This is ground beef meat sauce. Not quite as good as the Italian sausage meat sauce, but still enjoyable. And salad. We never have salad...
I reached for the Italian sausage and put it in my basket. What I planned to do with it, I didn't know. Turns out, it made for a great sauce. LV raved about the leftovers.
This is leftover sauce with leftover asparagus (not that I made all the asparagus one night—this is just what was left of the bunch). This is also my paper napkin as a diffuser for the point-and-shoot's flash. I'm not sure which is more delightfully lazy: homemade sauce from the microwave or picking up my napkin instead of moving the plate to a better location.
When I purchased the asparagus and the Italian sausage, I didn't see them going together. But come Wednesday, this seemed like a good idea.
It's spaghetti and half the ground beef I bought this weekend. I'm not thrilled. I was too distracted by a baby who refused to nap to season the meat properly.
"Dinner is deeeelicious."
Did I hear her right? Do I need to have Scrappy's tastebuds checked? This is 99 cent salad because it's set to expire any second. This is super cheap chicken that is probably also about to expire. This is store brand macaroni that I overcooked. It's all eww. But okay. Something other than pizza gets a thumbs up from the Scrappers...
This is roast chicken breast, penne, frozen chopped kale, and tomatoes. The chicken was still pretty frozen when I stuck it in the roasting pan (I stuck in the freezer after I brought it home from the store because I wasn't sure when I was actually going to do anything with it), which worked out really well. With the lid on, it created a nice little poultry sauna. I threw sliced a lemon in there and everything. It helped create a sauce so this didn't have to be as bland a meal as it could have been.
We've been avoiding converting any of the leftover chicken, turkey, or steak into dinner. Last night we walked all the way to Wendy's rather than eat leftovers. But tonight I went for it. There was a box of ziti. There were jars of pasta sauce. I had just bought a bag of frozen chopped kale. We could do this. We could make something of this... What I came up with was a super-cheesy leftover poultry baked ziti dish. Kind of light on the sauce, but still good.
While the chicken in this picture did come from from some rather large portions, they turned out to not be as ridiculously over-sized as I would have hoped. (Leftovers are fun...) There was quite a bit of bone.
I made this steak on... Wednesday? Yeah. It's been a busy week. I made steak Wednesday, but LV called to ask if I wanted him to bring anything home for dinner. So I told him to bring something to go with the steak—two gigantic bone-in cuts that were slowly baking in the oven. He brought fried rice and egg rolls. Then the next day we had pizza. Then today we had the steak again. (I wanted to make chicken pot pie, but with only $5 on me, I couldn't really get all the vegetables and chicken broth. Tomorrow. I'll make chicken pot pie tomorrow.) Again, I didn't feel like putting much effort into the sides, so here we have plain egg noodles with plain frozen green beans with plain (but really tasty (I took my time comparing cuts this week)) steak. Borrrrring.
Finally, those homemade meatballs I was talking about... The recipe says to roll out 24, but I wanted big honking meatballs. I made eight. Usually I buy the pre-made turkey version, which comes with maybe a dozen per pack. For the low low price of half as much, I was able to buy double the weight in ground beef and come away with meatballs that left everyone satisfied. Plus the other half of my ground beef pack. Plus two real lunches. There are never enough meatballs leftover from the turkey version to make TWO lunches. It's usually just one sketch lunch. But with REAL meatballs, I was able to turn eight into five meals. Nice.
I saw this picture in the hopper and thought, Didn't I already post the turkey? Oh, that's right. I used up more of the leftover cranberry BBQ sauce on leftover pernil and fresh egg noodles. ("Fresh" in the sense that I just boiled them. Not that I just rolled them out by hand. I haven't begun making pasta yet. There are too many things to try long before that.) Between the pernil and the BBQ sauce, there was a whole lot of flavor going on in this dish.
I wanted to make meatballs. Big Italian meatballs. But that plan just wasn't working out. First, I didn't have bread. Second, I didn't have time. After three days of wanting spaghetti and meatballs, I decided to simply make spaghetti and dump the sauce over the leftover roast chicken. Good enough.
I took the steak out of the freezer several days ago with bigger plans than simply making plain penne and frozen green beans. But here we are, plain penne and frozen green beans with some really good leftover steak. Mmm...
These are more frozen IKEA meatballs, but the sauce is all homemade. And this time I gave it about 20 minutes. Soooo good. So much better than the last time I tried to make a sauce without using the real drippings. Maybe too much sauce, though.
I had roasted chicken, half a box of shell pasta, and frozen vegetables. They all seemed to go together, but I wasn't sure what else it needed. Mayonnaise! LV was very excited. I was worried I was about to make everyone sick with warm mayonnaise. But it was safe. And still good as a lunch later in the week.
When the opportunity arises, LV likes to order a dish from Italian restaurants that has ham and a cream sauce. He asked me to hold the peas. Luckily, there were no peas in this frozen vegetable mix. He also requested a really thick sauce. I added corn starch, thinking that would do the trick. Instead we ended up with a lumpy alfredo sauce. Oh well. He still enjoyed it.
