Eating down the fridge

I'm going to list some of what we ate this week because sometimes I think it's helpful just to get ideas of what to eat.

I read about this idea of "eating down the fridge" somewhere last year, and though I'd never thought to call it that, it was something I'd tried to do occasionally. The idea is that you don't shop for a week or however long it takes to eat what's in your fridge. Now, I've already confessed that I'm obsessed with food. A part of that obsession is some food hoarding tendencies. So if I combine what I have in the fridge with what I have in the pantry and the freezer, we could theoretically do this for a long time. My current goal is to try to eat most of what we have in the freezers, at least to the point where I'm more aware of what's in them. I've tried keeping lists, but never seem to manage keeping them updated.

This coincides with another current goal of mine, which is to strictly stick to the current iteration of our budget. I'm really good at making budgets, and not so good at following them. Luckily we sometimes have little injections of extra cash in the form of painting (and now pottery) sales that cover the overspending.

Here's our menu from last week:
Sun: Golden Cheddar Cheese soup, Irish soda bread. I should post the recipe for that soup - it was really good (potatoes, carrots, onions, butternut, pureed with boullion, buttermilk and cheese). I prefer biscuits to the soda bread.

Mon: shrimp and scallop linguini, green salad with nectarines, almonds, cranberries, orange segments and goat cheese, pear tart from Whole Foods (Valentine's Day was an exception)

Tues: burritos. Refried beans and corn from the freezer. Whole wheat tortillas, cheese, cabbage, salsa were in the fridge. Tomatoes and avocado purchased for this purpose.

Wed: leftover seafood pasta

Thurs: shredded pork tacos (shredded pork barbacoa from the freezer)

Fri: Ate out with a Living Social Coupon at Tana Ethiopian. It was good, but for the money, I'd rather have Udipi or Green Mango. If you do go there, we all agreed the spicy lentils were the best dish we had. Then we went to see the animated shorts at Regent Square theater (I had a couple of free passes from PCA)

Sat: lunch: Use-it-up/make-it-up pasta (I had some leftover cooked linguini in the fridge that I mixed with sauteed onions, carrots, and celery and other assorted odds and ends in the refrigerator: black olives, calamata olives, a bit of goat cheese, chopped sun-dried tomatoes. Dinner: vegetarian chili from the freezer and homemade cornbread (used powdered buttermilk, since I didn't have fresh)

Sun: Southwest style hamburgers (ground beef and buns from the freezer, topped with chipotle mayo, canned green chiles, avocado, tomato, lettuce and cheddar), oven fries and sweet potato fries, and roasted turnips (I got them from the farmer and have been postponing using them, but they weren't bad this way).

On the possible list for next week:
*pozole (freezer)
*mediterranean lentil salad
*black beans and rice with a little appetizer of shrimp and avocado ceviche to use some of the *shrimp in the freezer from Valentine's day)
*fresh green pea soup with homemade bread
*shrimp pad thai
*leftovers
*chinese stir-fry if there are enough vegetables left in the crisper, with dumplings (freezer) from TJ's
*maybe cheesy hashbrowns with ham (freezer)
*breakfast for dinner
*frittata with the leftover potatoes from the oven fries

I'll just need to buy some cilantro, but I think I have everything else. I will need more bananas and milk for breakfasts. Creepy, huh? And I think I can do a 3rd week, too. TMI?