MJ, this post is for you...

I dedicate this post to MJ.

Last week, I decided that my bank account and my backside were feeling the effects of constant restaurant dining and so I imposed a new rule: No going out to eat for one week (I aim for a month). I am 5 days in and I can say that with the exception of one happy hour (work-related), I have maintained my position of dining a la house. And so, the pantry experiment begins again...

As a true pantry experimenter, sometimes you just have to figure out what the purpose of flaxseed really is, what a marinated eggplant tastes like and, with today's experiment, what barley actually tastes like...

This is barley. This is what I can tell you about barley:
1) It's a delicious source of dietary fiber
2) It's a friend of the heart
3) It's one of the oldest and most treasured grains
4) It hangs out with soups, cereal (really?), salad, stir fry, pilaf, and stuffing

Don't believe me??? Well...that's what Bob said.

and I seriously, seriously under-cooked it....

I awoke feeling ambitious. Not ambitious enough to tackle, say, cleaning or running errands. No, the perfect project for the day was to make a nice chicken soup/stew/stoup/souew...whatever, it's not a soup and it's not a stew.

I thought for sure that an old standby, chicken and dumplings, would fit the bill for figuring out a nice meals-for-the-week solution so that I could avoid going out to eat but I had no dill, and no desire to hand roll dumplings. So instead, I resurrected a few ingredients that I had bought out of curiosity but never opened.

I had the choice between barley for a soup and bulgur. I chose the barley because the bulgur sounds like vulgar and who wants to eat vulgar stoup? I also bought thyme on a whim and thought that it might make a nice addition to a dish. Not sure which dish but I knew there is a dish out there for which thyme makes the perfect addition.

So I assemble my unfamiliar ingredients on the counter:
Barley
Thyme

And the old standbys:
Carrot
Celery
Onion
Chicken Thigh
Sea Salt- Coarse (the darling of any pantry)
Chicken broth

I made what I have just learned is called a mirepoix (meaning French for a combination of celery, carrots and onions, diced in a pot to cook) and let it get all nice together. The I tossed in the chicken, thyme and the broth. Sea Salt for taste. The the barley...cue unfamiliar and slightly creepy music.

I read the directions on the package, I really did. And I cooked it down for what was about 50 minutes according to Bob Red Mill. I am not sure, but it is quite possible that barley is supposed to have a slightly crunchy mouth-feel but again, I am not sure.

To round out this stoup, I had some leftover grilled corn from last night and that got cut off the cob and tossed in. Overall, not a bad experiment and perhaps I might find something else to do with barley. As it stands I can say that I....like...barley, but just barely.

Any ideas on better barley?

If you don't learn from the past you are doomed to repeat history

Well, as Hitler failed to learn from Napoleon, another natural-born and charismatic leader neglected to learn any lessons....I failed to learn anything from the previous pantry experiment. Luckily the result of such an endeavor looks more like an abundance of overflow in the pantry and less like scores of troops freezing somewhere in Russia wearing the summer uniform for the military. If you don't know what I am referring to, then you obviously didn't have Mr. Bluhm or Mr. Murray for 11th and 12th grade history.

Brief history: In 2010, I noticed that my pantry, fridge and freezer were overflowing with stuff. I decided that I would cease going to the grocery store to see how long it would take before I actually ran out of things to eat...getting a little creative along the way. I vowed that I would no longer amass product and I would be more conscious of what I was buying to avoid throwing away food. Well...I looked in the pantry yesterday and decided that the 4 applesauce containers, the 4 BBQ sauce bottles and the 6 boxes of pasta (they ARE different shapes) were an indicator that I need to stop the bleeding and start the blogging.

In short, the pantry experiment is now, once again underway. I have noticed that there has been a gradual amassing of various "product" occurring in my house. And, as I am prone to do in times of great stress, I am avoiding studying for the general exams in lieu of non-productive hanging out, or, in this case....random blogging. I don't know that I will last for nearly a month with this round or ingredients, but I am absolutely willing to try. As the rules have stated--only fresh milk and fruit can be purchased although, I might, in the spirit of proper nutrition, allow for vegetables. We'll have to see how desperate this endeavor gets.

Bring on the Bulgar wheat and the rice wine vinegar!!

The End

And with the purchase of a loaf of bread (that has been discontinued for 5 months and then they brought it back, so it was really a no brainer) the pantry experiment has come to a close. I do believe that I was able to last a little under a month. I ate some good things, I ate some not so good things and I learned quite a bit about myself. Thanks for all that chimed in and gave me some great advice :)

And remember: always peel your bananas before you freeze them :)

5 Tips and The Master List

What have I learned from this experience:

1. If you don't have it in the house already, you probably can make do with something as a substitute to get by.

2. If it looks interesting in the grocery store and you want to be adventurous, put it back and go out for dinner. That way you don't wind up with boxes of "create-your-own-pad-thai", rice wine vinegar, teriyaki pork glaze and almond butter that you really don't know what to do with.

3. Rachel Ray, Ina Garten, Paula Dean and Bobby Flay make it look easy. It's their job. Chances are, if you are trying to recreate something that they did that "doesn't look that hard", it probably is and you should just go out.

4. That being said, who cares what Rachel Ray, Ina Garten, Paula Dean and Bobby Flay are doing? Do you're own thing! Chances are it will come out better if you put what YOU like in your own food.

5. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever.....EVER eat something that expired almost three years ago. Unless you have pepto-bismal, mylanta and are willing to pull an all-nighter.

Here is the master list although I am pretty sure that I am going grocery shopping this week. I need variety!

What I have left:
Freezer
- chicken breast
-chicken wings
-3 racks of ribs
-frozen tomatoes
-3 loaves of whole grain bread
-1 loaf of french bread
-frozen mango and strawberries,
-liqueur (yeah, me)
-Green beans, broccoli, cauliflower
- frozen wontons (where did that come from?)
- frozen scallions
- cheese
- pie crust

Pantry
flour
sugar
brown sugar
raisans
cashews
walnuts
oatmeal
pancake mix
cocoa powder
cheerios (2 boxes)
Kashi
Cornflakes
mushroom soup
chicken soup
canned tomatoes
a crap load of canned beans (ew)
balsamic glaze
rice wine vinegar
bbq sauce
ketchup
rice
rice noodles
create-your-own-pad-thai
onions
flax seed
pizza dough
bread crumbs
couscous
olive oil
honey
tea
17 cans of tuna
soy sauce
cornbread
canned corn
almond paste??
dried apricots
every spice under the sun

Fridge 
More tuna
eggs
milk
cole slaw
cranberry sauce
garlic
mylanta
ketchup
butter
italian dressing
orange, plum, peach
maple syrup
beer
salsa
pickles mayo

Attack of the 2008

So I guess I just keep stuff?

I unearthed this box of drinking chocolate from the back of the pantry yesterday and I got really excited because, hello, it's drinking chocolate and that's always tasty.

So I dropped some into a cup and just sort of mixed it will milk and nuked it in the microwave. I drank it all up...and it was really tasty with the exception of a little bit of chocolate clumping where it didn't melt. So I finish it and go over to the trash just to see what the directions say about how to actually make it

And right below the instructions was this little gem of a statement:

"Best if use by August 2008"

I...am SUCH a loser hahaha

But I am not dead yet...so that's always good.

(Upon closer thought I recalled that I actually got that box at Christmas...2008)

Guinea Pigs

No, I didn't eat them. I did have one over for dinner. His name was Antuan and he gave me two thumbs up on my slow cooked pulled pork made from pantry items.

Last night, I decided that I was going to make this pork shoulder, slow cooked, so that it could be a low maintenance dish. Previously, I have slow cooked chicken and beef and I know how to make bbq sauce for a beef recipe. I had to improvise with pork.

I used: salt, pepper, red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, ketchup, garlic, cumin, chili powder, vegetable broth, cinnamon and brown sugar. Basically everything and the kitchen sink.

I marinated this overnight and threw it in the pot this morning on the way out the door at 7:00. Fast forward 10 hours...delicious, fall-off-the-bone pork.

The real improvisation? I made the berry cake thing out of crap that I threw together in the pantry. Including applesauce, which I found is a nice solution to oil, which I have been out of since before this challenge started. I added the requisite flour, eggs, sugar, vanilla, whatever and I baked it. I did forget to measure some ingredients and the cake kind of came out uncake-like. More like a breakfast bread, which works well because I am almost out of smoothies and patience for that blender.

All in all, a good night, although now I have depleted a major meat component from the freezer. I am sensing the beginning of the end....

I...am not a Crook

So I was standing there today in Wal-Mart holding the package of mushrooms and I was fighting and fighting to put them back. And I thought to myself, "Just put them back. Do the stupid experiment the right way no matter how much tastier fresh mushrooms would be".

And?

I put them back.

Why?

Because I...am not a crook.....or a liar, or a cheater, or a false blog maker-upper...that would be lying :( (Boo liars)

Fast forward 30 minutes. I am standing over a crock pot about to dump in canned corn and canned mushrooms.  And I almost didn't do it because the mushrooms were sort of slimy and the corn was swimming in corn juice and all that. But I dumped them in because I needed a vegetable.

And it was damned tasty.

This meal was the pinnacle (epitome?) of this challenge. Canned corn, canned mushrooms, canned cream of mushroom soup, chicken and....guess what? Remember that nasty rice from the pouch from at least over a week ago that was horrid? That went in there too and you know what? It wasn't actually as horrid as I thought.

Score one for the crock pot and the pantry experiment. AND leftover lunch and dinner tomorrow :)