I've been going about this challenge by going down to the basement the night before and bringing up a few key ingredients. Last night, I brought up a can of pumpkin, a jar of jelly, and two cans of crab. Sadly, that's a lot of canned stuff, but it is what it is and we need to work with it.
For breakfast, I used the pumpkin to make this delicious Pumpkin Oat Bread from Weight Watchers. I belong to Weight Watchers Online. One of the reasons I really like it is that most of the recipes use real food, not a bunch of doctored up processed chemical junk. The recipe was a big hit, probably due to the fact that it had a fair amount of brown sugar.
Then again, after dinner I found this
so maybe they didn't like it as much as I thought.
Morning snack was what we call a "pantry snack." In our upstairs pantry (which really is a small closet in my kitchen that I stuck a bookshelf in), there is a kid snack bin. We have an Amish-run surplus grocery outlet with excellent deals, especially on organic food. Organic and natural granola bars are 5-8 for 99 cents, depending on the packaging. This past week I got Annie's cheddar bunnies in little pouches, 6 for 35 cents. I don't like the wasteful packaging in individually wrapped snacks, but I do appreciate the convenience, and I can't make granola bars for less. When I buy these, I dump a couple different things in a dishtub on the bottom shelf and the kids can help themselves. We do pantry snacks several times a week. It's also handy if we're going somewhere in the car.
Lunch was my hubby's responsibility since I got a four-hour break today. They had peanut butter and jelly, some on bread and some on stockpiled crackers, along with apple slices and baby carrots. I believe some of the crew also had some pumpkin oat bread from this morning. Our Amish store sells natural and organic peanut butter for $1.69 a jar, and all-fruit for between 50 and 99 cents. The crackers were part of a great deal I got at Target this week.
We were running errands this afternoon, and forgot about snack. Dinner was a little delayed, and so the kids had "mousie nibbles" of apples and cheese while I was making dinner.
Dinner was a bit of a puzzler. Canned crab. I'm not sure what possessed me to buy it in the first place. It was from the "real store" and not the Surplus Outlet, so I must have had it in mind for a recipe. However, at this late date, I have no idea what that recipe would have been.
I decided to toss together casserole, much like last night. Blessedly, my family likes casseroles. I started with a recipe for "Pasta Crab Casserole" from Taste of Home's 2002 Quick Cooking Cookbook that I got back in my hubby's seminary days. AAL (now Thrivent) used to give them away as part of member benefits. Ah, those were the days... but I digress.
Working off this recipe, I combined the cans of crab meat, a box of cooked spiral pasta (79 cents, thank you very much), 1/2 cup plain yogurt because I had no sour cream, 2 teaspoons of salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons of basil, and some pepper. Then I branched out on my own. Taking my mother's advice from my Facebook page this morning, I tossed in some frozen peas. Then I thought it looked kind of bland and added a can of diced organic tomatoes (50 cents). I topped it all with some grated cheddar and cooked it at 350 for 20 minutes.
Voila! Spiral seashore casserole!
The verdict? Two kids liked it, two didn't. Two had thirds, two didn't finish their firsts. This is life in a big family, I guess.
I do realize this isn't optimal eating. We need to eat this stuff, though, or it will all be wasted. Please be assured that we do have homemade whole grain baked goods, lots of fresh fruits and veggies, and plenty of milk and cheese. We're not only eating out of cans.
And you know what? I'm actually kind of enjoying this! I always did like a challenge.
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