Pantry Clean-Out

Before each move, our family goes into pantry clean-out mode. Knowing we can't take certain foods with us and not wanting to haul only a few cans of soup, half-empty bags of flour and sugar, or almost-empty boxes of cereal, we're getting creative...and our meals are getting strange. We're only buying the must-haves so we can use the other stuff we need to eat. For example, I just made a chocolate cake with chocolate glaze. This allowed me to use up flour, the rest of the butter, the rest of the vegetable oil, some confectioners sugar, some cake flour, almost all of the cocoa, and so on. Last night we cooked deer sausage that we needed to eat and today I bought hamburger meat so we can use up the last jar of spaghetti sauce, rotel chiles and tomatoes (I add this and the kiddos love it!), and spaghetti. For lunch yesterday the kids had rice pilaf and to that I added extra orzo and feta cheese. They seemed to enjoy it and I finished off the feta and half of the orzo.

I'm trying...my goal is to have only a small box of spices, canned goods, baking items, etc. to carry with us. Not only do we not want to carry a bunch of food items with us, but it feels sooo wrong to dump good food out! Here's a shot of the cake I made this afternoon. It was very tasty, so if you feel like baking, check out the recipe for the cake and glaze. (The links aren't showing up, so if you want the recipe, click on the word cake or glaze.) The kids devoured it and so did I - very small pieces of course!