Using What I Have Journal Entry #21/What I Ate in a Day #54

What you probably see as the featured image in this post is not the prettiest one here. In fact, it probably won't encourage you to click at all. If you made it here, I welcome you! You are a true fan.

I've mentioned that one of the ways I'm managing my mental state around the cost of food is only going to do my main grocery stock up trips every 6 weeks, with the occasional trip to a local, tiny health food store for just a thing or two. As I refine this system, I'm starting to prepare my kitchen better for that huge shopping trip by deliberately using everything I can in the fridge and freezer the day before. So here is one of those Saturdays.

The other thing you need to know is that I food prep when I cook normal meals, so I'll end up with leftovers, and you'll see here a few meals that made enough food for a few more meals. I probably could have managed another week without shopping without it being a huge deal, but I also don't feel comfortable having nothing left, so I will shop when I still have a few days of food left. Maybe I'd stop doing that if I didn't have a job, but it eases stress knowing I don't have too run to the store. Your mileage may vary.

First, I had a few things in the freezer to use for breakfast: Some marble rye bread and some Beyond sausage links. I toasted the bread and spread one with Earth Balance and the end of a jar of strawberry preserves. I spread the other with some "Bitchin" sauce that was on sale at the health food store. (The health food store has some amazing sales, and I guess that means I'm not as disciplined as I could be with what I get there, but that's one of the reasons I increased my food budget. I need to be able to get treats like that sometimes.) With my toasts and sausage, I had a glass of juice. This is the Smart Juice Antioxidant Force juice, which includes a mixture of not-very-sweet fruit and vegetables, which I've mixed with orange juice. Although I didn't finish off the bottle of orange juice or of the Smart Juice, I did finish off the bread, the sausage, and a jar of jam--all quite successful!

I did not photograph my morning snacks. I had crackers with more Bitchin sauce, though, some dark chocolate, and some Zevia caffeine-free cola.

When it was time to prep lunch, I gathered a bunch of things and came up with something that seemed very intentional. 

There was a head of romaine that I trimmed a bit to salvage (the outer leaves had to go, but the inside was fine), and with that I made a very simple, shredded romaine salad from a recipe from All Recipes. This used up the romaine. 

I had some cabbage, carrots, and tomatoes in the fridge (yes, even after all that time! The grape tomatoes get wrinkly but last longer than you might expect). That was the basis for this rice with cabbage recipe from Cooktoria. I cut the recipe in half and used about a cup and half of chopped grape tomatoes in this, incidentally, since I didn't figure they meant for me to count a grape tomato as "a tomato." I love--love--rice cooked with cabbage, and this did not disappoint. It was absolutely perfect. It also used up the green cabbage. I still have carrots, but carrots are virtually non-perishable in the fridge, so that's fine. And I used up about half of the grape tomatoes.

Finally, I made a very easy, no-need-for-the-oven blackened tofu from a recipe from Plant Based Jess. It was really good! I would have liked it better if it had been baked, probably, but it's not oven season.

As an afternoon snack, not pictured, I had the rest of a carton of vanilla non-dairy ice cream with an Olipop root beer to for a root beer float, which was also delicious, and a graham cracker spread with pistachio cream.

I knew I needed to use up t he rest of those grape tomatoes, and I also had one roasted red pepper in a jar in the fridge, so that was the basis for this pasta. It had garlic, tomatoes, roasted red pepper, corn, and non-dairy Parmesan with protein-boosted angel hair. I also used the end of a bag of frozen broccoli florets and some onions sauteed with bell pepper as sides. (Bell peppers don't look great after a month or so in the fridge, but if you cook them they're fine, so long as they don't get black spots or mold or anything, which mine tend not to--they just wrinkle up like the aforementioned tomatoes.)

This wasn't quite as good as lunch, but it was fine. I do love pasta!

Not pictured, I took my usual supplements, which now includes rather a lot of stuff. So rather than listing them all, I'll just encourage you to make sure you get what you need. Vegans need to supplement with B12, as I understand it. (I am not a medical doctor; this is not medical advice.) And you may need other things. With as weird as my immune system has been, I need rather a lot of anti-inflammatories; if I do talk about that, it'll be in another post.

So that's another day of food, that left me with a fridge ready to get some fresh produce in it and my freezer ready to accept a few new offerings.

This method may not be suited for everyone, but focusing as much as I can on clearing the fridge before I add more to it has really helped me keep from accumulating too much. And it's fun! And often delicious!