Milt

My week without any food purchases was too easy. I knew I had too much on hand. It hasn't been necessary for me to constantly cook because I tend to prepare enough for two or more meals regardless of what I am preparing. I have now prepared, and we have now consumed, a pasta and sausage entree, roasted yellow squash, zucchini bread, stewed apples (intended as a side dish, but it was eaten as a dessert), minestrone soup (from a Kadem package I bought on closeout after the holidays a year ago), and last night's dinner - marinated strip steak, cole slaw (not finished yet), feta mashed potatoes and the ever present relish plate of carrot strips, celery sticks, and until they ran out we had radishes. We ate out more often than usual this week. Usually Sunday noon is our only meal out, but this week we ate out on Thursday evening, attended a chili cookoff at church on Saturday evening (used only on hand ingredients in my entry - bison, bell pepper, onion, seasonings, etc.), and ate out again Sunday noon. Janis had class on Tuesday and Thursday evenings which also reduced how much cooking was done. She goes straight from school (teaching) to school (student) on those days. Her graduate program is now over until January. Tonight we are eating out again - an Interfaith Thanksgiving dinner at Temple Emanu-El. Only 18 meat packages remain in our garage freezer. We may not need to wait until spring to defrost, after all.

I am in, again. I enjoyed and learned from the earlier experience of not shopping for a week. Our pantry, freezer, and refrigerator are always too full. My goal for these past many months has been to reduce the freezer load by not buying more meat. To that end I have been partially successful. My plan has been to only buy the ingredients needed for the week's meals and focus on what is on hand to reduce the volume here at the house. That too has been partially successful. The freezer should be empty by spring and that long overdue defrosting will occur. When I shop at Kroger, Publix, and Trader Joe's I am able to stick to the shopping list fairly well. When I stop at Burger's Market and Big Lots I become the impulse buyer - buying only what I know we will eventually consume, of course. Our pantry seems to be as full as it ever was. I swear I was planning on reducing the amount in the pantry, but I have prepared for the colder weather and the chili, stew, and soup recipes that I know we will enjoy. That also means that I really don't need to do any shopping this week - and won't need to do much until some time next year. Our Monday was a typical weekday. I had my oatmeal mix for breakfast and Janis had her cold cereal to eat on her drive to school. For lunch I made my typical two sandwiches (ham and cheese & peanut butter and low calorie blackberry preserves which I picked up at Grandma Hoerner's factory in Alma, Kansas this summer). I had a honeycrisp apple for a snack mid-afternoon. The evening meal was leftover bbq beans and kielbasa, fresh spicy Asian slaw from Cooking Light, some chicken and pasta leftovers from Saturday's restaurant meal, and a plate of fresh carrots, celery, and radishes and I opened a jar of spiced peaches. This morning's breakfast was identical to Monday - and I prepared a new batch of oatmeal since I finished to old batch this morning. Each batch lasts me about three weeks. Of course, I had plenty of oatmeal, dried fruit, etc. already on hand. I won't need to buy more dried fruit until late spring. Janis' lunch is usually a leftover from the refrigerator or a microwaveable soup from the pantry. I keep a few soups and such on hand and she picks whatever she wants each day, The plan for tonight is a turkey wrap recipe from The Complete Cooking Light using ham rather than turkey. The turkey seemed a little bland last week and we still have some fresh spinach which needs to be used. My normal shopping is primarily on Wednesdays. That is the day we seniors get our 5% discount at Kroger and Publix. Trader Joe's is ten miles from home, so I only stop there when I am driving by. Burger's Market and Big Lots are also only visited when I am driving by. This Wednesday will be skipped, except that I will probably buy a turkey. It will need to be defrosted slowly, so I cannot wait until the day before Thanksgiving to buy it. However, we may use the turkey breast tenderloin in the freezer if only our two children are joining us. Everything else on this week's shopping list will wait.

I have continued (with very modest success) to reduce the quantities in the freezer, refrigerator, and pantry. This will be an excellent opportunity to focus once again on reducing what is on hand - and not spend money on food for a week.

Because last in is blocking the view of first in.

Doesn't the Inn at Serenbe also have cooking classes? It seems that I saw an article on line about that recently.

I have continued to participate philosophically, while buying a few items to complete meals. My skills and experience don't allow me to create in the same manner as several of you who are obviously quite knowledgeable and quite accomplished cooks. My challenge is to find recipes which use on hand items rather than those which cause me to buy more stuff. My confidence is such that I can make minor adjustments to recipes, but I still need to pretty well follow a recipe to have a decent dish. There is more space in our refrigerator, pantry, and freezer. I am now able to see most of what is in each - and plan the next meal accordingly. My practice is to decide on a meat (I try to vary from beef to chicken to shrimp to pork to fish, etc.) for the meal and then work on the accompanying dishes. We still are quite heavy on pastas and grains - but the quantity is being reduced. Using fresh vegetables while they are fresh is getting easier because I am keeping less on hand. Another parallel challenge is making more of what we eat from scratch. As a beginning cook, I found it very easy to buy mixes, prepared and semi-prepared foods. Last night's buttermilk biscuits were the best I have done. They can still be improved upon, but all fourteen were consumed (a first) - nothing left for future meals. I still personally prefer Pillsbury's Grands to my own biscuits - but I am going to keep working on my own. Again, space in the refrigerator is saved when several tubes of biscuits are not there. Thank you everyone for your participation in this forum. I have learned, been inspired, and have been motivated. My wife commented that this forum is getting me to do what she has been encouraging me to do for a long time. Unfortunately, she is quite correct. Just the same, she seems to be very happy with the results. Our shopping list (I will shop today because of the weekly 5% seniors discount on Wednesdays at Publix and Kroger) is being kept quite short by only buying the ingredients necessary for a particular meal. My terrible habit, in the past, was to plan too many meals and, therefore, buy too many ingredients. Some of the meals would never get prepared and the pantry ended up with more in it.

I have begun to make a few modest purchases. My goal is to reduce what is on hand and I am not good enough/experienced enough to create meals from my surplus. The purchases are only enough to keep us eating a healthy balanced diet and the appropriate ingredients to use more of what is in the pantry, freezer, etc. Today, for lunch, I finished off Friday's shrimp corn soup and had some of Saturday night's chili along with a couple of South African cookies we received for Christmas 2007. This project caused me to open them one night last week. Soon they will have been finished. Tonight we finished off the chili. I also made a tossed salad, from the salad mixes I had bought Friday at Trader Joe's, and I added a variety of fresh vegetables from the refrigerator. We also finished off two open bags of chips (blue corn and baked potato crisps) and one of the two open containers of dip. Dessert was some of the double chocolate cookies I made last night for my wife to take to a friend who is recovering from surgery. Most, but not all, went to the friend. Finally, we are finishing off various items and the space they were taking is noticeable. We still have a long way to go. Tomorrow's dinner will be pork spare ribs and bbq sauce in the slow cooker. By then I will have also thought of what should be served with the ribs. Our weekly grocery purchases are around $90 per week. We began tracking most of our expenditures on August 1 - so we can better determine how prepared we are for retirement. Before that, I could not have told you how much we were spending. Our average is just over $13 per day. Since we are now consuming more than we are purchasing, we may be able to reduce that daily average some. It will be interesting to see how much of that $13 per day was for surplus purchases, rather than items we would consume immediately.

Tonight we ate most of the leftover shrimp & corn soup that I had made for Friday evening. There is one small bowl left which will be part of my lunch tomorrow, along with some of last night's leftover chili. Tomorrow evening is still being planned, but will include a butternut squash soup. That will take our last squash, our last two potatoes, and the balance of the evaporated milk that I opened for the shrimp & corn soup on Friday. The chicken stock and onion are not in short supply yet. I just finished a batch of a little over four dozen double chocolate cookies. Most of those will go to a dinner that my wife and her fellow teachers are preparing for a teacher who just had surgery. The cookies didn't even make a dent in any of the ingredients used.

The best, in my opinion, is Mi Pilon on Buford Hwy at Mitchell Rd - about a half mile north of Jimmy Carter Blvd. The restaurant is open seven days per week from 11am-8pm serving a variety of dishes from the Dominican Republic from steam tables. Chicken, beef, goat, pork, plantains, rice, and more are almost always available.

Our week of no grocery shopping concluded this morning. Tonight's dinner will include the first newly purchased item since last Friday morning - shrimp for a shrimp and corn soup I have been planning on making for a couple of weeks. It needed to wait until tonight because we were missing the shrimp - which, as the name implies, is critical to the dish. It became very evident, as the week progressed, that we had enough to make only a week of no shopping a fairly easy process. I just got back from buying the shrimp, some milk, and a few other things - but the avoidance of grocery stores will continue for at least another week. We enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables, but the freezer, pantry, and refrigerator are where the overstock is found. I will continue to work on reducing the quantities in all of those areas. Tomorrow evening's potluck meal is already planned from on hand ingredients. Our subdivision's homeowners association is hosting the annual chili cookoff and I have entered mine, which will cook all day in our crock pot while we attend a retreat all afternoon. Chili ingredients are one of the causes of the overstock. Even though I have made chili more often this year than last - it will take a couple more batches to reduce the pantry contents appreciably. The future grocery purchases will be just what is necessary to use what is still here. Hopefully, all that I need is already on hand - but stocking for someday in the future will not happen. Fat Guy, this was a great idea! Thank you for inspiring me to do what already needed to be done. Reading all of the posts, along with viewing the various pictures, helped greatly. Someday, I will have enough experience to look at various ingredients and I will be able to create a dish from them. I'm not there yet, but it could happen.

My habit, in general, is to serve it until it is gone. Occasionally, a very large amount is made with the intention of freezing part for later consumption. When that is done, the wait is usually a month or more. By serving a dish until it has all been consumed, we seldom have a meal entirely of leftovers. One or two new dishes are prepared and one or two leftovers are finished off generally. The food choices change slightly - which generally keeps us from tiring of a particular dish.

I just did a Google search for "tamarind paste recipe" and the first item linked to 424 recipes which include tamarind paste. Surely there is something there which you will find appealing. Good luck on the move. My wife reminded me, when she learned of this project, of how she had worked very creatively to consume all that we had on hand before our moves from Kansas to New Mexico and New Mexico to Georgia.

The exercise is one my wife has encouraged for some time. Now she is pointing out that I will do this for eGullet, but not for "you know who". Unfortunately, she is quite correct. I have been working (very slowly - two steps forward and one back) toward reducing the amount we have on hand. Somehow, this provides a discipline - a time frame - some bond with fellow travelers. It has been interesting to look at the photos posted. Our pantry, freezer, and refrigerator are much less full than some and much more full than others. Last night's dinner was even better than I had anticipated. The Korean-Style Flank Steak was excellent. This was a new recipe that I will definitely be using again. Today's lunch finished off the cucumber salad from last night, and I ate a Nutrisystem dinner entree that my wife didn't want - along with some blue corn chips and fat free onion dip (also items my wife doesn't care for). This is my first day without any bread in the house, so I am eating a much different lunch than I normally have. It also allowed me to take on item off of the pantry shelf. In the past, when I have run out of bread - I have bought another loaf and continued making my sandwiches. Tonight will be leftover flank steak, leftover brussels sprouts, leftover watermelon, and our last two sweet potatoes will be baked. I also made a large batch of cole slaw this morning using most of our cabbage (and all of the rest of our sour cream and mayo). Tomorrow evening we will have dinner at church and on Thursday evening Janis has class so I will eat whatever is still on hand. I made another batch of oatmeal mix this morning. Each batch last me about three weeks - and all of the ingredients were already on hand. The same is true for the cold cereal that Janis eats every morning. No changes or adjustments in our morning routines have been made. We were talking last evening about how easy it has been to not go to the store. Tomorrow is my normal grocery shopping day - and I make quick stops at Trader Joe's in between Wednesdays. The second week will be much more challenging, but right now I want to continue. I think that I will need to buy some bread, milk, and fresh vegetables while endeavoring to continue consuming the great surplus already on hand with meat, pasta, grains, canned goods, etc. My long term goal is to defrost our basement freezer this spring. This was a goal I first set in summer 2007. I almost made it that summer, then when I was down to two packages of meat (and nothing else), I went on a shopping spree - and the rest is history.

My quick recap is that I read of this no shopping challenge on Friday, just after having stopped at Trader Joe's for some bananas. Without any planning, I was committed to using what is on hand. Friday lunch was my normal two sandwiches - lunch meat, lettuce, mustard, and pickles on Sourdough from Trader Joe's plus a peanut butter and currant jelly on the same bread. Friday evening we were invited to a friend's home for dinner so that I could provide some instruction regarding selling on eBay. I brought a blueberry cobbler made with some of the blueberries I recently purchased from The Fresh Market for $.99/pint. I bought a box of twelve pints and froze most of them. Saturday morning, I had my usual bowl of oatmeal from a mix I have been making for several years. A recipe in Taste of Home caught my eye six or seven years ago, and I have been making the recipe ever since - with a few minor adjustments. We then visited the Mercedes dealership where I bought my car in 2000 and viewed the new 2010 Mercedes GLK 350 (what is a 2010 model doing on display in February 2009?) - and ate a variety of pastries which they made available. On our way back home, we picked Janis' car up at the shop where it had been for the past week and then went to the best sandwich shop in Atlanta for lunch - Muss and Turner in Smyrna. Saturday evening we finally ate a meal at home. It consisted of the balance of the chicken and rice casserole I had prepared for Thursday evening, the balance of the carrot sticks I also served on Thursday, a good portion of mediocre seedless watermelon also cut up for Thursday, and I finished the open bag of tortilla chips with some fat free French Onion dip that Janis doesn't like. Dessert was the previously mentioned blueberry cobbler. Sunday morning we left for church with me eating a banana before we left. We snacked enough at church to hold us until we went out for lunch at Bagelicious. Sunday evening found us at Shillings-on-the-Square in Marietta for dinner with two other couples who also have season tickets for Theatre on the Square. We saw "Tales of a Soccer Mom", which was one of the best plays I have seen there in some time. Today, I had my morning oatmeal and Janis had a bowl of cold cereal - as we almost always do. Her lunch is a meal from the freezer (since we had no leftovers, which she prefers to take) and I will repeat my Friday sandwiches. Tonight, I am preparing "Korean-Style Flank Steak" from Complete Cooking Light cookbook, along with Brussels Sprouts Roasted with Bacon and Shallots - from About.com and a Cucumber-and-Tomato Salad from Southern Living 2001 Annual Recipes. As you can see, I am not the accomplished cook that most of you appear to be. I still need a recipe to use what is on hand - or for something where I must buy many of the ingredients. Someday I hope to progress to the point where I, like many of you, can look at several ingredients and prepare something tasty using them - without looking at a recipe. I am getting fairly comfortable with substitutions, but that is as far as it goes. Our dessert this evening will be strawberries and bananas, which will finish off the fresh strawberries while they still look good. That also is the case with the brussels sprouts, cucumber, and tomato. The rest of the week may get a little more challenging, because I am not planning every dish yet. We will have some leftovers tonight and they will be part of tomorrow evening's meal. How much I will need to prepare fresh for tomorrow is yet to be determined. Regardless, we definitely will still have enough food on hand to go well beyond the week. I doubt that the pantry shelves will look much lighter when the week is over.

I'm in! Since I retired, and my wife is still teaching, I have been doing all of the cooking for the past five years. My wife's role has been to point out how much more we have in the freezer, refrigerator, and pantry than needs to be there. I keep saying that I am going to use up what is on hand - then I see a bargain at the store, or something sounds really good for the next meal, or whatever. Actually, I have been reducing the surplus some in the past few weeks, but it isn't very evident yet. My regular grocery shopping day is Wednesday. In this area, Kroger and Publix both offer a 5% discount for seniors on Wednesdays. I stop at Trader Joe's and at local produce markets whenever I am driving by. Without any prior planning, except that on Wednesday I bought a few ingredients to be able to prepare meals which primarily include on hand ingredients, my grocery shopping will cease for a week. I think it will be possible to eat well for a week, or more, without any significant additional purchases. Tonight we are invited out for dinner. In exchange for dinner, I am going to be helping our friends begin selling on eBay - which is what I do, more or less, full time since I retired and closed my retail store. I have been selling my remaining inventory on eBay for just over five years now. Just as with "on hand" groceries, I don't estimate well. I thought I would have all of my inventory sold within two years. Now, we can see how long this food stock actually does last. Tomorrow evening, we will finish the chicken and rice casserole I prepared for last night's dinner.

Was Australian Bakery Cafe the "Aussie" place you visited? Their original location is on the Marietta Square. We have enjoyed our several visits, but have not been to the East Atlanta location. The best source for local suggestions is AtlantaCuisine, but any message board can be very helpful. I mentioned a couple of my favorite bbq places, but there are several much closer for you and your son that are also very good - Rolling Bones and Daddy Dz both come to mind. Is there a particular cuisine you would like to try? Tasty China is one of the best Szechuan restaurants in the nation according to those who can judge such things much better than I.

I have been in metro Atlanta for over 25 years now, and enjoy trying the various bbq offerings around the area. Dreamland in Tuscaloosa is one of my all time favorites. They sells ribs with white bread, chips, and drinks only. The franchises, such as the one in Roswell, offer a much broader menu. I have eaten at the Roswell location several times, but have no plans to return. There is much better bbq - be it pork or beef - to be had. Sam & Dave's BBQ 1 on Lower Roswell Road, Marietta has the best brisket. Their other offerings are all in the very good category. Swallow at the Hollow on Green Street, Roswell is also an excellent choice. They offer live music on weekend evenings. Prompt seating is only possible during off hours. Both places make all of their own sides. Unfortunately, that isn't the case at all bbq establishments.

Last year I read an article in the alumni magazine of Fort Hays State University. It stated that per capita consumption of lamb in the United States is .7 pounds annually. My son's comment was that we are covering a lot of non-lamb eaters because we eat considerably more than that. Several years ago, that son fixed lamb chops for a Valentine's dinner for his girl friend and was surprised to find out that she had never had lamb before. She became a convert that evening. I was raised in the high desert plateau area of northwestern New Mexico. That is sheep country. One year my father bought a calf, a pig, and two lambs at the annual 4-H livestock sale. Mutton stew is a popular dish among the Navajo where it is a traditional breakfast menu item. We have never had trouble finding lamb in our part of Georgia - but it does tend to be expensive. Our Easter dinner was a boneless leg of lamb from Costco. The last of the lamb was used to make some excellent chili. Our consumption of chicken has increased considerably in recent years and our red meat consumption has decreased. If you leave ground meat out of the equation, I am confident that our family eats more lamb than beef - even though I have never kept track of such numbers.

It is great hearing that Beverly's Chicken In The Rough is still around. They had a location between 15th and 16th on May Avenue during my childhood - a block from my grandmother's house. We ate there many times on our visits to OKC. Their chicken was outstanding. Beverly's was mentioned on Roadfood some time ago and several posted very positive memories. I think that May Avenue location has been gone for forty years or more. That says something about how old I am, doesn't it?

Your inquiry interested me, in part, because I was born in Oklahoma City and spent much of my childhood visiting family in OKC. Way back then, I knew of a number of very good places (according to my standards at the time) to eat. Perhaps you need to search on Chowhound instead of eGullet. I did a quick search for "Oklahoma City" and found 368 items. I didn't bother searching for Okla City or OKC - which undoubtedly would provide even more.

Yesterday, I prepared a Chicken Mulligan Stew from an About.com recipe and served it to a group of dinner guests last night. I got so far behind on everything (this is a new experience for me - fixing a complete meal for eight) that I forgot to take any pictures. A 23 ingredient recipe isn't something I generally do, but it turned out to be very good. Having rice, pasta and potatoes in addition to cannelini beans made the dish very interesting.

Last Wednesday evening after dinner I made Cream of Butternut Soup to serve to my bridge group at noon on Thursday. Last fall I had printed out a recipe from Taste of Home and finally tried it. My primary adjustment to the recipe was to use buttermilk, rather than the 1% milk called for in the recipe. Besides getting those two butternut squash off the counter, it tasted really good.

Persevere. Keep cooking, observing, questioning, and asking for help - here, or with friends or co-workers, or relatives. It just depends on who is available and whose judgments you trust. I am 65 years old and dreamed of being an excellent cook the way many children dream of being a great athlete or movie star. This dream began when I was probably thirty years old. I gradually began getting a little experience, but it was infrequent. A few years ago, I began cooking a couple of meals a week on a regular basis. That helped. When I retired and closed my retail store, I began cooking all of the meals at home. My wife still works and although she is an excellent cook, she doesn't get excited about cooking. My cooking successes have increased considerably during the past couple of years. As has been stated several times above - experience counts. I have only thrown out a couple of meals. Most are decent enough to eat - even when they aren't thrilling to eat. Several cookbooks and recipe sites are proving more successful for me than others. My greater successes come from preparing familiar foods, because I can tell when it is too dry, too moist, too sweet, bland, or whatever. Now, I am getting familiar with ways to adjust recipes for our tastes. I don't always include all of the red pepper flakes or all of the chili powder called for in the recipe. Similarly, I have been able to add seasonings to soups and stews or have recognized the need to cook something beyond what the recipe called for - sometimes adding considerably to the cooking time. On occasion now, a family member will ask me to fix something again. That suggests that my skills and abilities are improving. Don't give up! Just keep working at it.

I am reminded of the long gone Della's Spanish Dining Room in my hometown of Farmington, New Mexico. Farmington boomed, due to natural gas drilling, in the 1950s. The 1950 census was about 3,500 and by 1960 it had reached 22,000. Della and her husband originally operated a grocery store from a room at the front of their home. She began serving meals and quickly needed to expand into the family's living room. Eventually, the dining room was added to the restaurant portion and the grocery closed to provide more dining space. Eventually, Della moved from the house and converted the entire establishment to restaurant space. Della's Spanish Dining Room was so named because Della, and many others in northern New Mexico, was descended from the Spanish explorers who came to the area long before Mexico was established. Della provided all the warm sopaipillas and honey the customer wanted. The food was all seasoned with green chiles. She used no red sauce. Has fifty years tempered my memory? I still view her sopaipillas as the best I have ever had. The two restaurants in Old Town Albuquerque were good, but not as good as Della's. Last month, I had sopaipillas at Chef Bernie's in Farmington which were very good - but my memory still has Della's in the top spot.

I stopped going to whole foods in Duluth when they moved away from Satellite Blvd. and the reason stated by Whole food's pres. was to move to more "Affluent Clientele". My money was just not good enough for them. It's ok though, because they are nothing like what Harry's used to be anyways. I personally hated pretty much everything that they made "in house" and served hot on their buffet steamtables. ← I infrequently shop at Harry's now. When Harry Blazer was in charge, I shopped at the Alpharetta store about once every two weeks. Prices are higher and selection much less to my tastes. However, Whole Foods is making a profit and Harry's filed for bankruptcy protection.