Do you want to hear a joke?
Q: How many foodies does it take to create edible food I already paid for once? (This is really, really funny. Hilarious even.)
A: Two and a half.
Okay, pick yourself up off the floor and have a glass of water. All that laughing leaves you gasping, doesn't it?
Now go back to the first sentence, replace "exclamation points" and "I'm starving" with "lame joke that's not even funny" and "I just read a funny blog about dumb people in bookstores" and then come back here. I'll wait.
There. Now it's out of both our systems. On to food. This food, in particular:
This particular dish - Rotini Gratin - is the brainchild of WilliamB, who you heard me mention at the height of the Blogger commenting storm of badness, and who changed my freezer, fridge and pantry inventory from a list of random ingredients to a list of meals.
It's just noodles, caramelized onions, buttery toasted bread crumbs and canned tomatoes. But it is warm, and rich and delicious. We made it twice, and I wish I were eating some right now.
This, not so much. Puff Pastry Chicken Pot Pie was also WilliamB's suggestion, although originally it was meant to be a Tex-Mex version. It was meh, and here's the reason: the chicken was the last from a box of frozen chipotle chicken breasts that my brother passed along to me when he moved. Those chicken breasts sat in my freezer for a disturbingly long time, and I flirted with the idea of throwing them away.
Instead, I rinsed off as much of the "chipotle" as I could, and Mr chopped it up, mixed it up with frozen and fresh vegetables, topped it with gravy and condensed cream of chicken soup, and the puff pastry that I got on sale and with a coupon a few weeks ago.
See? Meh.
Then there was this beautiful thing:
Mmmmm....Quinoa Frittata. Mozzarella, caramalized onions, quinoa, eggs, and spinach.
Yes please.
I'm pretty sure we ate it in maybe seven minutes. And it's So. Easy. Or at least that's what Mr says. What a lazy housewife I've become. (I'm the half in "two and a half", and that's being generous.)
But all this pantry cooking is what's keeping our grocery bill down recently. And it's giving me hope that it will stay down. We'll see.
I leave you with this, proof that Miss is a girl after my own heart:
