Not Bad for Scrounging

So I've been having a bit of fun with our food budget lately. I've started a quest to eat super healthy, but to also keep our food budget as low as possible. Yesterday was payday, but I didn't get to the bank to refresh our food money envelope and I also didn't get to the store so come mid morning I was scrounging for something to put together for lunch. I am super impressed with myself. Check it out.

So I pulled out a recipe for "The Easiest 100% Whole Wheat Bread Ever" from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Book and got that going early this afternoon. This recipe is like a quick bread, so you mix up the dough and throw it in the baking pan, let it rise and pop it in the oven.

Humm, now for the meal. Well, I checked out the pantry and noticed I had a can of garbanzo beans and a can of black beans. I also had a can of some crushed tomatoes. I looked in the fridge and pulled out some random stuff. So I got ready and just went with it.

Scrounging soup: I Sautéed a diced onion and some garlic. When it was nice and sauteed, I added some wine and let it sizzle and cook down (we keep a box of cooking wine in the fridge, I bought it a year ago and it just sits there). I added some oregano and sage that I picked last week at Delaney Farm (our CSA). More sizzle. Then I threw in the two cans of beans plus a half can of kidney beans I had in the fridge. In goes the tomatoes and a box of chicken broth. I tasted it and it was boring so I added several spoonfuls of crushed sun dried tomatoes (packed in oil kind, sits in fridge), and salt and pepper. Yummier. Still lacking. Oooh, I found a bag of spinach that I got from the CSA last week and hadn't used, in that went, along with some handfuls of frozen corn from the freezer. Ummm, just right.

In the end I couldn't believe what I came up with at the end of the pay period. Troy walked in the door and the house smelled like fresh baked bread. There was a sizable pot of soup ready for a post work snack, with some nice whole grain bread.

Crafty Scrounging!