The Great Freezer Challenge!

The smarty pants here in the house seem to have this idea that I am pretty bad about using up things before I go out and buy more...and they aren´t that subtle about letting me know how they feel either...eh hem....


Now, I will admit that I do buy more then I need and seldom go to the store because my cupboards are bare. This comes from the early days in my marriage where we had NO money...I mean NADA...NUTTIN, INGENTING TING-E-LING! I use to watch the grocery store advertisements come in the mail with great sales; Everything 10 kroner! Buy one get one free! Yet, I couldn´t take advantage of those sales because we had nothing. I don´t regret being poor at that point. I made the sacrifice to be home with the kids and I don´t regret that but it sure made things really difficult financially. As money got better I would take advantage of those sales...whether I needed things or not...just because they were on sale and I could afford it. 


When we moved to our present home, one of the perks was a big walk in fridge with enough room for two families monthly groceries. This is very nice obviously, especially when you are planning for some big occasion that you have all this space, it´s a luxury! However, food gets lost in there....


I´m serious, it goes in...and then it gets forgotten or it gets shoved to the back of the shelves, or hidden under new stuff that comes in....and when you finally grab yourself and say TODAY we will clean out the fridge, you discover all these lovely food items that have gone out of date, turned green, or grown fur...it´s really quite embarrassing to admit this. I´m by no means well to do and I don´t have money to just throw away like that but it´s a bad habit that I don´t usually think about until it´s too late. I also get terribly ashamed every time I read about starving children in Africa. I think they´d probably give anything to spend a day in my fridge and when I end up throwing out food I get so angry with myself for being so thoughtless. 


However, I want to put myself through a challenge now. For an entire week I will attempt to prepare meals using what I have in my freezer and my fridge. I´ll have to buy some more milk through the week because my children drink milk like it´s water...at least the two youngest do. So while we should have a cow permanently stationed in that giant fridge in order to satisfy them, buying the 1.75 liter jugs, which is the biggest milk jugs we can get here in Norway, will have to do. However, otherwise I will challenge myself to use what we have here in order to make our dinners for the next week. Of course I´ll post what I make....maybe we can both learn something this week? I am of course a little leary about making this challenge because I am expecting a busy week and so I´ll have to plan ahead- not really a quality of mine- but I will have to learn! So to start us off, I´m going to share with you the last two meals I have made here...


The first was coconut shrimp. 

Now this was ALMOST as guiltless as the recipe calls for...however, toward the end of the baking in the oven I thought it looked a little dry. So I drizzled one of my many olive oils over ever so lightly and the results was as you see above. I sereved this with pasta and a salad. YUMMY!!!


Sticking with the seafood theme, tonight I made a delicious creamy fish soup This recipe is only in Norwegian so if you don´t have a translation program that works let me know and I will send you the recipe in English :-) I made a few adjustments to this though, when I made the broth, I increased it with almost a half a liter. So this made about 1.2 liters of soup. I also used parsley flakes instead of Kjørvel which when I looked up the translation for this word, I found chervil...which I still had no idea what that was, so I looked up the word and this word chervil is a herb in the parsley family. So I figured I was good if I used parsley. I also used a half a regular onion vs. the leek (purre) and I added one boat of fresh garlic. YUMMY....I also used cod fish and salmon fish and shrimp in this. I was going to make a yummy homemade bread to go with this but I am at the end of the week and totally in a recharge my battery mode which means doing NADA today so I am ready for the week ahead of me. So I grabbed some garlic bread we had in the freezer! (Good girl Amy!!) This soup was fabulous and hit the spot on this grey and drizzly day...

Not sure what we will have tomorrow? Think I´ll have to take a look in the freezer and see what I can find. Stay tuned folks and have all your questions answered; Can she do it? What will she be making? Will it taste good? Will she have enough food in her freezer and fridge so she won´t have to shop for a whole week? Will she be able to last longer then a week? Will the kids like what she makes?....All these questions and some hopefully interesting recipes will be heading your way in the days to come....so hang in there...In the meantime, tell me- are you good about using up all the food in your fridge or freezer before you buy more? What is the scariest thing you´ve found lurking in your fridge or freezer that you totally forgot about???? Leave your answers in the comment form below! 


Until next time my friends.....