What's in the fridge?

Can I just tell you what I packed in my backpack for lunch yesterday?

Popcorn. A bag of microwave popcorn, and a very large water bottle to fill in the gaps.

You see, apparently if you skip work all of Christmas break... you don't get paid all of January. Wierd. But thanks to a very timely visit from my parents along with generous dinners from our Grandmas, we successfully made it all the way through the month and to the first day of February on only one Costco trip! Well successfully might be debatable. Popcorn for lunch isn't exactly what I would call a success. And I did have to start getting creative. I had planned out about two weeks worth of dinners but by the third week of January I was really struggling and thus developed my newest cooking tactic.

Google anything you find in the fridge/freezer and make a meal out of it.

Good idea right?? Well....let's just say last week's "salmon and bacon" search did yield results and I did try the recipe. I won't be sharing that with you. But by Monday we were down to "frozen chicken and orange juice concentrate". Turns out that was a much better combo! We loved it, and even if you have other options I promise you will too!

Easy Orange Chicken

Ingredients:
3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts-cut into bite sized pieces
flour
salt
pepper
oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 green onions, chopped
3 Tbs. Soy sauce
3 Tbs. orange juice concentrate
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C vinegar

Instructions:

1. Mix flour, salt, and pepper in a large ziplock bag and then coat the chicken by shaking it inside the bag.
2. Pour oil ( about 3 Tbs.) in a frying pan and heat until just smoking. Add chicken to the pan in even layers and fry and turn until brown.
3. Remove chicken from the pan and if needed add 1-2 Tbs. of oil to the pan. Saute the minced garlic and green onions until just soft.
4.Add soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, and orange juice concentrate to the pan and heat until bubbling.
5. Pour chicken back into the pan and combine until well coated. Serve over rice.

Yum! Really easy and delicious. I added some cornstarch to the sauce because I wanted it to be thicker but that's just preference. Also, I ended up using garlic powder because I didn't wait for the frying pan to cool off before putting in my minced garlic so I scorched it and was too lazy to mince more. Oops :) I got the recipe here.

Another useful discovery from this past month was the website lovefoodhatewaste.com , you can go and click on an ingredient you have that you are trying to use up and it will generate recipes for you! Just in case you ever forget to work over Christmas break, thought I'd share my tips!

Comments

  1. What a resourceful little wifey you are! You are learning a lot of life lessons, the hard way, just like we did. :) And, thank you for sending my package, got it today and I'm excited to get these stockings finished!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Emma's Chicken...good too
    4 Chicken Breasts
    1 Lipton soup mix
    8 ounces apricot/peach Jam
    3/4 cup catalina dressing

    Mix latter three together and put it over chicken in the crockpot...it's good. Serve over rice or whatever:)

    ReplyDelete

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