For as long as I can remember I've loved being in the kitchen. As a kid I loved to bake, and as I got older I revelled in each new dish I was taught to make.

My parents split when I was young, and we lived with Dad so some of the meals I learned to make are weird to some standards but we enjoyed them. My hubby looked at me like I was absolutely retarded the other day for mixing a little mustard in mashed potatoes. When we were kids Dad used to fry leftover potatoes this way and called them army potatoes. It's not my favorite meal, but when potatoes have become such a staple -- after having WLS I have had a lot of trouble with eating -- potatoes -- and mashed potatoes in particular have become a staple.. and yes, you can get too much of a good thing.. I kid you not!!

What started out as looking for inspiration in making the same old boring meals that I was tired of making, let alone my family being tired of eating I was on a hunt. I wanted to reduce the amount of science experiments growing in my fridge because despite all their promises nobody ever seemed to want that last porkchop, or the french fries they asked me to make for an upcoming after school snack. It was driving me crazy as we'd clean out the fridge every couple of weeks and see bags going out to the trash. I understand from talking to my motherinlaw that only got worse while I was in hospital because hubby would be running back and forth, the girls would grab convenience food --though they are both capable of cooking full meals at their ages -- and when he'd come home they'd be full, or give him grunts and non-answers for what they wanted for dinner. They did takeout a lot and each week we paid to have the garbage man take away the groceries that only weeks before we shelled out good money for.. Make sense? No not really..

Well in my travels I stumbled upon so many interesting tidbits, tricks and things that I found that it ignited a spark of sorts. I found sites devoted to freezer cooking, and frugal-thrifty living, among others.. and while I don't think I'll ever be as committed to the cause as some for finding a second use for everything, I have been inspired regularly on these groups. People associate Frugal and thrifty with being cheap, or broke and in reality it's so much more than that. I prefer to think of it more along the lines of, if I don't throw out $100 in groceries this week, and I plan out our meals then that's $100 in groceries that don't need to be replaced, and also $100 back in our pockets that we can put towards our home modifications, our garden, or whatever we choose.. I consider it more of a challenge.

It's the same with clothing.. by going to thrift stores, and buying brand named items without the huge price tags a couple of times a year I only need to buy shoes, underwear, socks, and then you don't mind splurging here and there for a new outfit because it's a TREAT not a have to.. but I digress..

I had no idea that leftover rice could be frozen! When you make fried rice you're supposed to use cold rice anyhow. This was a tidbit I picked up from a hospital room-mate at one point. I never thought about freezing brocolli either, and hubby buys HUGE bags of it from Costco that unless we were bunnies we could never finish it all before it spoils. Some of the girls were talking about Garbage soup, or leftover soup where you take a container and put it int he freezer and put all your leftover vegies from meals in it, when the jar is full you make soup. Some mix meat in with it, but I am not crazy about the idea of mixing several meats in one soup.. though it might be alright, I tend to do chicken with chicken, or beef with beef, and not mix that around..

So a leftover porkchop might get cut up and put in a freezer bag labeled for the next soup, leftover ham from a family dinner was repurposed into omelletes, sandwiches, and I even had enough leftover to dice up a few cups and make a really nice bean and ham soup. A little leftover meat from having had tacos became spaghetti sauce, nachos, and a few after school pizza's built on tortilla shells.. We normally do plain hamburger as well as some with taco sauce since only half of the family like the sauce so there's usually a fair bit left over afterwards.

I've been reading about ladies who take 2 of those store bought already cooked chickens and make 4-6 meals out of them for families of 5.. Wow. We make one for our family of 5, and there's never enough. So I what I've started doing now is buying 2, We take what we're going to have for dinner, and then I save the carcasses for soup broth, a few sandwiches usually come out of it, and then what's left becomes part of the soup. So for roughly $14 (CDN) we get a couple of meals, plus soup for the freezer, and some lunches. Some of the gals split them up into 1-2 cup portions and freeze them like that for quesadillas, and such and that's how it goes so far, but I don't normally go that route.. there are a lot of ideas out there..

I started keeping the tops and bottoms of celery that we'd normally have tossed into the composter, and washed it to freeze it. Now when I'm making broth, I'm not using a whole celery heart that has to be thrown away after the stock is made. I still have the part that everyone wants to eat in the fridge all prepped and ready to go, and and the inch or so from the tops, and couple of inches from the bottom are also put to good use, when before they would have just gone to waste.. it's the little things like that, that I get most excited about. My hubby just shakes his head at me because I seem to be having so much fun with all of this.. but he's admitted that it's a good thing

I've made it somewhat of a new years challenge and I've been having a blast trying to come up with new ways to use things up. It's funny though, now that I've started planning a little more, and thinking ahead to what leftovers might become, I'm finding I'm only cooking bigger meals a couple of times a week, the rest of the time is pretty much a reheat and go.. I'm always amazed at how much simpler it's become and so much of it was common sense that was already there all this time.. LOL

If you're still with me, and not sleeping thanks! <Grin> As mentioned in a previously I tend to be somewhat of a chatterbox, particularly when the muse and inspiration inspire me. Lately Home is where it's at..