Oh my goodness….I have been so slack about raiding my fridge and pantry. And then mr. foodie went shopping and he’s all kinds of fun when he goes grocery shopping because he buys meat and flowers and snacks and ice cream and all kinds of things I’d never buy (except I buy meat). So we spent a bunch of money instead of shopping from ourselves for a few weeks. But lately, I’ve been back at it. Here’s the thing, in my house I need to buy produce and meat in order to even continue with the pantry raid, otherwise we’ll only eat rice and pasta with mustard and jam and that’s just not awesome.

So from the past week or so, here’s how we did:

Sticky Apricot Chicken Thighs with Wild Basmati Rice:

We took some skin on thighs that we’d purchased, sauteed them crispy then took some apricot preserves that’s been in the pantry forever and drizzled in some soy sauce and red pepper, poured it over the thighs while they finished in the pan and let the sauce warm up. I adapted the recipe from Simply Delicious…see it here. The wild basmati rice we polished off and then we added slivered almonds to it. Frozen broccoli is always in my house. So this rounded out the evening. Pretty great meal if I do say so myself.

Poppyseed Chicken Casserole with Sweet Peas:

I’m pretty sure this is the Paula Deen version. I have a recipe that I go by that I can’t attribute to any one person or site. But this tried and true casserole pretty much takes a can of cream of something soup, some sour cream or Greek yogurt, poppy seeds, all mixed up with shredded rotisserie chicken. Take a 1/2 stick of butter, with 3/4 sleeve of crushed ritz and you get what my kids call Ritz Chicken. It’s homey and satisfying and my wee one says, “This tastes like ol’ timey food. You know what kinda food I’m talking about?” And we totally did know. It tastes like a family reunion potluck. And it’s super fast and easy in a pinch. You can find a bazillion different recipes on Pinterest but the best versions have the sour cream and Ritz.

Buffalo Bleu Sausages with Corn and Fancy Green Beans

Alas, sausages never photograph well. But this sausage by Sausage Works (found at Lowes Foods) is fantastic. Most of their sausage is pork but this flavor features chicken sausage so it’s lighter than the norm. We seared it rather than grilled because it was raining outside. Took some Texas Pete Sweet and Spicy wing sauce as drizzle, thawed the rest of the frozen corn, finished some green beans and ….well now I feel like need to go get supplies, lol. Yummy.

Honey & Heat Ribeye Steak with Cauliflower Rice and a side salad:

Had to finally go get some meat for this one. Mr. foodie and I shared a ribeye, finished a bag of cauliflower rice that needed to go (we added some Flavor God Garlic Lover’s seasoning to the rice), finished a head of romaine and simply dressed it with Sunny Italy Dressing, olives and croutons.  I have this Cloister Honey that’s Ghost Pepper flavor and it is outstanding. By no means am I trying to use it up, but it can’t just sit there. So I took some butter, drizzled the honey over that steak for a sweet and spicy kick. I even had some Exceptional Cheddar from Trader Joe’s and drizzled the honey over that too. And I could’ve just had that for dinner, it was that tasty.

Now, my man is traveling to assist with efforts in Baton Rouge this week so I won’t be eating meals that I cook, more like having leftovers from Taco Thursday and having smoothies and such. So stay tuned for next week…hopefully there will be some interesting combinations to use up the fridge and pantry.

Do you have any great pantry purge items? Yes, lasagna counts! Mmmm….lasagna. I have everything for that, except the meat!