So today was the first day of the Eat from the Pantry Challenge and my own challenge to make all our bread from scratch for the month of January. Today's menu, all from what we already had on hand, included mashed potatoes and gravy, roasted turkey, brown rice casserole, green bean casserole, asparagus Parmesan, cranberry-orange bread, three grain bread, and pumpkin bars.
There's been a lonely bag of cranberries resting in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator since Thanksgiving. Every time I'd see them in there, daring me to make something of them or throw them away, I'd think, "I really need to make cranberry-orange bread." But I never seemed to get around to it. Until today, that is.
Food waste, be damned! We now have three loaves of cranberry-orange bread ready for dinner tonight, breakfast, and for the freezer.
I love this recipe, since it uses half whole wheat flour, yet the bread still moist and delicious.
I boiled up a bunch of brown rice this morning, since it's so handy to have it ready to heat up and use during the week. Unfortunately, I think I used up all but a couple of cups today making this three grain bread and the cheesy-rice casserole for dinner.
This is a great whole grain bread, incorporating brown rice and corn meal, along with white flour. When the kids were little I always baked in in loaf pans, but I really like the look of the ovals. This was Sarah's favorite homemade bread when she was little. She misunderstood my calling it "Three grain rice bread," and forever after it's been known as "Three Blind Mice bread" in our family!
The two pie pumpkins and the acorn squash sitting accusingly on my kitchen counter since September have also met a fitting end today. I finally baked them into a squash puree and made whole grain pumpkin bars for tonight's dessert (and probably tomorrow's breakfast, as well!)
The Eat from the Pantry Challenge gave me the nudge I needed to use what I had on hand, rather than allowing good food to spoil. It never hurts to have a little push to help turn intentions into actions.
1 comment:
You're exactly right and said it so well - there are things that I plan and want to do, it just takes that nudge to make it a reality.
I love making cranberry bread of any kind for my family... and they love eating it :-) And seeing as I too have a lot of cranberries in my freezer, maybe I should make up a loaf?
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