Right now, we’re back east to attend my cousin’s son’s wedding in Pennsylvania.
Incredibly, we have been in San Luis Obispo for just about 2 months now. We have gone from living a month in the hotel to a month in the apartment we are now renting. The owner of our rental has graciously given us the option of storing our extra stuff for the week we will be gone, allowing him to rent it out, and saving us the week’s rental fee.
You may be wondering WHEN we will be moving into our house. So. Are. We. Although it is progressing every day, and looking more each day like the beautiful home we had envisioned, much remains to be done before we will be closing and moving in. Will keep you posted on that one.
Each time we go to check it out (about once a week) we get more and more excited as we watch what was once blueprints, photos and computer generated videos come to life. Most recently my kitchen pendant lights were hung over the island! We agonized over that decision, but, they look as great as I had hoped and imagined, bringing my new kitchen one step closer to a reality.
In the meantime we had to exit the apartment which means not only packing up and storing our belongings, packing what we need for the trip, but also cleaning out the fridge and pantry. Totally.
With this in mind, I have ceased shopping this past week and began the process of trying to make meals out of what is still here. Which wasn’t that much.
This no small fete led to a meal of my favorite Stuffed Peppers the other evening.
With a can of tomatoes, two green peppers, some snack packs of raisins, one lemon, half an onion, some ground chuck, and one bag of brown rice in the larder this wintry dish made perfect sense to me, even if it was a fairly warm day in August!
Feeling like a contestant on “Chopped” I decided to throw in the remainder of a bag of dried apples to sweeten the sauce. Turns out we really liked the additional sweetness they provided. Who knew?
In the last couple of days with what remained in the pantry and fridge I made some pizzas, using up leftover crushed tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, dried oregano, salt and pepper to make the sauce.
A couple of almost stale whole wheat pitas toasted up nicely in the oven, and topped with that quick sauce and a meager bit of mozzarella cheese hanging around…pizza!
My husband couldn’t have been happier when he saw me coming out of the kitchen with a tray of pizzas to snack on! Oh, and mine even had calamata olives on it!
So for dinner the other night I was really getting down to the bottom of the barrel.
Here’s a riddle for you…what can you make with some lettuce, 2 very ripe tomatoes, a can of tuna, 3 leftover roasted small potatoes, a couple of pieces of green pepper, 3 green onions, a bit of celery, hard boiled eggs, a few calamata olives and some home made vinaigrette dressing?
Why, a salade nicoise, of course! Bon Appetite!
