Make Do Monday and "Stone Soup"

 

The neighbor left a gift of squash on our porch this morning

Cottage Living

We should to go to town to pick up supplies. Since my Temporary "no-workus-status", the shopping schedule has gone out the window. When I was working, I would just stop by the grocery store on my way home and pick up the things that we needed. There's just the two of us and our place is rather small so long gone are the days of the "big grocery store run".

It's lunch-dinner time. (we missed lunch, a little early for dinner) We are hungry. We begin to fantasize about different food-stuffs, none of which we have available and we are putting off the "town-run". Generally I like making something out of nothing. It's a challenge. The Bearded one was hankering for something warm and comforting like beef stew. We have no beef and no stewing bits. Please note that we do have tilapia and sweet potatoes but that's getting a little boring, we wanted something else.

I rumaged around and this is what I found to work with:

A pint jar of home canned tomatoes

5 frozen chicken tenderloin pieces

Some Barrillas whole wheat pasta.... Whoops only 6 noodles! who on earth would leave 6 noodles in the box? So scratch the noodles.

A leftover chunk of artisan olive bread leftover from when the gals came to lunch. Nice and crusty.

A one inch cube of parmesan cheese.

An onion

A partial bag of frozen spinach

Garlic puree'

Aha! some Mozzarella cheese, and a little mexican cheese blend too.

Cottage cheese.

At first when I found the pasta I thought easy I will just make some sort of chicken spaghetti. Six noodles was not enough so I had to nix that idea.  I poured the tomato sauce into a pan and added onion, garlic, Italian pizza sauce seasoning from the bulk foods section. Chunked up the chicken and threw that in. Here I added about 2 tablespoons of ketchup just to help the home canned sauce a bit. I let that simmer and reduce till thick and spicy. I mixed some cottage cheese with some garlic pepper and added grated parmesan.  I sliced the olive bread and layed two slices into the bottom of my baking dish and put on half of my chicken tomato mixture. I dolloped the cottage cheese/ parmesan combo over that and added a generous amount of thawed spinach. Sprinkled a little mozzarella on top. I layered 2 more slices of bread, the rest of the chicken mixture and topped with a combo of mozzarella, and a bit of mexican-blend cheese. Tossed it into our toaster-convection oven till all hot and bubbly...

Fresh out of the toaster oven

 

Ready for the taste test

The Guinea pig...

It was a success! Turned out pretty well. We still need to go to town, sometime. Maybe tomorrow...

Before and After

Last February The "Bearded One" took a road trip around the Olympic Peninsula on his V-star Motorcycle. It involved camping. I repeat "February". It seemed like a smart thing to do at the time he recalls...

Before

This is the original photo he took at his campsite next to the Bogashiel River. This is as he remembers it. Very cold and dreary.

After

This is how he saw it in his mind's eye before he actually took the trip.

So I made it so.

A little cropping and a lot of light painting. I think He'll wait till summer to go camping next time. Either that or I will just make up a trip in photoshop. think of the gas he'd save.

Healthy Choices

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hmmm... Pause for Thought

The delightful story of "stone soup" with wonderful illustrations.

Until next time...