Spring Cleaning of my Pantry & Fridge

Today I was out all day running errands & picking up produce. I made the mistake of purchasing those premade muffin mixes (65cents each) because they were on sale and I hadn't bought them in years as I always bake from scratch. I usually cringe at the chemicals found in cake & muffin mixes and always shy away from them. But for 65cents I thought...sure why not? I haven't used eggs in years for baking and have never had issues. When I used the muffin mix, I used my usual egg replacer and did the rest as per the instructions. I ended up with 6 gooey-ish tiny flat muffins...yikes. They don't taste too bad but now I'll have to give the mixes to friends who eat eggs. Might work out better, maybe the chemicals work with the egg. haha! I should have known better..live and learn! I never have flat muffins when I bake from scratch, so I'm not sure why this happened.
 

Right now my kitchen is a bit of a disaster. I had at least 100 spices in there, some from years ago and some in bags I had bought in Morrocco and Spain last year. I cleaned them out, threw out the old sketchy ones and now the spice shelf looks normal again though I still have at least 50 spices left! :) I do love my spices! 

After cleaning the spices, I decided to take a look in my pantry, freezer and fridge to see what I should use up. I took out some older frozen bread that had gone stale (which is why i had frozen it) and will make some french toast with it in the morning. I ran out of soymilk but always keep powder on hand, so I made a fresh batch today and will use that for the french toast. I can't wait! I also ran out of maple syrup which isn't good. I can't seem to eat that fake stuff but might have to make a batch of the sugar/maple flavouring kind tomorrow so I can eat the french toast. I might also use the "Miel de Cane" which is a honey like molasses tasting syrup from Spain that I bought last year. It has lots of iron so that could be an option too.

I discovered a master mix which I had made before Christmas. I had 2 cups left which wasnt enough for some of the recipes I had but ended up making some muffins and improvising. I added two small ripe bananas I had on the counter, a little vanila & frozen blueberries. WOW! Turned out amazing, so much better than the crappy mix! :)

I saw that I had an incredible amount of lentils on hand and made some Ethiopian lentils in the crockpot. The recipe is on this website so if you look up Ethiopian it's there. The kitchen smells delicious, much like the Ethiopian Restaurant I used to go to. So now I have some meals for awhile! 

I also discovered some frozen peas I had which had been there awhile. I don't use peas alot and had probably purchased them for a specific recipe. I took them out and made some pea soup for my friend as I am not a huge soup eater when the weather starts warming up. Here is my recipe:

PEA SOUP (using frozen peas)

2 cups of frozen peas

4 cups veggie broth or water

Several dashes of thyme, rosemary and mint

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp salt

1 carrot (diced)

1 stalk of celery (diced)

1/2 cup instant mashed potatoes (or one small potato) - i find this makes soup much creamier

Throw everything in a pot and boil for about 10 minutes till veggies are tender. Blend with a hand blender, then add instant mashed potatoes and blend again. If using real potato, add with other veggies. Season with some pepper!

This turned out pretty nice and creamy. I stored the soup in 3 containers and will give this to my student friend who rarely has time to cook these days so his diet hasn't been great. He could use the healthy food!

I don't know what was wrong with me today, but I bought a gigantic box of Golden Grahams cereal which was on sale. I used to eat them when I was younger and loved them. I made the mistake of going to the store when I was hungry too (same time I bought that muffin mix!). I rarely buy cereal because a lot of it is filled with sugar, but I had a bowl and BOY was it good! I fear I will eat the whole box in no time and don't want to do that, so I will make some Golden Graham Smores treats for work. It'll use 6 cups of the stuff and I'll be able to use the leftover marshmallows I had bought when I made homemade hot chocolate for friends for the holidays. Marshmallows are not vegan (they are made with either pig or cow gelatin...eeek) so I won't use them myself anyway. This will be a perfect way to dispose of some of that sugary cereal and finish of the marshmallows. yay!

I'll continue my kitchen pantry cleaning tomorrow and probably cook and bake more. I have so much more food that I thought, so perhaps you might want to look around your kitchen before you go grocery shopping, you'd be surprised what you'll find. I can probably live off what's in there for a month. Really!

PS: Posting on both blogs now, so if you see duplicate content that's why. The postings are different though but could have some of the same content. :)

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