Marcaritaville's Blog

Can I just tell you, as soon as you decide you aren’t going to spend any money – THAT? Is when the you know what hits the fan. Promptly after making our decision, my front tooth broke! So off to the dentist to get it fixed. $90 later, I was a whole woman again.

For dinner tonight I was going to make homemade lemon pepper chicken tenders to go on a caesar salad and some left over homemade bread from yesterday. But, I got a message from my hubby telling me how sick he was feeling (him and half the country), and then almost as soon as I got that, my mom called and told me about the fabulous chicken noodle soup she made from the magazine Cooking Light.  Voila – chicken noodle soup it is! I Went through my cupboards and I have all of the ingredients, except for the celery. I am hoping *hint, hint* that my mama will bring me a couple of pieces of her celery. If not, it will be fine without. I got the recipe from mom, and have all of my ingredients out and ready to go:

Chicken Noodle Soup Ingredients and Recipe

I think the best part of this challenge we are doing is that I am finally being forced to cook. For those who have been following me here, you know how much I love to cook. The problem has been that it is so much easier to pay a little extra and buy premade. Not this month. This month we are only making what we have in the house. The other thing I have noticed here right at the beginning, is that I am not wanting anything to go to waste.

This past week, I was able to get a large container of strawberries greatly reduced because they were older. We have eaten some and they are incredible. This afternoon I was looking at them thinking how sad it was that they were going to turn bad before we could use them. This afternoon Barefoot Contessa made strawberry jam on her show and a lightbulb went on! I am sooo making some strawberry jam tonight (or tomorrow morning depending on how energetic I feel later. I have all the ingredients! The Barefoot Contessa also made homemade Brioche – I may have to make that, too!

Simple Strawberry Jam Ingredients

I looked around at my other fruits, and saw that my bananas are a little brown. So tonight I am going to put chopped strawberries and a half banana sliced up into baggies to freeze. I also notice I have some vanilla yogurt that only has a few days left on it – I will flash freeze that in coin sized blops and then add them to the baggies. Instant smoothies for mornings! I guess this challenge is turning into far more than I had initially planned. It is fast becoming a zero waste month.

Are you joining me in my challenge? If you are, I would love to hear from you, and how you are doing!