Food Bank Cooking

I think I am going to do something a little different this week. I am going to try to post meals I have cooked using the items we got from the food bank. Today was pick up day. I'll post all in this thread in the comments and keep the week together so stay tuned.

What are you doing to combat the increase in food? Our family is having a hard time coming up with snacks. We are so use to an afternoon snack. But I just cannot justify the cost of snacks. I have been baking a lot but salty snacks are what we are missing the most. Ideas?

Well, I am at it again. Trying to salvage as much as I can from a product. This is limes from the last produce distribution. There were quite a few in our bags. I zested and juiced them this morning. The zest I will let sit out and dry completely. You can use it as a seasoning in a lot of things. From rice to tea to baked goods. The limes made a whole cup of lime juice. I decided to use it for limeade as a treat for the family on this wintery day. The boost of vitamin c will be a great immune booster. I put the lime peels in a zip lock and will throw that in the freezer. We usually have a simmer pot going this time of year with citrus peels, a cinnamon stick and a few whole allspice berries. It adds moisture in the dry house and makes everything smell so good.

A part of frugal cooking, is to know what you have. Today I cleaned out my pantry. It sure gets messy quick when kids are involved.

I went to the grocery store yesterday. (Yes, even though we utilize the local food bank, we still go to the grocery store for some things.) I was shocked at how much some products were, especially the snack items. I wasn't able to get much. We are just going to have to be creative and make our own snacks. Fruit was also pretty high. Only thing I ended up getting were oranges. We will have to depend on canned fruit for a little while. The butter was just too much too. We will have to wait for a sale.

What Items do you see in your grocery store where the price has gone up drastically?

The end of 2023 has been hard for our home. I feel like this year has been hard for a lot of people. We pulled off Christmas with the grace of God. Honestly if it wasn't for his intercession I don't know how we would have come through.

Our dinner was Lamb leg with Broccoli, carrots, and mashed potatoes. A family member farms lamb and we are blessed to get it at a reasonable price. But everything else on our Christmas table came from the food bank. Our guests had no idea.

For New Year's, we always try to do snack foods all day for NYE. Cheese and crackers, pickles and olives, meatballs. Whatever I can pull out of our pantry and set on the table all day. Well, Life has been busy and we have had to eat most of our convince foods. Even the cheese I do have in the fridge needs to last till we get a refill on our EBT card mid Jan. It doesn't help we have some unkind virus visiting our home currently. So for today we are going to have Baked potatoes, chili, and whatever else I can pull out of my back pocket. We are still going to welcome new beginnings together as a family and cherish every moment.

For NYD, I was hoping I had a ham hiding in our deep freezer, but no luck. We do have some pork roast though. Again, another gift from God. I either got it from the food bank or a really good deal at the grocery. Boiled potatoes, carrots, and cabbage will go along with it just fine. Maybe we will do BLT's for lunch. I do have a bunch of tomatoes from the last produce giveaway I went to.

I hope you are able to make the last day of 2023 a memorable one. God Bless.

In an attempt to use up what we have and not let things go to waste, I decided to clean out my fridge today as I meal planned for the week. My daughter picked out a bag of limes a couple weeks ago from a friend's church to take home. I am zesting the peel to dry and use later. The juice will be used to make refreshing lime aid for the family. I could freeze the lime juice also but my kids really like lemon and limeade. Some leftovers did go to the chickens, but at least they are fed. I also had a basket of older apples. Still good, but not as sweet or crispy. Those went in the crock pot for applesauce snacks for the week. Stay tuned for more frugal food ideas.

Do you have herbs growing in your gardens? How about mint? Do you only harvest what you are going to use at the moment and let the rest shrivel up outside? Harvest all of it!! You can cut mint now and hang it up somewhere to dry. Then pull the dried stems through your fingers to get all the leaves off. Makes the best tea to warm you up. Mint also helps reduce inflammation, relieve sore throat, and helps open your nasal passages. Cold and flu season are around the corner. Make some mint tea. And don't forget those other herbs in the garden.

More on the preserving front. Finally got the Tomato soup all done. 18 pints. Those will warm us up this winter. Still more to do. I need to shred some huge zucchinis, pick our home grown grapes, and find jalapenos to make some salsa. Maybe peach salsa?

Yesterday was busy and slow. I did manage to work on those tomatoes but didn't get too far. Dinner was Taco's. While I was out at Sam's Club (yes, although we utilize the food bank, sometimes you still need to go to the store.) My husband finished cooking up some chicken thighs. I chopped them up with my good strong spatula after they were done and added some taco seasoning. If you don't have taco seasoning, mixing up a concoction from other seasonings is fairly easy. There are a few recipes on the interwebs and you can tweak it how you like. Then a dog in the fridge for sour cream, lettuce, and you can't forget that home made salsa. We also got a can of olives out to make it feel special. Dinner was outside in the yard since our eat-in kitchen is full of canning projects. The taco shells were in our food box last week. Progress on the preserving will be posted later today.

Today is going to be a big preserving day. Why is preserving important to food bank cooking? Well, in order to provide for my family I have to utilize any means available to me. Wether that be low cost means to procure food, no cost means, or growing our own. Some seasons we are in abundance and some seasons we are not. In order to utilize the food we do have to the fullest, we preserve. There are many ways to do this too. You dont always need fancy equipment either. I am going to use this post to show you how you can preserve when you are in a season of bounty.

We went to the food bank this week as well as a produce giveaway. On top of that our garden is producing. It wasn't my best garden this year so I can't really let anything go to waste. My kitchen (and living room to my husband's chagrin) is full of tomatoes, corn, green beans, bell peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, peaches, nectarines, apples, and an abundance of eggs our small flock of chickens has been gifting us. Before this produce goes bad I have to do something with it.

And don't worry, the chickens get plenty of the scraps and produce that goes a little bad in the process. Our food bank tries to give us as much as they can but this sometimes results in giving us produce that is past its prime. That does not go to waste. We give it to our hens who love it. It then turns into food by means of nutritious eggs and fertilizer that produces great gardens.

I will post today's progress in the comments of this thread.

day 4 was enchiladas. It was supposed to be chicken enchiladas but I still had shredded pork and thought to myself why not save me some headache from cooking more chicken. So I added the shredded pork to my crock pot with a home grown jalapenos, a splash of lemon juice, half a cup of water, and some taco seasoning. Used that for the filling of this delicious meal.

A part of living frugally is using what you have. You also do not have to eat canned produce and pasta all the time either. There is room for treats. I was looking for something to add to my crock pot today and came across a half of a bag of mini chocolate chips and 2 half bags of mini marshmallows. Thankfully we had a box of Rice Krispies from the food bank that I was holding on to for just this occasion.

Leftovers are for breakfast too. This was a fried potatoes topped with leftover pulled pork, bbq sauce, and an OE Egg. Delicious!

was not a success today. I wanted to make chicken Parmesan. But I did not have any boneless chicken. So I decided on using drumsticks in chicken Cacciatori. I also used diced tomatoes instead of crushed. The flavor was good. But, oh my, what a pain this meal was. I stirred some pasta in and the drumsticks fell apart. So there was bones, skin, and cartilage mixed into the dish. I had to pick through each spoon full not to get any of it. Also, I think my red peppers released their skins and I had these stringy skins in the dish I had to pick out too. None of the kids liked it. They did manage to pick through and eat the noodles though. So with the veg that was in the sauce, I am going to count that a win.

I realized for day 2 I used my plan for dinner a day early. Oops. But that's okay. I had some apples given to me by a family member from her tree that had begun to get soft. They were still perfectly fine but not the best for snacking apples. I peeled and cut them all up and popped them in the crockpot. On top I spread around a packet of cinnamon frosting that was leftover from some refrigerator cinnamon rolls a few days ago. We made 2 tubes but only used 1 packet of the frosting. I then topped it with some granola that has been hanging around in my pantry and some dollops of butter. Cooked on low for a few hrs while we were at a local event. It was so good. Kids wanted Ice Cream with it too from a recent birthday celebration. We only had chocolate but the kids were happy.

This month I am participating in this year. For the whole month of October I will be making crock pot recipes every day. I will do a breakfast on leftovers day and a dessert on pizza day. This week is tight and I refuse to run to the store for any ingredients. I plan to use the Passionate Penny Pincher Crock Pot recipe cards I am borrowing from a friend. Today though I am using a Campbell's sauce packet for Honey Bourbon Pulled pork. Just pour over a pork roast. The pork roast I got on sale a while ago at GE I believe but we do on occasion get them from the food bank. This pork roast is big enough for about 2 or 3 meals for my family of 7. I didn't have any buns but found an easy recipe for hamburger buns. We only have restaurant packets of sugar right now till I can manage to get some more, but it was enough to activate the yeast. Going to make some frozen mixed veg and some buttered noodles to go along with everything. I will probably make a small salad for everyone who wants one too. This meal turned out pretty darn good!

Thank you to the volunteers and generous donors to our local food bank. This yummy dinner was all provided by them. Happy kiddos and mom.

First cool day. Perfect for some potato soup. We got leeks last week from the food bank and saw it fitting to use some russet potatoes from the produce distribution to make some soup. Added some chopped carrots from the food bank last month. Carrots last a long time in the fridge if you store them properly. Some home made veg broth I canned up last year from scraps of vegetables I saved was added as well. After all the potatoes were cooked I added some heavy cream, a sprinkle of mashed potatoes to thicken it up and seasoned to taste. Cheddar was from a previous food bank as well and frozen till now.

When you have a large family with different tastes, you make both egg salad and tuna for lunch. We nearly always get cans of tuna in our dry goods box. And this week we got eggs!

One of the packages of meat we got from the food bank last week was a big package of hamburgers. The meat was kind of grey but otherwise looked and smelled just fine. I took half of them and chopped them up and made taco meat for a future meal. The rest were grilled up for dinner. I also treated the family to home made french fries from some remaining potatoes we got about a month or so ago. In the right environment potatoes can last quite a long time.

There was a huge bag of biscuits in our food bank haul yesterday and one of my daughters asked for sausage gravy and biscuits. The kids snacked on chocolate muffins while they waited and our breakfast kind of turned into lunch, but we were fed. We had a few eggs we got yesterday break on the way home so while I was putting them away I cracked them into a jar instead of tossing them. We had those with our sausage gravy.

Let's talk frozen potatoes for a minute. Sometimes we get frozen potatoes in our food bank items. I am assuming they were leftover restaurant food. I have yet to be able to make a russet taste good after thawing. Just doesn't work. So those unfortunately go into our compost. Sweet potatoes on the other hand...

This is what we got this week and I was so excited! I defrosted them and portioned the mash into 3 cups. This will allow me to make sweet potato muffins for the family at least 3 times! I was going to make them for breakfast but I remembered we got chocolate muffins at the food bank and I want to eat those first. These baggies will go back in the freezer for future use. I know, re freezing. It will be okay.

Yesterday was our local food bank pick up. Here is most of what we were blessed with. The canned goods are not in these pics . I will post as soon as I go through those boxes.

I want everyone to know that if the skyrocketing prices in the store or at the pump are drastically affecting you or a loved one PLEASE reach out to your local food pantries. This resource is there to help. They WANT to help. I prayed and was so glad I was able to talk a relative into going yesterday for the first time. Do not be ashamed about needing to utilize the food bank. God put us on this earth to help each other by using the gifts we have. Let people help and help in return whenever you can. While I was at the food bank I also dropped off clean old clothing my kids have outgrown as well as a bag of household items. Thankfully our food bank has a clothing giveaway as well as a blessing shack which is like a free garage sale (honestly my kids favorite part).

For dinner last night we baked the Mac n cheese and had the strawberries, grapes, and an apple to go with it. Lots of good meals here so stay tuned!

Dinner on food bank day is stuff that we get that will go bad quickly. Pizza, mango, honeydew, oranges, and an apple. Oh, and a veggie tray was opened.

When you have stale french bread you make a breakfast bake. This is similar to a French toast bake but savory. I put the bread cubes in a baking dish, added sausage and onion that I sauteed on the stove. Seasoned with a season salt and pepper. Then added lots of eggs. I let it sit overnight in the fridge and baked this morning. Once baked through I added cheese to the top and let it melt. Got a thumbs up from the kiddos.

What to do when the food bank gives you ripe bananas? Well, you make a double batch of banana muffins and a banana pudding pie. I had the pudding mix and pie crust in my pantry, both from the food bank, for a while. Now we can have a yummy desert tonight.