Have you tried this stuff?

I made an interesting Mac & cheese thing couple weeks ago.  I sorta followed "dinner with julie"
I didn't make it in a skillet, and I added leftover chicken instead of bacon.  But it was still interesting....

Then on Friday I was making meatballs ...and didn't really want any spaghetti and was kinda tired of red sauce.  Whattomake....whattomake....?

I had a container of campbells white cream sauce in the pantry and just a couple days before I was reading a meals on wheels fundraising cookbook and noticed a recipe for swedish meatballs.

50+ meatballs
container cambells white sauce
container yoghurt
.....why not

I emptied the white sauce into a pot and then rummaged around in the fridge for something to add volume and spotted a medium container of plain greek yoghurt, so I added it.  Then spotted another container of veg stock ...about 1/3 of a container so in the pot that went.  Some nutmeg - then lea and perrins and finally the meatballs.  ( I gotta add here, that they were some of the best meatballs made to date --- me and the kids kept sampling them as soon as they came out of the oven)   I even added all the brown bits on the parchment paper the meatballs cooked on.

Served them with noodles
Found some pork jelly instead of logenberry

Yummmmm


So Yesterday I picked up 3 more containers of the stuff on sale $1.66 each (when you buy 3 otherwise $2.00 each)  So far I've only seen them at Superstore.  But they might be at others by now.

Yesterday it was "empty the fridge soup" --- or better known as Ina Gartens minestrone... you can find it here, or just google it.  I even used cannellini beans from scratch.  (though they still suck---can't get my taste buds around legumes or pulses or whatever they are officially called)

..cooked up 1/2 a pound of bacon, removed them to bowl after they were done.
..sauted 2 onions, 4 garlic and three celery stalks in the bacon fat and olive oil
..added 4 carrots,
..two containers veg stock
..couple shots of braggs and lea & perrins, and celery salt
..bay leaves
..2 baby zuc's, an almost empty bag of frozen french cut beans, scrunched up into smaller bits
..1/2 bag of pasta that I found in the pantry...small tubular, that I cooked seperate then added to the soup pot just before serving
..couple over ripe roma tomatoes
..and this stuff

rinsed it, spun it, then cut them up with scissors before adding to pot.
..Threw some leftover ham shank from sunday dinner and the bacon into the pot. (was worried the ham wouldn't be a good idea since it had a Dr. Pepper reduction and grainy mustard as a glace..but it was very good in the soup after all)
..found container of squash puree, added it to pot
..chopped up flat leaf parsley
..added a big glob of pesto
..added the cooked pasta
Served with loaf of french bread.  It's only going to get better for today.  But it was very good last night.  The  salad greens really made the soup.  I've never seen it before.  I actually was searching for some baby spinach at the supermarket, but spotted this package instead.  And I grabbed the last one....to the shagrin of two other women standing beside me that were both after the same thing.  Apparently it's very good in smoothies.  But I got the last one.  It will be added to the weekly grocery load for sure.  I really think it made the soup.  And my daughter (has smoothies every morning as she drives to work) added it to her daily breakfast smoothie.

I found a box of oven-ready cannelloni and I have plans to use the salad mix with beef/pork mixture and the campbells white sauce instead of tomato sauce.  Just for something different.