Most of us in the US are two weeks into self-isolation, and it sounds like this could go on for at least another couple of weeks, maybe as much as a month.
So I have a question: What’s for Dinner? What do you make that is quick and easy, and you almost always have all of the necessary ingredients on hand or that incorporates leftovers to avoid food waste.
Pantry Challenge
Kind of like a Pantry Challenge, but you can use items out of the fridge and freezer, too. The kind of meal you throw together at the end of the week just before grocery shopping day.
Taco Salad
The other night after a busy day outside doing yard and garden work, I threw together a taco salad that was pretty darned tasty. I heated up a package of frozen cooked ground beef adding my homemade taco seasoning mix to the ground beef, reheated a package of refried beans that I also had in the freezer in another little skillet. Then I opened a can of diced tomatoes and stirred in some of my salsa seasoning mix to make a jar of salsa, and pulled the shredded cheddar cheese and the last of the lettuce from the fridge. Lastly, I grabbed a pack of freezer guacomole.
I layered everything on a bed of chopped Romaine lettuce on our fancy china. It’s a popular pattern, that you may have seen before.
Typically I have a couple of packages of plain flour tortillas in the freezer, that I could have made toasted chips or salad bowls. All I had this time was spinach tortillas and I wasn’t too fond of them to begin with, so I skipped the tortitllas.
Sliced black olives would have been good too. And maybe topped with a dollop of sour cream.
But honestly, it was just as good without the tortilla chips and olives.
So tell me what you would put together. Remember it’s gotta be cheap, quick and easy.
Bloggers, feel free to drop a link to your super easy recipe in the comments as long as it’s along the lines of a Pantry Challenge.
Haphazard Homemaker 
I don’t have any recipe links, but I’m a big fan of dumping stuff on chicken (cream of chicken soup + cheese slices; apple cider + apple jelly; honey + dijon mustard, etc.) and then baking it.
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I love Taco Salad but tonight I used some leftover pork roast, chopped with added Mexican seasonings. I had some white corn tortillas that I warmed in the microwave to soften, put a portion of the pork onto each tortilla, put a little cheddar cheese on top of that, and then I folded it over and deep-fried it. Had to drain it quite well but they were decent with salsa and Frank’s Hot Sauce. It was Taco Tuesday and I didn’t have the normal taco fixings. 30 more days of “shelter-in-place” and hopefully we can get back to living our lives. Things will never be the same for any of us but more so for some than others. š¦ I’ll be glad when this nightmare is over.
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I feel the same way, Deb. We just have to hang in there.
Your dinner sounds awesome! š
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Check out my recipe this coming Saturday which was just that.
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Thanks, Sheree, I’ll be sure to look for it. š
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We do a lot of pasta, beans, rice and tortilla meals. My husband makes bread and I always make sure to have plenty of homemade pasta sauce in jars for the week. We use our crock pot a lot. Here is a menu plan for a couple of days:
Breakfast- Homemade blueberry pancakes. We have huge bags of flour and baking supplies on stock. When we buy fruit in season from the farmer’s markets we freeze them. We have two freezers in our home so we have lots of frozen berries on hand for smoothies, muffins and pancakes. When I make up pancakes there are always extras for the next day as well as dinner if we are having a pancake night which we will do for fun and call it a Denny’s breakfast night with fresh chicken eggs and potatoes and pancakes. Mostly my kids love adding peanut butter to their pancakes.
Lunch- Either pasta, bean burritos, pizza bread. We make our own toastada shells by baking corn tortillas ourselves. You can buy a whole bag of corn tortillas at the dollar store for $1 or a little more at grocery stores, so corn tortillas go a long way. I will bake pasta in the oven and add some cheese. We don’t use up the whole bottle of sauce so the next day on bread we will make veggie pizza bread. I try to add very little cheese (since this is hard to by during shortages). My son loves pepperoni so we have lots frozen that we add when we make his pizza bread. I will add some green beans with tomatoes or a side salad.
Dinner- basically the same as lunch. We will make sandwiches too but that is mostly chicken sandwiches, or tuna. Soups with homemade breads, Hummus with non bread (like a cracker). rice and black beam tacos, all kinds of Italian dishes…can’t spell or remember their names. Veggie burgers and carrot hot dogs. Basically whatever we have a lot of or was on sale.
Snacks- popcorn, apples and peanut butter, oranges (neighbors have trees all around) pickles (have large jars filled with them) and cookies of available. Banana ice cream- we freeze ripe bananas and turn that into ice cream later by blending and adding honey and a little vanilla extract.
Sorry so long, just love sharing ideas. Love this post. I will have to share it with everyone so you can have a whole menu plan out there for us all staying inside. Thank you Robin for doing this, such a kind thing. Have a great week.
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Those are all amazing ideas! I need to jot those down for future reference. The k you so much for sharing. ā¤š
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Very true, Robin. We are getting creative. I don’t like going to the store so much anymore so I try to use what I have at home or the husband likes to get out and about while I do my online thing.
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