Eating Down the Pantry

Neal and I declared May "eat down the pantry" month, meaning we are only buying dairy products. We are finishing off the produce and random bits from the cupboards, fridge, and freezer, and we haven't been suffering a bit. Who knew how much we had saved up? Between Meg Kelly from High Meadow Farm keeping us stocked with greens every week and our own little cold frame, we have been eating greens at least twice a day. We're expecting plenty of seasonal produce from the garden and markets staring in June and we want to have room for them.

So far we have tried out:

-"corn pudding" to use up our frozen sweet corn. We've been feeding the extra corn to the chickens and they LOVE it.

-enchiladas with cooked greens, Scallions from meg, leftover mushrooms, carrots, frozen corn, freezer chicken fro the fall, and canned salsa... Yummy

- beet and turnip gratin from Annie's website: leforthomestead.blogspot.com

-pasta with frozen pesto (wish we would have started eating down the fridge earlier because we already have greens in the yard that we could be using.

-asparagus from our CSB farmer.... Delicious 

-pizza with frozen tomatoes and fresh spinach from Meg

-rice and beans with scallions, fresh greens, and frozen corn

-black bean soup... Surprisingly flavorful

-sautéed greens

To date, we have been able to harvest these foods from our garden and cold frame:

~Lettuce

~Radish

~Kale

Meanwhile we have wild harvested:

*dandelions

*lamb's quarters

*red raspberry leaves (for tea)

*stinging nettle

*chickweed

*violets

We could be eating garlic mustard, purslane, and more... But we have so much good food from the CSA and in the freezer that we haven't gotten around to it.

Beet and turnip gratin

Asparagus for breakfast

Cheese kit I received for Christmas from my folks

The kit makes ten batches... So nine more yummy batches left :)

We used milk from Grassway Organics Farm. We'll be returning... So delicious!

Almost 2 quarts of whey and a half pound of queso fresco.

Radishes from the garden. They taste surprisingly good sliced and served with the fresh cheese