Foraging

Haven't been doing a lot of real cooking lately... lots of throw together meals instead like Grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup and the like. The other night I grilled some chicken breasts and served it with some leftover spanish rice with vegetables and threw some mole sauce that Alejandra had made on it. This has been the extent of my creativity lately.

Last night I realized that today was the day that a large crowd was descending upon my house for lunch and not only had I not planned a menu, I had not shopped recently and with DH out of town and it being past the kids bedtime, shopping was not an option. I decided that this meant it was time to forage in my fridge, freezer and pantry to assemble meal.

My first thought was falafel. I knew I had some pre-made and was hoping I had 2 boxes worth. Some cukes, tomatoes and some yogurt thrown on some homemade pita and the meal would be done. Sadly I did not have 2 boxes. Plan B, falafel and chicken? No the falafel plan just needed to end. And not enough chicken for everyone either. Beans? No. Cheese? apparently don't have that either. Go to the store and buy sandwich ingredients? Agh too expensive. Survey fridge contents... head of lettuce, head of cabbage, plethora of beets (sigh), a lemon that had seen better days, potatoes, shallots, cuke, mushroom,s fresh basil, small sweet peppers and a handful of carrots.... thinking....

I decided on greek salad and thought I could make some pita bread to go with it. After more thought I decided that a roasted vegetable pizza would be a good accompaniment, forget the pita. Then I decided that I needed more food and that I would make some foccaccia bread to accompany all of this. Then I remembered that I had grilled vegetable lasagna in the freezer and I took a calming deep breath and dug those out. So in the end our meal was:

Lettuce, cuke and tomato greek salad with some olive oil mixed with balsamic and vinegar
A roasted vegetable salad with potatoes, shallot, mushrooms and sweet peppers (scrapped the pizza idea)
Foccaccia bread with fresh basil
Vegetable lasagna

As usual I made too much food and there are tonnes of leftovers.