I'm a picky eater and usually just buy the same couple of things to eat for dinner all the time (namely, potatoes!). My husband, on the other hand, likes everything (except beets and sauerkraut). I have been spending some time over this past year and four months of marriage locating recipes that are easy to make and that my husband will love. I've found quite a few winners. The problem is that a lot of recipes call for just a little bit of a fresh produce or dairy item that I buy and then most of it goes to waste.
I'm going to try to get better at locating different recipes that use some of the same vegetables. For example, last week I made a chicken rice casserole dish for my husband that called for fresh celery and onions. Of course, I had to buy a whole bunch of celery even though I only needed 1/4 cup of it!
Determined to not let all of that celery go to waste, on Sunday night I went internet searching for an easy recipe that had celery as an ingredient. I ended up at All Recipes, which seems to be one of the largest databases of free recipes out there (this is not a paid advertisement, by the way!). I was able to do a search by ingredient. I found another casserole dish that looked easy, but it also had chicken in it, so I thought it might be too much like the original dish I had made.
Searching around some more, I came across this Golden Potato Soup recipe. It looked pretty easy, and I definitely already had the potatoes on hand ;) It even calls for onion, so I was able to use more of that up!
I made it tonight, and it was a definite hit. From now on, whenever I make the chicken rice casserole, my husband will know that potato soup will be for dinner a few nights later :)
I really love the idea of grouping recipes together to keep food (and money!) from going to waste. The next time I make a dish that calls for a produce or dairy item that we won't use up, I'm going to go looking for a matching recipe to make later the same week.
Does anyone else do this? Do you have some favorite recipes that you like to "lump" together? I'd love to hear about them (with links if they're online!!!).
ps- Wow! This is my 100th post on Family and Finances. Craziness :)
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Recipe Websites and 100th Post!
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3 comments:
Wow - that doesn't seem possible - happy 100th post!
I totally dig the All Recipes site, but for a different reason - I like that people rate each one, and make comments on ways they tweak each recipe. They get to do all the experimentation I would never take the time to do, and I get to learn from their mistakes! I just recently signed up for an account on the site, so I can create my own "recipe box" - we'll see if that's a worthwhile feature...
Hey Happy 100th!
I love potatoes too but don't have any tried and true good recipes... if you have some you love and want to share feel free to email me. spillingbuckets gmail.
All recipes is good - and so is Recipezaar, both have comments and ratings.
Good point, you guys. I love the comments and ratings, too. In fact, the potato soup recipe I found by listing the search results by rating (it's a 5!).
ladybugblue, let me know if you end up using the account. I usually just print them out for my physical recipe box, but I'd be curious to know if an online one is useful. :)
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