I’ve been on a mission this summer to accomplish 2 very important feats in the kitchen. The first, avoid turning on the oven as much as possible. With temperatures hitting the 100 degree mark several times a week in our city, I just cannot bring myself to add to the heat by using the oven.
We’ve grilled out a lot and eaten a ton of pasta salads but Matt and I are getting tired of the same dinners every week. The second, reduce our grocery bill as much as possible. That means I’ve been doing a lot of shopping the pantry for the past month.
It’s amazing what I can find stuffed in the pantry if I really take the time to look. I’ve been tinkering around in the kitchen experimenting with different ingredients and combining recipes together to find some new meals and use up the things I’ve found in the pantry.
I recently took one of my favorite vegetarian recipes and tweaked it to include meat and a heavier sauce because it’s next to impossible to convince Matt to eat anything where meat does not feature prominently in the dish. He’s a dedicated carnivore.
I had a bunch of zucchini on hand courtesy of my mom and I found the peas and mushrooms in the pantry as well as the box of thin spaghetti noodles that I bought by mistake instead of the Angel Hair pasta we prefer.
Those were the base of my recipe and I added the sauce and meat to appease the husband and children.
Ingredients:
1 box thin spaghetti noodles
1 jar sliced mushrooms or 1 cup fresh sliced mushrooms
2 zucchinis, diced
1 can sweet peas
2 cups cooked and chopped chicken
1 cup Alfredo sauce
Grated Parmesan
You can see the entire recipe on the Food Lion website. Have you checked out the new Food Lion website yet? I submitted my recipe to the recipe portal– it was so easy to do.
You just name your recipe, add a description, share a photo, and list the ingredients and directions. It literally took me 3 minutes from start to finish to submit my new recipe.
Then I spent an hour clicking around on all the other recipes that other people had submitted. I found some delicious recipes that I plan to try very soon. There are recipes in all kinds of categories, from desserts to side dishes to vegetarian to breakfasts.
The whole Food Lion website is easy to navigate and as a busy mom, I appreciate that feature! There are a lot of recipes already added and I hope you’ll take a few minutes and add one of your own!
I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.