What’s In My Chopped Basket?

In less than two month we will be in Maine. That means I have got to make the most of my garden until then. I still don’t have ripe tomatoes, but I have had a lot of zucchini, green beans and cucumbers. So I am having to get creative with those.

I have another goal to eat as much out of our freezer and pantry as we can before we go. There is nothing so heart breaking as having the electricity go out while you are away and coming home to a bunch of spoiled frozen food. There is a good trick to know if this happens. You freeze a small plastic container of water and once it is frozen you place a penny on top of the ice. If the freezer ever looses temperature the ice will melt and the penny will sink. You would never know if the food spoiled if the electricity came back on, except that the penny is no longer on top of the ice.

I have all kinds of great things in the freezer, but we often forget about them. Today I took out a big circle of hot Italian sausage. I cooked it up to use in my zucchini creation. I used pesto from the freezer, half a bag of orzo from the pantry and a can of tomatoes. Two onions and some cheese and I have made some kind of zucchini bake. I hope Russ likes it since I made a big pan.

It is going to be an interesting summer of mash up meals. Sometimes the best things I make come from the challenge of using what I have on hand. Like the Food Network Show, Chopped, where the contestants have to make a dish with the disparate ingredients in a random basket I consider this my summer of Chopped.