The Bitten Word

Cupboard Cleanout: Day 7 -- Tomato and Squash Pot Pie; Bulgur Wheat with Chickpeas; Oatmeal Prune Cookies

Our last full day of the Cupboard Cleanout (we've still got breakfast and lunch on Day 8 to get us back to where we started). Things got a little tougher as our cupboards got emptier.

We were pretty much out of proteins at this point, save for some frozen breakfast sausage links and a couple of ice-covered chicken thighs of questionable provenance. So Day 7 turned out to be a largely vegetarian day.

Lunch was good: stewed chickpeas, black beans and tomatoes served over a bed of bulgur wheat. We added some smoky spice with a couple chiles in adobo.

Dinner was a highlight: We took a big bag of frozen squash and zucchini from our CSA last summer, a couple jars of our home canned tomatoes, an onion and a block of frozen basil, and cooked it all down in a Dutch oven until it was nicely sautéed. Then we topped it with a sheet of puff pastry and baked it for about 25 minutes. Voilà -- a tasty vegetable pot pie!

But the best part of Day 7 was the afternoon treat we made for ourselves: Oatmeal cookies. We didn't have any raisins, so we chopped up some prunes. Hot from the oven and scented with cinnamon and vanilla, these cookies made the Cupboard Cleanout seem like a breeze!

Cupboard Cleanout: Day 6 -- Spaghetti in Clam Sauce; Fudge Pudding with Coconut White Chocolate Macadamia Sauce; Chia-Seed Oatmeal

Six days into this challenge, we decided to do something that was either very smart or very stupid. We decided to host a dinner party.

Okay, not really a dinner party -- we just had our friends Drew and Ralph over for Friday night dinner. We thought it might be a good way to help use up some of the things still lingering in our pantry.

We started things off with sort of an antipasti platter: sliced salami, sunchoke relish on crackers, pickled green beans, and pecans that we'd toasted and tossed in salt and shaved maple sugar. (By the way, the maple sugar we've been using this week has been from that maple cube we mentioned here back in December 2010. Zach's dad surprised us with one as a gift after we mentioned it, but we haven't done a good job of utilizing it until this week.)

The main course was spaghetti in a clam sauce. We had two cans of baby razor clams in the cupboard, a gift from a friend who had been to Spain. We sauteed them briefly with some diced anchovies, a little garlic, oil, white wine, butter and some red pepper flakes. Then we tossed some cooked whole wheat spaghetti noodles into the clam sauce and topped it all with panko.

Drew and Ralph thought it was tasty. Clay thought it was pretty good. Zach, for some reason, thought it was absolutely delicious. The briny clams and salty anchovies, the buttery sauce, the noodles -- for whatever reason, he found that it completely hit the spot.

Dessert was a hodgepodge: sugar-free chocolate fudge pudding topped by a sauce we made using half of a bar of leftover white chocolate that's been sitting in our pantry since who knows when, a can of macadamia nuts, and some shaved coconut. The pudding was, you know, pudding. But we all thought the sauce was really fantastic.

So while we never would have served this food to company had we not been in Cupboard Cleanout mode, we're calling the dinner party a solid success.

Cupboard Cleanout: Day 5 -- Wild Rice with Turkey Sausage, Pecans and Dried Fruits

We've been very much enjoying the Cupboard Cleanout, but this was the first time it really felt like a challenge.

Here's the deal: We had plans to see a play Thursday evening, so we knew we wouldn't be home to cook dinner. Fine. Dinner would be a couple bowls of defrosted Creamy Cauliflower Soup we had frozen last month.

But, lunch. What to do for lunch? In a typical week, we probably would have bought some Lean Cuisines for work. Or, faced with the prospect of nothing at home to take in for lunch, we would have purchased lunch out at a deli or salad bar or something. During the Cupboard Cleanout, though, that's not an option.

So Wednesday night about 9 p.m., we dragged ourselves into the kitchen to see what we could make to take for lunch the next day. We weren't thrilled about the idea of starting a new dish when what we really wanted was to have a beer and watch Modern Family finish this F.D.R. biography we've been reading.

Anyway, we came up with was this Wild Rice with Turkey Sausage and Dried Fruits. And we were very happy with it!

Cupboard Cleanout: Day 4 -- Chinese Black Beans with Tofu; Steamed Broccoli; and Cherry-Cheesecake Pudding

We're midway through our Cupboard Cleanout, and so far it's been pretty terrific. (Although we're also now out of pretty much all the "normal" foods we had in stock, so we're about to enter the Wild Wild West of pantry items.)

This Chinese Black Beans dish is actually something we've been making a lot lately, Cupboard Cleanout Challenge or no. It's loaded with great flavors, it's super quick to cook, it only uses one pan, and it's cheap. And it's filling.  And it's meatless (well, except for the oysters in the oyster sauce).  

What's not to love?

Cupboard Cleanout: Day 3 -- Braised Curry Chicken with Golden Raisins and Peanuts

Three days into our challenge, we've stumbled onto a dish that's already an instant new favorite! (What's that they say about necessity and invention...?)

Yesterday, a reader named Cheryl commented on our post about Day 1 with an idea for how to use up some of the pantry ingredients she saw on our list. Cheryl wrote:

I can well imagine the chicken thighs in a tagine or curry, with onions, carrots and golden raisins, sweet potatoes, too, if they are still there...put it all over couscous or basmati rice. Slow cooking is luscious, especially thighs until they fall off the bone!

We liked Cheryl's idea so much that we went right home and got to cooking!

Our 10,000th Comment!

Just a quick note to mention that last night we received our 10,000th comment on The Bitten Word! We continue to be so grateful to hear from you guys -- we love your comments and your emails. We literally could not do this without you.

The 10k milestone made us wonder about the first comment we ever received, so we went back to our very first recipe post, this Pork Cheek and Black-Eyed Pea Chili. Our very first comment was from "Maybelle's Mom," who wrote to say:

I found this link on the Cleveland Food Board. Would you have any idea where the best place to get pork belly on the east side of Cleveland?

Well, four years later, we still don't know anything about sourcing pork belly on the east side of Cleveland. But we're thankful for Maybelle's Mom, and for everyone else who has shared their thoughts and questions with us.

So what was No. 10,000? It was a short and sweet comment from a reader named Mary Miller, who commented on our original Cupboard Cleanout post to say, simply:

    thanks guys!

No, Mary, thank you! And thanks to all of the rest of you! 

Cupboard Cleanout: Day 2 -- Sweet Potato Soup, Roast Pork with Apple-Cranberry Mostarda, and a Collards and Couscous Salad

On Day 2 of our Clean-Out-the-Cupboard Week, we went to Costco, which is exactly not the kind of place that you want to visit if you're trying to clear the pantry. But we were running errands in the 'burbs with some friends, and they needed to go to Costco, so we tagged along. 

When we announced this week of cooking down the food we already have on hand, we said that we would allow ourselves $15 to spend on items we want for the week. Doing this at a place like Costco has its advantages and disadvantages. In the plus column, prices seem pretty low. But at the same time, you can't get a small amount of anything. Buying proteins was out of the question, because there were only a handful of items we would have wanted for under $15. If we had been at another supermarket, we would have purchased a couple of onions. Here, we had to buy a 5-pound bag. So here's what we purchased:

A gallon of milk: $2.58
A bag of clementines: $6.99
Two bunches of bananas: $2.78
A 5-pound bag of onions: $4.49
Total: $16.84 

So we went over budget by $1.84, but think we did pretty well. This really puts the pressure on, though, for making more out of what we have on hand. If you missed the list of what we have to work with, you can see it yesterday's post. 

What did we cook and eat on Day 2?

A Few Updates: Giveaway Winner, Pins & Comments

First, we selected a random winner this morning for our most recent giveaway. The winner is Jenise, who commented, "It's gotta be Bon Appetit, there just something so wonderful about a piece of fried chicken." Hear hear! Jenise wins a copy of Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London's Ottolenghi. Congratulations! 

Second, like seemingly everyone else on the planet, we've joined the ranks of Pinterest users. If you're there, you can follow us and see things that we find of interest. Spoiler alert: there are a lot of Downton Abbey related pins. (Also, can we please talk about that Christmas special? We're still swooning.) You can also see what others are pinning from The Bitten Word, which is pretty interesting, too. 

Over the weekend, in an effort to make it easier for you to comment, we made some updates to how comments work here on the blog. During the giveaway, several readers wrote to say that they were having trouble commenting, so we removed the "captcha" -- the little box that asks you to input a code. This should make leaving comments much easier. But if you have problems, please let us know. We love hearing from you. 

The photo above is a beautiful little plate of pasta carbonara that we had a few weeks ago in Florida. We snuck down there for a weekend with friends. We're overdue to tell you about that, and about a trip we took to New Orleans a few months ago. We'll do that next week, once our cupboards our bare. 

Speaking of -- we'll have a second post up in a few hours about Day 2 of the Cupboard Cleanout Challenge. See you then. 

Cupboard Cleanout: Day 1 -- Whole Wheat Pasta with Short Rib Ragu

Our grand experiment has begun: One week of eating only the food we already have in our freezer, fridge and pantry.

We started off by making a full inventory of our larder -- all the forgotten pastas, misbegotten pre-made sauces, and truly random ingredients lurking in our cupboard. You can read the whole list after the jump.

For our inaugural cleanout meal Sunday night, we eased ourselves in with a pretty tame dinner. We defrosted some braised short ribs and pearl onions, left over from when we made those Short Rib Pot Pies back in October. We added a little tomato paste, some red wine and some Salsa Lizano to make it a little more saucy, and we threw in some frozen peas to liven it up. We served it over some whole wheat spaghetti noodles.

Day 1 Dinner: Whole Wheat Pasta with Short Rib Ragu
Cupboard Items Used: Frozen leftover short rib filling, frozen peas, spaghetti
Degree of Difficulty: 2 out of 10
Verdict: Delicious! Rich and savory and meaty, this was an excellent way to kick off our Cupboard Cleanout.

Read the full list of all the random stuff we'll be trying to figure out how to use this week, after the jump!

January and February Covers Gallery + Win a Cookbook in Our Latest Giveaway

Here are two things that stuck out to us about the most recent food magazine covers. 

In January, the month of "light" this and "new you" that, Food & Wine placed a nacho burger on its cover. Forget you, diet! 

And in February, none of the 10 magazines we track put chocolate on the cover. Somewhere, St. Valentine is weeping. (As if to make up for it, the March Food Network Magazine just arrived in our mailbox and it's "The Chocolate Issue.") 

There are several covers that we truly loved over the past two months, and you can see them in the gallery below. And we want to know what you think. 

Since we loved the Soba Noodles with Eggplant and Mango from Plenty so much, we decided to give it away here on the blog. It's a beautiful book. Believe us, you need this book. 

Here's how you can win it.