You may have heard about the new diet fad called “Clean Eating“. Maybe it’s not really new, but it’s new to me. I’m under the impression it consists of avoiding all processed and non-organic foods or something like that. And, no diary or alcohol, yikes! We’re considering trying it out, but before we can, we’re going on what we’d like to call the “CleanOUT Eating” diet.
A CleanOUT Eating diet primarily involves eating whatever we have in the house to clean-out all of our cabinets. This is to eliminate the bad, tempting stuff and make room so that we can restock for a weekly meal plan.
Some might say we could toss or give away some of it, but that seems so wasteful since we’re on a tight budget. We WILL use everything, down to the last marshmallow!
We’ve always had very limited cabinet space and no pantry. To remedy this, we’ve already started using the hall linen closet as a pantry and we’ve turned the coat closet into storage for cookie trays and appliances.
Even with these solutions, there’s was no more space for anything new. So, time to CLEANOUT ALL THE CRAP!
This shows you just SOME of the crap we pulled out of our cabinets, not including our freezer, liquor cabinet, and our supply of quickly used stuff (pasta, etc.) Some of this stuff has been sitting around for a while! Exhibit A…
Rob and I grouped up everything we pulled out and brainstormed how we can get everything used and gone within a few weeks.
Here are just a sampling of our ideas…
Stuffed chicken breasts, we’ll be having for a couple of weeks.
Taco night this week.
PB&J on Beer Bread.
Combine into one big batch of tomato sauce for pasta nights.
Beef Stroganoff – just made last night. Was delish!
Chicken marinades?
This has been around since the pregnancy. Crumble and used for breading?
Rob’s taking most of this to work to use as lunches. I claimed the Ramen and Spaghetti O’s for myself.
Brownies?
White chocolate & Walnut oatmeal cookies.
Pumpkin pie?
S’mores
Anyone else see a dessert theme here? Wonder what this is going to do to our waistline.
Mix together to make a nice trail mix for snacks.
Using as coffee creamer.
Tapenade on crackers as an appetizer.
Sides for our chicken dishes over the next couple weeks.
Once all this stuff is gone… we’ll share with you our plan for weekly meals that are healthier (or, at least keep us from eating out, and so in comparison is healthier).
What’s the oldest thing you have in your pantry? What’s the craziest diet you’ve been on?
Hmmmm…this is not getting you off to a good clean eating start! You might want to consider tossing those likely to be rancid nuts. Also, many of those other things could be donated to a local food bank. Google is your friend when researching clean eating!
You are totally right, but this is kind of fun. May throw the nuts though…didn’t know they could go rancid.
Kate, my usual brownies recipe uses cocoa, if you want the recipe. (There’s probably one on the cocoa tin, of course!)
The Libby’s pumpkin stuff is actually pretty healthy stuff, full of fiber and beta carotene! It can be used for pumpkin bread or pumpkin cookies. However, neither uses sweetened condensed milk, sorry.
Yes, I love your recipes. We can always use the milk as creamer like the others.
Great Idea to do. I need to clean a few “items” out as well.
We did something similar when we moved. We tried to use as much as humanly possible so we didn’t have to pack and move it. =) It worked pretty well, although there were still some things we needed to buy. A girl has to have her fruit and milk.
Best of luck!
That’s a perfect idea for moving. Had I done that when I moved out of my apartment, we might not some of this stuff still. Woops!
I was going to say something about the nuts, to the tune of tossing them out pronto! ‘Cause nuts go bad so quickly because of the oils. A tip from some chefs on the Food Network is to put nuts in the freezer so the oils don’t cause them to go rancid.
Good luck on the new diet! Sounds interesting!
So far it’s not going too well. The tomato sauce turned out yucky. The graham crackers were stale. And, we’re tossing the nuts. Starting to think this was a bad idea. But, at least the stuff is finding it’s way out of the cabinets and into our bellies or trashcan.