Three or four {different} meals. One jar.

As I mentioned in the post about the pizza we had this past weekend, when I came here at the end of February,  I brought a couple jars of my dad’s homemade spaghetti sauce.  I used the first one the first week we were in the apartment, but had been saving the second jar.

Over the past several weeks, I have learned a lot about living with refrigeration, making correctly portioned meals, and using the  same ingredients to make new and different meals.  Most of my learning has come through trial and *many* errors.   I would be ashamed to tell how much good food has gone to waste because I failed to use it on time.  I have learned that some things must be used immediately {like milk}  but other things can last a couple more days {like chicken broth}.  For example, if I buy milk for a baking, I know I am only going to use a cup or two of the one liter package, so I also plan to make Chai Tea Lattes as a special treat when Rafa comes home from work. 

So when it came to the final jar of precious spaghetti sauce, I knew I wanted to use it well, but having spaghetti five days in a row did not sound appealing.  Here’s how it’s gone thus far: 

• Friday:  Spaghetti with ground pork added to the sauce and severed over  pasta shells with a side of garlic bread.  There was a little left over, so Rafa had it as a side to his eggs that night for dinner. 
• Saturday/Sunday:  the pizza. 
• Tuesday {it would have been Monday but something else came up}:  I made a version of a recipe a friend gave me at one of my wedding showers.  It included strips of onions and peppers mixed in with the sauce, then poured over chunks of chicken and baked.  Rafa came home, looked around for what we were going to eat, and I told him to look in the over. (when I first started cooking for him, he was skeptical about the oven.  his mom, after all, uses her oven as a pantry and cooks solely on the stovetop.  Rafa, however, has been converted! :)  He said it smelled great, but I was still a bit hesitant, because I had to deviate from the original recipe quite a bit.  We both liked it, and Rafa so much so that when he got a call from work and had to leave quickly, he told me to save the little that was still left on his plate. 
• Wednesday: A little and this and a little of that.   Chicken broth {from yesterday's chicken}  with a couple quesadillas  {with the leftover cheese from the pizza that I kept in my suegra’s fridge}  on the side. Chicken Bake {leftover from yesterday} sandwiches.   I also pressure cooked some black beans that we will use for different things over the next several days and made agua fresca out of the few oranges we had left. We also have peanut-butter oatmeal cookies, but those will be gone quickly through sharing ;)  If there is any chicken left, we will use it to make tacos for supper.  Then that should be the end of the spaghetti sauce. 

So there you have it.  Nothing spectacular, but we have had good, fresh, filling food to fill our tummies.  And nothing has gone bad this week….that’s a plus!   Being the head cook at our house has been a challenging and fun {sometimes disappointing and stinky} experience thus far. It has taught me just how blessed we are and how to use our resources better.  It’s a process, but one I’m enjoying.   It’s a job I will be keeping!