Freezer Failure

The goal for this past week was to live off my freezer and resist all temptation to go to the grocery store. I was part successful – I made it through the week without going to the grocery store, but I didn’t make much of a dent on the freezer stock.

A refresher on the rules: eat only food I already have, and buy only dairy and salad supplies at the grocery store. Take out and restaurant meals were strictly forbidden.

Breakfast was the easiest – yogurt and an English muffin (my local grocery store had a buy one/get one sale on Thomas’s English muffins a few weeks back and I had a package in the freezer).

For the most part, lunch worked out well too. I ate mostly salads that I brought from home and leftover chicken parmesan from last Saturday. I did have one cheat on lunch, but it was totally out of my control and I cannot be held accountable. My boss asked me to have lunch with her on Friday, and I really can’t be expected to tell my boss that I can’t go out to lunch with her because I gave up restaurant meals for the week. Seriously.

Dinner is where things got a little fuzzy. Okay, they got bad. I blew it. Below is my daily recap on how non-foodie like this experiment ended up being.

• Sunday:  I had salad for dinner, a plain old garden salad. It was within the rules, but kind of lame.
  
• Monday:  After having to deal with a particularly bad situation at work, my dinner consisted of a couple Jamesons and Ginger Ale and a bowl of popcorn . Technically, these are all ingredients I had on hand, even though I chose to buy the drinks at a bar instead of coming home and mixing them up myself. But the popcorn was all me.
  
• Tuesday:  I had some lamb kebabs in the freezer, so I decided to make lamb burgers. I chopped the meat up in the food processor, added some lemon juice, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper and formed them into patties. For fun, I threw in a Laughing Cow cheese wedge. Feta would have been better, but I don’t typically have that on hand and even though it wouldn’t have been against the rules for me to buy it since it falls into the dairy group, I was too tired and hungry to go to the store. The burgers sound a lot better than they were. If I had a legitimate grill, they may have been okay. But I only had a cast iron grill pan which needs to be really hot, and it cooked up the outside way faster than the inside. I do prefer my red meat rare, but I finally understood what all the Top Chef judges complain about when the cheftestants undercook the lamb.
  
• Wednesday:  I found veal cutlets in the freezer, and made some veal parmesan with leftover pizza sauce and the extra parmesan cheese from the chicken parm. It was a passable recipe – not great, not bad. The classic “fine.” I learned that this is a dish that best be made right – the chicken parm recipe will be used in the future.
  
• Thursday:  Time for my weekly drinks with Sofia, so dinner consisted of a glass of sauvignon blanc and a bowl of popcorn when I got home. I’m starting to think that popcorn is the food of the Gods.
  
• Friday:  Friday was my big cheat night. I’m not even going to try to hide it – rules were broken left and right. No freezer, no pantry, but instead a fantastic dinner at Grill 23 (both the food and the company). The details of which are not going to be shared at this time. Sorry, folks. I’m keeping this to myself for now.    :)
  
• Saturday:  Penny and I went to Denise’s daughter’s first birthday party, so breakfast consisted of a Fiber One bar in the car on my way to Needham, and lunch consisted of cheese and crackers. I broke down and ordered a pizza for dinner. I was starving, and too damn tired to do anything else about it. If it’s any consolation, the pizza wasn’t very good.

So, while I saved significant money on groceries, I certainly didn’t do much to clean out my freezer or eat a well balanced diet this past week. Oh, well, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

I’m heading to New York for work next week, and while I’m
there the plan is to hit Tom Colicchio’s Craft and
Charlie Palmer’s Aureole. I’m not any disappointments,
but if I do encounter any, I’ll be sure to share them with you.