Being an Iron Chef at Home

Are you trying to tighten your belt and keep your expenses down? Geez, aren't we all to some extent this year? With the economic downturn, we are more often choosing to stay home instead of running to our favorite eateries. Even so, groceries are not cheap...

I have found a way to make the whole "I'm eating in to save money" thing a bit more fun. I created my own personal Iron Chef challenge at home. For those of you not familiar, "Iron Chef" is a television show where the chefs compete to cook several dishes from a mystery ingredient with a time limit.

So, here's how I modified the show concept to make eating at home a bit more adventurous:

Each week I pick some old foodstuff that's been hanging around and find a new way to use it up -- sometimes I can even incorporate more than one thing, for example, white chocolate chips and dried cranberries which made their way into some awesome cookies...click here for the recipe.

Just to give you an idea as to what I was faced with one week -- here's a picture of what was in my fridge



Does one person really live here?












So, dig down into your freezer, reach to the back of your pantry closets and see what you can find. Google recipes for your ingredient(s) and see what your opportunities are.

You could even broaden this exercise to turn it into an occassion for getting together with friends where everyone brings their Iron Chef dishes.

Happy Thriftiness!!!

Food & Kisses, GiGi