What's For Lunch?

Oh my. I've been thinking. A lot. About a lot. Mostly old thoughts that I'm cycling through again. Must be a sign that things are getting back to normal after the baby. One of the things I've been thinking a great deal about is the frugality of our lifestyle. Meaning, it's not frugal enough. I got pretty slack with the arrival of the new baby. He's still in disposable diapers (and so is the 2-yr old Jr Spragus), until he stops pooping every 15 minutes . I've gotten lazy with the laundry -- it's going straight in the dryer because I don't want to take the time to hang it out and get it down again. Apart from the OAMC, I've only been preparing the easiest of meals and throwing out whatever's left in the fridge that I just can't be bothered with.



Really, in my defense, the little one isn't on any kind of schedule yet, and he prefers to eat every 1 - 2 hours. He naps at various times, or sometimes not at all; and he's notorious for being up every hour during the night. So I've been trying to manage everything with a major sleep (and time) deficit.



Nevertheless, I am trying to get back to frugal habits. I recommitted myself today to NOT throwing out any more food. Period. NOT letting stuff sit in the fridge until it's unusable. So, for lunch today, I did a little fridge shopping. I knew I had a half-lettuce in there that was a couple weeks old (it's a Romaine and they do last longer...) and some tomatoes of similar vintage; leftover Dominoes pizza from Friday night; sorta past-it cheese slices; and maybe a couple other things.



Well, the lettuce was unusable, even for lettuce soup (okay, I don't know what lettuce soup would taste like, but I was going to give it a try ). It was only good for the worm buckets. Black. Slimy. Nuh-Uh.



However, I did find the following ingredients to be unappetizing, but usable. 3-day old dried out pizza, 3-week old tomato, and kinda ugly old cheese slices.

Well, I've had worse to work with. Sooooo....what sounds good? How about THIS?:

Yes folks; that's Italian Pizza Egg Casserole. Here's how it works:



Start your oven heating; grease your casserole dish; chop up the pizza into small pieces and chuck them in the dish. In this case there was not enough pizza so I used a few slices of stale hard bread and chucked them in there too. Sprinkle with salt to taste, and about 1/2 tsp of Italian seasoning. Top with cheese slices.

Get out your powdered milk (yep, I know the kids won't drink it, but it's perfect for this recipe!) Use about 1/2 cup milk and mix it with 2 cups water. Stir in 4 beaten eggs, and pour it over the top of the cheese slices and bread mixture.

Now top it all with your yummy (old) tomato slices. Voila, now you have a yummy looking casserole. Well, it even looks like you planned it!

Bake it in a medium-temp oven until it's done (stick a knife into it to test -- the knife should come out clean, except for a little cheese maybe). This was delicious. The older kids ate more than half of it themselves, and Daddy has lunch for tomorrow. (Incidentally, he took a couple of pieces of this same pizza to work with him today and ended up throwing them out. We'll see if he likes the new improved version tomorrow!)



Since I had some stale bread still left over and a hot oven, I made the kids a cheapo treat.

Cinnamon Toast. They gobbled this up too. Oh, and we ate some delicious first-of-the-season plums along with our delicious old lunch.





Bon Appetit!