Ever look in the fridge and say..."really"?

A little bit of this, a little bit of that.  That's what I was in my fridge when I opened it yesterday, and all I could think was REALLY?  There was a dab of ham, part of an onion, some baby carrots and celery that was getting close to being done for, a bit of cheese.....were these going to go to waste?  I'm a single parent and money is tight.  The few things I listed may not sound like much, but over the course of a year, all those little 'dabs' that get thrown out add up to a lot of money!  I wasn't gonna let this go to waste!  I was gonna re-purpose these ingredients and make something delicious!

I searched my favorite recipe site (allrecipes.com) for some inspiration.  I put in the ingredients I had and all kinds of suggestions came up.  None of them appealed to me.  Then, on the side was the dish of the day....Chicken spaghetti!  I looked through the ingredient list and decided make something on this order with the leftover ham.

It was a busy day already so I didn't have a whole lot of time to mess around in the kitchen so here's what I did:  I have a couple (ok, three) crock pots.  I got out the small one that I use to make cheese dip for games and stuff and pulled out my leftovers.  I chopped up the leftover onion, ham, carrots and celery, shredded up the last bit of cheese and threw them in.  I opened up a can of cream of chicken soup and a can of rotel and poured them in.  I found a small can of mushrooms (drained) and added them.  I added a bit of chopped chilies and green peppers.  My goal was to make a "sauce" that I could put over pasta that my daughter would like, and I'd let her pick the pasta so there wasn't a fight about dinner!

I turned the crock pot on low and went to work.  I work 'from home' (sort of) so it's easy to go about my business and and still come back to check on stuff.  I was gone for 3 or 4 hours.  I came back and checked on the "sauce".  It was pretty thin.  Way to thin to put over pasta.  I had to do something!  Either add something or rethink what this was going to be!  Pasta is always a winner at our house, so I decided to thicken up the sauce.

When cheese goes on sale (either shredded cheese or blocks of cheese) I buy!  We eat a lot of it!  If it's being used in a casserole or pizza or something like that, freezing it is fine!  It will last for a long time in the freezer.  So I went to the freezer and pulled some out.  I added about 8 oz of shredded cheddar and the sauce was looking good!  Like a "grown up" mac and cheese sauce.

My Olivia is such an opinionated little gal.  She has a pretty advanced palate for a 7 year old.  She's pretty adventurous and isn't afraid to try new things, however they have to look appealing.  This is why I let her pick the pasta we would eat the sauce over.  After checking out the sauce and deciding she would like it, she chose garden rotini noodles.  She loves the different colors!  And honestly, I would have chose those too, or maybe penne noodles.  something to stand up to the sauce.  When it was almost time to eat, I boiled the pasta til al dente.  I drained the noodles and mixed the sauce and noodles together in a cake pan, topped with a little extra cheese and put in a 350 degree oven for about 5 min.  Just long enough to melt the cheese. Meanwhile, I took a sleeve of buttery crackers (generic Ritz), melted 2 tblsp of butter, a little Mrs. Dash, and 1/8 cup of Parmesan and mixed them together to top the pasta with, and bake the whole thing for another 10 min.

It was really good!

The point of this post is that being creative in the kitchen can be a lot of fun!  It can also save you a lot of money.  But best of all, it can produce some tasty results!

 (How do you like the fine china I used!  LOL!)  As you can see, it was paper plate night at our house!