Chopped!

Do you watch Chopped on food network? It's one of the shows I always record to watch while I'm on the treadmill. I love it and I've learned a lot watching it.... it does, however, scare my boys.

I hate to waste food. I save even the tiniest bits of stuff knowing that it isn't going to be enough for a dish. These little goodies stay hidden in the depths of the refrigerator and pantry until I come across a few of them and go... "hey, I have an idea!!"

My concoctions never have names, it's usually "cleaned out the fridge salad" or "went through the pantry casserole". Some work out, some do not. Tonight was one that did work, I'm happy to say. I kinda thought it might, so decided to take a few pictures - so here is a typical "Nick's cleaning on the pantry/fridge salad".

This was 1/4 of a bag of baby spinach, there is a jar with a few Kalamata olives left in it, the blue lid jar is a Danish feta cheese that is marinated in oil with spices and herbs, there's a little chunk of Parmesan cheese and a few yellow baby tomatoes. What you don't see is a pot on the stove cooking the almost 1 cup of macaroni noodles I found (again not enough for a whole dish for us all).

The spinach was torn up a bit and the feta cheese and it's oil poured over the top. The oil is the base for the dressing. The tomatoes and olives were halved and thrown in and the Parmesan cheese was shaved and then chunked. I added a little of the olive juice to cut the oil a bit. The pasta was rinsed in cold water, drained and added. After tasting it (several times- you know, just to be sure....) - all I added was a little lemon juice and some lemon pepper.

Looks pretty tasty? A dish out of almost nothing. Love it!!

This little gem is the feta cheese. We first had it in Iceland and fell in love and for years couldn't find anything close. This is imported from Denmark and is very close to what we had. Keep an eye out and soon I'll show you what I'm going to make out of this cute little jar :0)