Clean Out the Pantry Day 1: Garbage Salad

Kristan's post about having a ton of food stocked in her pantry and wanting to cook for one week using only ingredients she had on hand. I decided to challenge myself to the same thing since I have a ton of non-perishables in the pantry, meat in the freezer and things in the refrigerator that need to be used up.

Yesterday I hit the trifecta. I used not only two items from the pantry, but also an item from the deep freeze and a few things from the refrigerator.

The steamy weather yesterday was not conducive to a heavy dinner. It was, however, perfect grilling weather so my husband threw a sirloin steak (from the deep freeze) on the grill for our protein. Instead of serving it with a starchy side, we decided to just throw it onto a salad. Every one of the toppings were things we already had on hand and some of them were things that would have gone bad had they not been used up this week.

I present to you my Garbage Salad:

spring mix, tomatoes (from our garden), dark red kidney beans, croutons, coleslaw & sirloin steak

Yes. That says coleslaw. My husband looked at me like I had lost my mind. 

I wanted a slaw-like dressing for my salad, but we didn't have any because I'd used up the last jar toward the end of last week in a batch of homemade coleslaw. We ate it as a side dish with several meals, but there was still quite a bit leftover that would have gone spoiled in the refrigerator. I threw it on top of my salad to keep that from happening. Lo and behold, it was actually really good.

It was a perfect meal for a hot summer evening. We weren't overly stuffed and the veggies were extra refreshing.