Moving meals

Boxes everywhere. Complete disarray. Nothing in its place, and nothing fresh in the fridge... this is not how I like to live! But, we're moving this weekend, so I've been on a mission to use up those random half-empty boxes of pasta, frozen food, nearly empty bottles of sauces, and clean out whatever perishables are left in the fridge. That's led to some mostly boring meals, and not nearly enough fresh veggies and fruit (I haven't been to my Berkeley Bowl all week! I don't know how I'm surviving!!) But despite this, I have managed to come up with a few tasty meals this week...

Clean up the fridge pasta
Ingredients:

• Kamut pasta spirals (or whole grain)
• Frozen corn (and/or peas)
• Vegenaise 
• Dijon mustard
• Agave syrup
• Nutritional yeast flakes
• Ground flax seeds
• Old Bay spice
• Celery seed
• Cumin
• Salt & Pepper
• Fresh dill

I packed my measuring cups already, but it was somewhere around 1/2 box of the pasta, 1/4 cup Vegenaise, 1 Tbsp mustard, drizzle of Agave, a few shakes of nutritional yeast, about 1-2 tsp ground flax, a shake or two of Old Bay, a shake of Cumin, a shake of celery seed, and a healthy amount of fresh chopped dill, with salt & pepper to taste. Play around with the amounts to your preference, to get just the amount of sweet vs tang vs spice that you like, but I think the items go well together. The hubby even liked this one! Funny what you come up with when you have a bunch of random ingredients on hand!

Here's another one:
Simple Peanutty Rice Noodles
Ingredients:

• Rice noodles
• Peanut butter
• Soy sauce or tamari
• Coconut milk
• Fresh chopped mint

If you are using hot noodles you've just cooked, you can get as simple here as just mixing some peanut butter and soy sauce right in- the heat will soften the peanut butter and make it into more of a sauce. Or, if, say, you are on your third meal of rice noodles that you are pulling out of the fridge yet again (who, me?), then you can mix the peanut butter, soy sauce, and a little coconut milk in a dish and heat it up in the microwave (or a pan, if it's not packed yet) to mix into a sauce. The amounts were somewhere around 2 Tbsp peanut butter (I actually used this MaraNatha no-stir peanut spread with omega-3's), 1-2 Tbsp tamari/soy sauce, about 1 Tbsp coconut milk, plus a bunch of chopped mint leaves. I actually really liked these flavors together.

Random! While these were some good simple meals, I am getting sick of noodles!! I can't wait to stock up my new fridge with ridiculous amounts of fresh veggies. Speaking of which, we move this Sunday-eek! - not going far, just about 10 miles from our current place- but a new neighborhood that I'm really excited about! Plus, I will have space for a little herb garden in the back! New adventures to come...