Nothing goes to waste

The week gets really busy around here and I'm commited to Katelyn and I eating fairly healthy on a budget and not just swinging through a drive thru because we're pressed for time. What this requires from me is cooking in batches so that we have a few things around to eat to take for lunch or to heat up in the evening for dinner. My parents bought a rotisierre chicken when they were over last week and there was some chicken left from that and the carcass. So tonight I cooked the carcass and made broth and then pulled off the last bit of chicken. I'm going to throw some stuff in the crock pot tomorrow before I leave for southwest chicken soup (one of my favorites and really easy...I usually have all the ingredients in the pantry). I didn't have a can of black beans though and I am really trying to use what I have in the house instead of going to the grocery store all the time. I did have a bag of dried black beans in the pantry so while the carcass was simmering I cooked the black beans and fed Katelyn some other leftovers (ham and soup beans from a few nights ago.) I had a cup of rice in the pantry so I cooked that up and I bought a bunch of fresh cilantro for 50 cents and 3 limes for $1 the last time I went to the store and I needed to use some of it up. So I took a piece of tilapia out of the freezer, squeezed some lime, drizzled olive oil and sprinkled some cilantro over it and stuck it in the broiler for a few minutes. I ate the fish with a side of rice and black beans with some lime, salt and cilantro over them. The rest of the black beans are going in the soup tomorrow. The leftover rice will be turned into chicken fried rice later in the week. I think I'm going to make cilantro pesto with the rest of the cilantro...or a nice salad dressing. We'll eat the soup tomorrow night when we come home and it will then become lunch a couple times this week. And I have several more cups of chicken broth in the fridge that I'll use in something this weekend (I refuse to buy broth in a can...it's so easy to make.) All our food is taken care of for the week..and it just took a couple of hours tonight of digging through the pantry and simmering.

Here's tonight's dinner!