I’ve had some things going on this week that have kept me away from my computer and/or blogging for a good chunk of the week. I realized today that I blogged like, what? Once? Twice maybe? Daily photo? Haha. Not since last Friday. Well hopefully next week will be better.

Instead of a cop out photo post, I’ll tell you a quick story. I call this story “Ghetto Cooking At It’s Finest – The Empty Pantry Edition”.

First you should know, I hate food shopping, and yet I prefer fresh fruits and veggies to most other foods which requires me to make pretty much bi-weekly trips to the supermarket. Well as the beginning of this entry would suggest, I had zero time to make even one trip to the supermarket this week, much less my usual two.

My fridge contained the following: half a bag of pizza cheese along with past-the point-of-being-edible lettuce, yogurt, celery, and … uh was that once a peach? Oh and some chicken that I thought I would defrost and eat on SUNDAY (right, last night was THHURSDAY). My pantry contained: two cans of diced tomatoes from when I overestimated a recipe last month, and about a quarter of a bag of pretzels from (I’m not kidding) January.

Meanwhile I was starving. And tired. Too tired to even order out. So what did I do? Used the (mostly) edible food.

ARE YOU READY FOR THIS PEOPLE?

I put the diced tomatoes in a pot, added some tomato paste (that was hidden behind one of the diced tomato cans – SCORE!), stirred in some garlic paste and fresh cilantro (that’s growing on my windowsill) and warmed it all to make a …. “sauce”.

Took the (stale) pretzels (FROM JANUARY), crushed them into … powder, BREADED THE CHICKEN WITH IT, put it in a casserole dish and poured my “sauce” over it, and covered with what was left of the pizza cheese and baked.

G-H-E-T-T-O.

Who uses STALE PRETZELS FROM FIVE MONTHS AGO in place of breadcrumbs? This little lady right here.

And I’m going to say something now that is going to make you all lose (or gain?) a little respect for me:

MY DINNER WAS DAMN GOOD.

I’m not even kidding or exaggerating a little bit. It was so good, I’m not even a little ashamed to admit it. I think empty pantry cooking is my new specialty.