Use What You Have Cooking

I know that most readers of this blog are couponers. And as couponers, we tend to stockpile food.

The question then becomes:

How do I find recipes that use the ingredients I have on hand?

I’ve have a few different approaches to solving this dilemma.

1. A list of recipes stuck to the side of my fridge that pretty much call for the ingredients I generally have in my pantry and freezer.
2. Use It Up Cookbook: Creative Recipes for the Frugal Cook
   by Catherine Kitcho that I got from Amazon a few years ago (an okay book, but not exactly what I was hoping for)
3. Search recipe sites that let you use the ingredients as search items

I just read about Google’s foray into this… I’ve never seen it before, but I’m not sure if it’s new or not.

In the regular Google screen, search on a few ingredients you have on hand. Google recognizes these as food and a new option shows on the left side: Recipes. Click on it and you’ll see more options to further narrow down the results by selecting other ingredients. You can even choose to show only recipes that match your desired cooking time or calories per serving.

Nifty! Don’t you think?

(I’m in the process of working through 3 freezers worth of food — mostly meat & veggies, which *should* do wonders for my grocery bill in the next month or so.)