Daily Nourishment- Clean out the Fridge Meals

So as I said I have been making a better effort to cook dinner every night. The last two meals of last week might be regulars and are great to use when you have a lot of random veggies left over. So, here we go.

The first "Clean out the Fridge Meal" was a mezza spread, which was a lot of fun to eat. It's the type of meal you can spread out on the coffee table and snack on while watching TV and hanging out. Which also means you can eat for hours, who doesn't like that? Here's what mine looked like.



This meal was very cost effective. I had most the veggies which were- cucumber, banana pepper, tomato, artichoke hearts, avocado and garlic stuffed olives. Then a picked up the hummus and falafel mix in the natural foods bulk section(bulk bins= very cheap!) of my local grocery store. I was a little scared what the quality would be but they were actually both really good. I did add a little fresh squeezed lemon juice to both which wasn't called for on the directions but I felt was needed. I also picked up some mini pitas which I just heated in the oven before serving.

The second "Clean out the Fridge Meal" was Sloppy Joe's....well vegan Sloppy Joe's, strange right? I actually saw a recipe for vegan Sloppy Joe's but they called them Snobby Joe's. Pretty cute, sorry mine don't have a cheeky name. These were actually my very first Sloppy Joe's ever. I don't remember ever having these as a child, or maybe I just blocked it out. So going into this I didn't really know what to add because I had no idea what the sauce was like. But I did have a tube of this that needed to be used up and a yellow onion.



So I picked up a can of Sloppy Joe sauce and some whole wheat hamburger buns and crossed my fingers. Then I thought if I was going to do the whole cheesy American junk food dinner I had to have.....yes, tater tots. I even made a vegan fry sauce or special sauce if you are a stepbrothers fan. Ta Da!



Anyways here is what it looked like before adding the all scary sauce from a can.



Upon opening the can I right away hated the smell....way sweeter then what I was expecting. My first thought was gross, my second thought was I should of gone with my gut about purchasing sauces that come from a can. Then I tasted it and it wasn't as bad as I was prepared for. I was expecting a Spaghetti O's type of sauce and it wasn't that bad. It was similar to the Spaghetti O's sauce as none of the flavors in the Sloppy Joe's sauce was anything I could put my finger on. Even with the ingredients stating the sauce had green pepper, tomato and onion in it I couldn't taste any of it. It was very much like how ketchup doesn't taste too much like a fresh tomato. But I went ahead and dumped it in. Here is the finished meal.



In the end the meal was good and I would/will make it again. The sauce is so heavy it would cover up almost any veggie. So next time my veggie bowl is full of lots of odds and ends Sloppy Joe's will be their fate. But next time I will make the sauce from scratch, maybe a more grown up version.