Lately, we have been trying to hit two birds with one stone: increasing our home cooked meals and using up pantry stores prior to our international move. It has been fun and economical to find recipes that use multiple ingredients we want to get rid of.

Andrew and I are both Minnesota natives and almost always have wild rice as a pantry staple. Sometimes family members send us wild rice as a gift and other times we purchase it in Oregon just to have it on hand. I had about 2/3 cup left in my pantry and wanted to make one last dish with it. I perused my cookbook collection and came across a recipe for Curried Wild Rice Salad in the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, 16th edition. This recipe was extra awesome because it also called for the rest of some brown rice I had lying around. It ended up being a tasty, low calorie snack with just the right addition of veggies (peas and sweet pepper) and sweet components (orange juice, honey, and raisins).

Tip: For several years we have made our own vegetable and meat broths. It not only saves a few dollars at the store, it also turns food scraps into a usable product. The process takes a bit of work, but is well worth it. Put several gallon size baggies in the freezer and fill them with wilty (caution: not moldy) herbs, vegetable scraps, and meat bones. When you have several full baggies, dump them in a large pot, fill it with water and let it simmer for hours. It is best to keep fish or shrimp separate from things like ham or poultry. Once the broth is nice and concentrated, strain out the solid bits, let it cool and then fill up Mason jars about 3/4 full. Place the jars upright in the freezer with the lid a bit loose. Once they are fully frozen, secure the lid, label and date your jars and store them in the freezer. This is a great way to have all kinds of broth on hand anytime you need them.

I had some very strong shrimp broth in the freezer that I wanted to use up, in addition to some Asian ingredients like fish sauce and rice noodles. Fortunately Martha Stewart had just the recipe I was looking for: Rice Noodles with Chicken, Pork, and Shrimp. This was an umami meat trifecta that was balanced out with Napa cabbage, fresh lemon, and hard boiled eggs. Andrew is a huge fan of Asian food and this hit the spot!

The last recipe we whipped up was Lower Carb Shrimp Spring Rolls with a Peanut Dipping Sauce. Since we had already used our rice noodles in the Martha Stewart recipe, this was a perfect way to use some leftover Rice Paper wrappers from the pantry. The Spring Rolls were light and delicious with plenty of fresh mint, cucumber, and carrot (Andrew has a strong aversion to cilantro so we left it out). The dipping sauce used up some of our peanut butter, some Stir Fry sauce we had in the refrigerator (the recipe called for Hoisin, but we subbed in the Asian sauce we had on hand), and Sriracha. We still have a few more Rice Paper wrappers, so this recipe will definitely be a repeat for us in the near future, it was yummy.