A Story of Ingenuity

Sometimes you just have to be creative. And when you're poor like me, you REALLY have to be creative.

I have been baking and getting ready for company this weekend. Rather than go out to eat when everyone is here, I decided to show off my baking skills and make some breakfast items. I've made:

Zucchini Walnut Muffins

Zucchini Chocolate Muffins

Zucchini Lemon Poppy Seed Bread

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Bread (my favorite, which came from Abby)

Lemon Pound Cake Muffins

Peanut Butter Banana Bread w Chocolate Chips

Cinnamon Swirl Bread

It's all in my freezer, and I am looking forward to eating all this delicious food (I also made 6 peach pies the other day). While making these recipes, I THOUGHT I had all the ingredients, but I discovered while making the PB Banana Bread that I was out of chocolate chips. I was in the middle of mixing when I figured this out. I had already been to the store, and I wasn't about to go again, so this is where my creativity played a role.

I walked through my house and found every piece of chocolate I could find. I unwrapped about 10 pieces of Dark Chocolate Kisses, chopped them up and used that for my chocolate. Am I good or what?

While making my Peanut Asian Chicken Salad tonight, I realized that I didn't have canned peanuts, as per the recipe. Again, I wasn't about to go to the store in the middle of cooking dinner, so I started looking through my cupboards. I found a bag of trail mix, which yes, is full of peanuts. I rummaged through the bag of raisins, M&Ms, cashews and peanuts until I had enough peanuts to chop. Ingenuity at its best! While I will admit the peanuts kind of tasted like raisins, it was already in my cupboard, so I'm OK with that! :)