Not eating out; Cooking In!!!

Wow! could this economy be any more trying? I really love to eat out and try new foods and yet we're stuck at home relying on our own resources for tasty food product.

Not really such a bad thing... I'm a fairly experienced cook and adventuresome cook and we are trying to eat our way though our freezer and pantry. Of course our pantry is a little weirder than most.
For example I took an inventory of the pasta department....seven different kinds of spaghetinni including brown rice and spinach...five different kinds of spaghetti... four kinds of fettuccine including squid ink and hot pepper/tomato (Who bought those?)....numerous boxes of shaped paste including orchiette (little ears), cortuna (trumpets and my favorite radiotorri (radiators).
We could eat past from now till the end of the year and still not eat it all.
Pickles: Green tomato pickles in four varieties, pickled vegetables including Brussels sprouts, artichoke hearts and garlic. Pickled peppers and pepper relish and plain old dill and sweet pickles.

Stock: I make all my own stocks because I really DO NOT like the amount of salt in most stocks. Lamb stock, Duck Stock, BBQ Beef Stock, Beef Stock, Rich Stock (includes potatoes) and Chicken Stock. It is not hard to make stock, you just simmer veges oar meats until they give up all their flavor. Preserving it is harder. I do not like to take up freezer space so I pressure can all my low acid foods. I bought a 20 quart canner at Orchard hardware for about $90.00 five ore six years ago and it's still going strong. I look for jars at thrift stores adn yard sales. I mainly buy new rings and lids.

Spices: Everyone loves to open my pantry and just inhale. I only keep an ounce or two of spices out on the cooking shelf so all the extras live in the pantry. Vietnamese Cinnamon, Dried mushrooms, Several kinds of dried pepper, Dried chiles and the Catnip I hide from the cat. It all smells amazing.

The usual vegetables and canned goods (although some one went a little crazy on anchovies). We keep about ten or so different cans of cooked beans of different kinds to use for soups, dips, etc.

Dried beans and peas make soups and salads.

There is the baking shelf with five kinds of flour, several kinds of baking mix, vanilla, brown and white sugar. Molasses, honey, light and dark corn syrup.

There is an entire box dedicated to Asian foods. Hoisin sauce, different canned coconut items, nori, dried noodles, fish sauce, chili paste, bean paste, and other spices.

The freezer is a weirder mix. I am trying up all the recipes I can find for dried cod. Somehow I have four different batches bought in different areas. I will take some photos of the next batch of attempts.

I have two gallons of duck fat and one quart of foie gras fat. I think we have eaten too much duck and now I need to buy more duck to use up the fat "confiting" it. You simmer or bake cut up duck in duck fat till it is done. It gets creamy and tender and amazing tasting. So not lo cal.

I also have a quart jar of bacon fat. More normal but I am saving it for a cookie recipe that uses bacon fat as the fat in a gingersnap. Tastes so good and you cannot figure out why.

We somehow we bought twenty pounds of chicken breasts and they are frozen. We've tried to use them up but I think they are multiplying in the freezer. The problem is we really don't like chicken breast; we like leg meat. I've made chicken curry, chicken enchiladas, chicken tamales and chicken soup... any other suggestions?

We have two large tri-tips that we will BBQ this weekend. They end up good for all kinds of things.

There is two pounds of chestnut meat, several boxes of phyllo dough and about six pound of smoked fish.

Some times it gets a little overwhelming and confusing to try to do something with all these varied ingredients.