Thrifty Thursday: Working with what you have?

Do you work with what you have in the house or do you run out to the store to get what you need?  I am trying to clean out the pantry items that are going to expire and not pay too much for groceries at the same time so I am trying to figure out how to make things just a little differently.

I wanted to make Salsa Sloppy Joes for dinner one night and I didn't have the tomato soup.  I thought about going to get one just so that I could make the dinner.  I looked at my choices in the pantry and I found tomato sauce and tomato paste.  I decided to use the tomato paste and added a little extra water.  I got the same yummy sloppy joes without going to the store.  Now I know that I don't need to get tomato soup to make the same great recipe next time.

I didn't have milk to use when I was making scones so I decided to use the peppermint flavored creamer that was in the fridge.  End product was amazing!  It was a nice rich pastry with a hint of the creamer flavoring.  I was excited to make them with the creamer next time even though I had the milk!!!

That same night with no milk in the house, I was planning on making corn bread.  What was I going to do because I knew that peppermint creamer wasn't going to work for those!!  I got out evaporated milk and searched the Internet.  How could I use this can to make my corn bread recipe?  The Internet had a bunch of different opinions but thought that it would be best to try half evaporated milk and half water.  I did and it turned out great!

The next day I decided to try the evaporated milk to make a loaf of bread and it worked like a charm.  I have used the evaporated milk in a few recipes so that I could stretch out our regular milk for my son.  The funny thing is that now I have used so many replacements, our milk is now about to expire so I am going to have to make a few things with the milk before it is sour :)

I also had some grapefruit that were not getting used (sadly, I bought them and immediately started taking medicine where you can't eat grapefruit so they were sitting abandoned in the fridge).  I decided that I would juice them all and try to make some muffins.  I found a recipe for Grapefruit Oatmeal muffins which I will try to make soon and you will see the recipe.

I am now looking for a few recipes to use my praline creamer and a jar of caramel sauce in the fridge.  I think that together, they might make the most awesome creation.  Here is hoping that I find something soon.  Hopefully I will find something that isn't so good that I will be sad that I used up all the creamer and caramel because I won't be getting any more :)

Do you have any experiments that you have tried to replace things in your recipe?  Have you ever gone looking for a recipe just to use up something in the cupboard, pantry or freezer?  I am looking for any recipes you would like to share which are your go to for using what you have on hand.  I am going to be posting a few in the coming weeks.