Gardening From Kitchen Scraps - Green Onions

Oh, the never-ending wealth of knowledge I receive from Pinterest! I totally have dreams of growing my own garden one day but in this season of life the idea of tending to it seems a little overwhelming. But I am thrilled to learn that there are some pretty easy ways to grow veggies from what I already have in my kitchen with very little time or effort involved. Just my kind of project!

This week I decided to try to grow some green onions. Seemed easy enough. Take a bunch of green onions, cut of the bottoms, place in a jar of water in the window and done. No really, that's it. Too good to be true? Maybe. Let's see how it worked for me.

This is what my green onions looked like the first day when I started this little experiment:

And this is what they looked like exactly one week later:

Pretty awesome, huh? I can just start trimming them off and using them whenever I need and they will continue to grow over and over again. The only upkeep involves changing out the water and rinsing off the roots every once in awhile. I can handle that!

~Thank you Homemade Serenity for the idea~

***Update - Wanted to come back real quick and update you on this. We got 2 great re-growths out of this bunch and then nothing worth using after that. I still think it is worthwhile and a good way to stretch each bunch:) 

Teriyaki Chicken Lettuce Wraps

When I bought 3 heads of lettuce at the store last week because they were on sale for $.48 each, I knew that I would have to come up with something other then salad to put it all to use. Then it hit me....lettuce wraps! I had never made them before so I checked out a few recipes just to get an idea of what could/should go in them and then ran with what I already had on hand. Let me tell you that I am mighty proud of how these turned out. They are really simple, super cheap, and absolutely delicious. And I was able to stretch one chicken breast to feed our entire family! Not to say that we have a shortage of chicken around here...remember our 40 lbs from Zaycon Chicken? But even when we have plenty I like to stretch what we have as far as possible. This will definitely be a recipe that shows up on our dinner table again.

Teriyaki Chicken Lettuce Wraps
Start with the rice. I used 1 cup dry whole grain brown rice which takes longer to cook (about 45 minutes) but is full of fiber and cheap to buy in bulk. Once that was finished cooking I added about 1/4 cup of sweet Teriyaki sauce and let sit.

Then I cut up the chicken (I only used one breast, two would be good if you were wanting more) into small cubes, sprinkled it with seasoning salt, and cooked over medium high heat in a little bit of olive oil until cooked through and starting brown.

Now for the veggies. I used green onion, shredded carrots, and minced garlic because that is what I had on hand. You can of course use any variation of veggies based on what you prefer or have available. Once the chicken was fully cooked I lowered the heat (med low) and added the veggies for just a minute or two. At this point it was smelling AMAZING!

The last thing I added was roasted red pepper flakes. Because of the kids, I only put in 1/8-1/4 tsp which still gave it a slight kick but nothing they couldn't handle. I think this really made the flavor for me. I enjoy sweet with some spice! Once you have stirred in the flakes and let them cook for a minute, stir in the rice and keep over the heat until the entire mixture is heated through. At this point I just layered a few leaves of lettuce to make a cup and then dished up the rice and chicken mixture.

Doesn't get much easier than that!