Spring Fridge Cleaning

Walking around our neighborhood yesterday enjoying the unseasonably warm weather I was reminded how much I like where I live. I have access to a variety of things within walking distance - groceries, pharmacy, restaurants, shops... As we've been working on minimizing what we have - regularly evaluating and donating clothes, household items, etc. I've noticed a change in our grocery shopping habits as well. Because we have easy access to groceries and because we don't have a car we do smaller more regular shopping trips. We are also trying to eat more fresh produce and less packaged items - there are a few staples we keep on hand for quick meals but we are even right around the corner for two places that make fresh pasta. I would rather make a stop to pick fresh pasta up for a quick dinner than eat pasta from a package out of the cupboard. In honor of spring and starting to notice our new food patterns I decided it was time for refrigerator spring cleaning. I looked in the fridge and freezer to see what had been there awhile and needed to be used up so it wouldn't be thrown away. 


I found empanada discs in the freezer. Perfect! You can fill them with almost anything... 
Filling #1
beans, sweet peppers, cheddar cheese, chipotle powder, cayenne pepper powder
Filling # 2
cherry tomatoes and basil from the farm share, basil from our yard that we'd frozen, and gorgonzola, salt and pepper
I'll admit that the gorgonzola was a bit odd but it seemed to work 

Filling # 3 
Bag of mixed frozen berries blended with an ounce of semi-sweet chocolate, I ended up with more filling than shells so used it for dipping too 


I fried the stuffed discs in oil until the dough was cooked and golden. I dusted the fruit empanadas with powdered sugar. They were also easy to reheat in the oven for a late night snack.