So I told my hubby that I thought we should try to eat from the pantry. He was game, because it will mean a drastic reduction in our January food budget. Little did I know that there were a group of people attempting to do the same thing. Yesterday I was checking out one of my favorite websites and saw the eat from your pantry challenge. Their challenge doesn't start until January 1st, but we are starting NOW!!
We will need to pick up a few basic items, but my goal is to spend less than $50 on groceries from now until the end of January. Can we do this? I don't know. The skeptic in me says...absolutely NOT. But the optimist says....attempt that which seems impossible!!
Now, I don't have a huge stockpile of groceries in my pantry. A couple of cans of this, a couple of cans of that, bread and cereal...plus sugar and flour. We do have a nice selection of meats that I have either bought on clearance. As I have taken inventory I'm realizing our meals will be fairly creative.
Oh, this would be a good time to mention my children's response to this plan. "We are going to STARVE."
Last night I was talking with a friend whose husband is in the hospital and is recovering from three unexpected and serious surgeries. We offered to coordinate meals for her family. However we didn't think we could get someone to volunteer to take a meal today.
We haven't even officially started and I admit I was tempted to head out to the store to buy items to make a nice meal for my friends!! Instead, we evaluated what we had on hand. The answer was we prepared some breakfast items that we arranged nicely on a platter. And we had some leftover Ham and Wild Rice soup that we had for dinner last night.
We were also able to add rolls to the mix which brings up a funny story!! We bought these nice frozen dinner rolls from Kroger that were on sale for our Christmas dinner. I checked the instructions earlier to see the prep time. The first line of the baking instructions say..."Keep frozen until ready to bake". So, about 30 minutes prior to dinner, we pulled out the rolls to bake them. The next part of the instructions say basically let thaw for 3-5 hours. There was a speed thaw method that took 1 1/2 hours. SIGH!!
$0.00 money spent (Two meals for friends.)
- Breakfast: Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits (my husband makes the best biscuits on the planet...even though he did break his biscuit bowl this week) Bacon and Mushroom Casserole and Tiny Cinnamon Rolls, apples and oranges
- Ham and Wild Rice Soup with DinnerRolls
2 comments:
We're in - we eat through our freezer twice a year, but $50 - yikes. I bet we drink that much milk in a month.
Sounds like a fun challenge! Not sure we can make it for under $50, but I bet we could for under $100. Not knowing what you were doing, I though about the same thing and cooked out of the freezer last night -- Turkey and Rice casserole. Have fun with your challenge! Eat lots of beans and rice and pasta!!!
Love you guys.
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