Pantry Challenge Report: Week One

Are you doing the Pantry Challenge with me?

This is a month-long plan to keep your food purchases to a bare minimum by using up what you've got: in the cupboard, fridge or freezer. (I'll be spending $5-10 weekly for milk and clearance goodies, too.)

Granted, I tend to be a bit of a chipmunk in this department. We just spent a mini-vacation at a hotel: I snagged a handful of apples, a few tea bags and a few packets of apple cider mix during our time there. (Yes, I took the soap, too.)

So far, it's been going quite well. 

Breakfasts:  Pancakes and turkey bacon
                   Oatmeal (with nuts and apples)
                   Cereal and milk
                   Eggs, Hashbrowns
                   Eggs, biscuits (with a jar of peach jam that was unexpectedly delicious -- 
                                       and made me think about making tarts)

Lunches:  Other than Sunday dinner, we don't tend to eat these -- I've noticed, now that the Brick is retired, that we seem to do better on two meals a day. But if one of us gets hungry, there's always cookies in the jar, red licorice, a peanut butter sandwich (I'll make more bread when needed), or leftovers.

Suppers:   Chicken vegetable soup with crackers (we've had the flu)
                 Some kind of soup (made with chopped this and that, plus sour cream)
                 Chili (with venison) - and blue tortilla chips
                 Colcannon  (made with turkey bacon)
                 Shrimp with Green Beans (from the freezer)
                 'Buffet' of leftover bits and pieces

root vegetables are good keepers, even in warmer places

Drinks:  tea and coffee -- we like it STRONG, diluted a bit with milk
                  (The Brick had a beer, too)

Desserts:  Coconut flan (from a box at least a few years old -- but it was good)
                Cookies & small candy bars (from the Christmas stockings)
                Clementine oranges (must eat them up - they're starting to bottom out)
                Apples (from the hotel, plus a crisper-ful still holding out from the fall jaunt to Michigan)
                Applesauce

Popcorn, yogurt, a glass of milk now and then, and crackers, too. The best thing for nausea in the world.

I have lots of apples -- maybe apple crisp? And fried chicken or rabbit looks like it's on the future menu.

Six dozen eggs went to various customers in the past few days, so we're a little low on eggs. The chickens will make that up quickly. We're almost out of milk, so a trip to the grocery store is next. 

Results of the shopping trip:    2 gallons whole milk        $1.99 ea
                                                4 cans tuna in water             .50 ea    (saved 79 cents each)
                                                                              -----------------
                                                                  TOTAL        $6.22