Eat from the pantry challenge–week 1

One week down, and I’m proud of how we’ve done. We’ve eaten soup, corn dogs, macaroni and cheese, spaghetti,meatball sandwiches, meat gravy over mashed potatoes, and some leftovers.

Around Thanksgiving, I bought a HUGE bag of yukon gold potatoes, and I’m having a hard time eating them all. This week I noticed that they are starting to sprout, so I took action. I cooked up three big pots of potatoes, then mashed them, adding only chicken broth. Then I froze them in freezer bags so that I can have quick mashed potatoes later. I also made up a big batch of potato salad for Megan, my potato salad lover. I don’t know if we’ll be able to get through all of these potatoes before they go bad, but I’ll try. This week we’ll bake them up as fries, or maybe loaded potato skins.

I’ve also gotten some “help” in my challenge.My neighbor called and asked if I needed fresh eggs. I had JUST gone to the store, so I told him I could only afford 18 eggs, and he said, well, how about if I give you two dozen, but only charge you for one dozen? Well, that’s a good deal for me, so I got two dozen fresh eggs for only $2. Yes, it went over my $25, but I’ll try to cut back by $2 this week. My sister-in-law even gave us her leftover ham from Christmas! Hey, we’ll never turn down ham.

By Friday night I was kind of tired of cooking, and I told Cole he was in charge of thinking of something to have for dinner. He said How about Ramen noodles? Sounded great to me. I like it that the kids actually WANT to eat ramen noodles. And since Ryan was out of town, there was no need to make a “real” dinner. Although last night we did have a roast (from the freezer) with sweet potatoes, yukon gold potatoes, and carrots. So we’ll have some leftovers from that dinner to use up this week.

I only went to the grocery store one time this week, and I almost stayed within my $25 budget. I did go over by a couple bucks, but I actually put some things back, when I realised I hadn’t bought the right item that was on sale and went with the coupon I had.

That’s not a whole lot of food, is it?

This week I’ll need more fruit, as I was getting tired of apples and canned fruit, but I guess that’s the point, right? We had bread in the freezer, but we’re almost out of that, so I’m going to have to make my own bread or buy some more this week. This week we also ran out of the cheese that the kids like. It’s the presliced American cheese that I buy in a huge block at Costco. But I don’t think I can go into Costco and ONLY spend $25, so that cheese might just be a no no.

We also did some baking. I brought out a bag of muffins I had stored in the freezer. The kids gobbled up those muffins and asked that we make some more. So on Sunday we made a bunch of two different kinds of muffins for the kids to grab and eat.

The hardest part for me is seeing the deals on cereal and other stock up items that I can’t buy right now. We do NOT need cereal, as I buy lots of it when it’s on sale, but I hate to pass up a deal. I’m also getting low on diet coke, so I’m going to have to add that to the list this week.

How are you doing? Did you eat from the pantry this week and avoid going to the grocery store? Well, if you didn’t, it’s not too late to try.