Money Saving Mom and Fish Mama have started an Eat from the Pantry Challenge for the month of January. What a great idea!
The Eat From the Pantry Challenge is a plan to avoid grocery shopping as much as possible, and only eat food you already have on hand for an entire month (or week, 2 weeks, whatever you want). It is such a great way to save some money and get creative with your cooking ( I mean, what am I going to make with a million cans of Hunt’s tomato sauce, barbecue sauce, and Nestle morsels??).
After looking through my pantry and freezer, I’m actually pretty excited! I have some meal ideas already and can’t wait for the last week when I’ll really have to get creative. I still plan to buy milk, bread, eggs, fresh fruit, etc., but I will not be doing any stockpiling. I also plan to continue going out for lunch after church on Sundays, and my weekly playdate at Chick-fil-A with my Bestie.
This challenge also fits in perfectly with my personal goal to eat less processed food in 2010. We will go ahead and eat up what we have left, and any that we don’t eat by the end of the month will go to the local food pantry. Once it’s gone, it will be great to have a fresh pantry with less temptation. I also will get to have the fun of re-stocking it with healthier food!
Here are a few dinners I already have planned from my stockpile:
That is a week of dinners planned with no effort at all! Here in a couple weeks I may be desperately asking for ideas though!
So, what do you think about the challenge? Will you be participating?
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I would love to get in on this but we're having another baby in about 6wks, so my stockpiling is in overdrive! We'll be doing LOTS of pantry eating in the coming months though, just not Jan!
.-= Therea´s last blog ..The stockings are hung.... =-.
Theresa,
Congrats! I would sure be stockpiling like crazy too!
Haha. Yeah, I don't need Mc-D's. I do the same thing - I will use our bread machine and bake fresh bread instead of going out and buying it. The pantry challenge is a really good idea though. My husband is great at "throwing things together", whereas I usually always need a recipe to go by unless its a type of cooking I'm really familiar with. I'm going to try to buy less too and see how it goes. :)
Stephanie - btw - I love Chick-fil-A. I hardly ever eat fast food but it's my favorite!! :)
Wylene,
I always need a recipe too! I have only "thrown together" meals a handful of times. They weren't bad, but I always feel safer using a recipe!
OH, and I was going to say, one of the hardest things about eating from the pantry is that we're kinda used to "spoiling" ourselves with our favorite foods - but if we get creative and eat what we have on hand, the meals turn out pretty tasty, healthy and satisfying too.
Absolutely! I've used the term Pantry Raid to describe reaching into the pantry rather than stopping for fast food or calling for (gasp) pizza. We've discovered we can skip our weekly shopping trip often by just buying bunny food (for our pets) and milk (for us). Keeping baking basics helps, too: I baked bread today instead of running out to buy a loaf. The result: healthier eating, increased self-confidence in the kitchen. Who needs Mc-D's? Not my family. Please tell the teenager...
.-= Daisy´s last blog ..The What Decade? On names and labels =-.
Daisy,
I'm going to attempt to make more bread this month, but it is such a habit to grab a loaf when I go to the store. Gotta get out of those bad habits though, right? :)