Eat From the Pantry Challenge ($30 grocery week!)

A lot of blogs I follow advertise doing "eat from the pantry" challenges. Some are for a few days, some as long as a month. I always found that idea overwhelming and unpleasant. But, in our end of the summer budget crunch, we decided to give it a try. We opted to do one week and see what happened. I have to admit, not only did it save us a lot of money, it was quite humbling.

We have never considered ourselves "extra" wasteful (you know, we recycle and donate when we can, try to eat the last bits of cereal, etc...) but what I didn't realize is how many things we buy that weren't getting used. And then, before you know it, they are expired, spoiled, or stale and you throw them out. I've recently had a lot of overwhelming emotions about the number of people just in our own community that don't have food. It sickens me when I think about how much I throw away. So, slowly but surely, we're making changes towards that. Here's how we did the challenge.

First on the list was to take inventory of what we had (this is now actually a running list for our convenience and to help with waste that we keep tacked on the fridge/pantry door/deep freeze and add/cross off items as needed). We marked down lists for the refrigerator, freezers, and pantry. I had a lot of obvious items this time around and didn't have any trouble at all coming up with meal plans. However, should you find yourself in a situation not knowing how to use what you have, go to www.allrecipes.com and click on "ingredients" at the top. You can list items you have and it will give you meal ideas for those items (you still might have to purchase one or two things, but that's better than buying ALL the ingredients for a different item!).

Then, we listed the few items we needed to complete the meals, and use for the household over the next week. We set our budget at $30 (I know, I know, you're thinking WHAT??). This forced me to do two things: get EVERYTHING in one trip (no quick trips during the week) and really seriously watch my budget.

The outcome: we survived! It was actually refreshing to know that we made it a whole week on $30 worth of additional groceries, we had company over for dinner 2 of those nights, and we were able to use up items we already had on hand! We felt really good about being mindful of our pantry. And, this is something I think we will add to the list every month or two-just to clear out "extras" hanging out in the pantry and freezer. Will YOU take the challenge now?

Here are a couple of tips for doing the challenge:
*don't dismiss those half eaten potato chips/pretzels/crackers that may be stale. Crumbled, they make an excellent crunchy coating for meat and veggies!
*consider how much you will REALLY use (it's okay if you actually run out of something!)If you're running really low on something, use just a hint of water in the bottle (like coffee creamer or ketchup), shake it up, and use it.
*if you have leftovers that you won't use for a while, freeze them. Then pull them out on an eat from the pantry week (no purchasing required!)