It was our final day of our official Eating From The Pantry Challenge and here's what we ate today:
Breakfast: Grape-Nuts and milk (We made some extra powdered milk up last night and stuck in in the refrigerator overnight. I couldn't really even tell the difference on cereal this morning!)
Lunch: Baked potatoes with butter and cheese
Snacks: Tortilla chips, organic toaster pastries, no bake cookies
Dinner: Chicken noodle soup, tuna sandwiches and fried egg sandwiches, carrot sticks
(Um and yep, nevermind the fact that we're sorely lacking in the fruit and veggie eating department today! I had plans to incorporate the last of what we had on hand, but time and energy slipped away from me.)
Well, I made it–15 days without stepping foot into a grocery store! I do believe that's almost a record for me and it was a nice change of pace. I've often skipped a week of grocery shopping, but usually that was when we were very well stocked. It's not very often that we go this long and let things get this bare. However, we had plenty to eat every day and we certainly didn't go hungry!
We didn't have as much of a variety in our meals, we didn't eat as much protein as we usually do, we ate more of fewer things, and we certainly didn't eat as healthfully as we usually do, but we made it through the Eating From The Pantry Challenge just fine.
In fact, I found it rather invigorating to concoct new recipes, ideas, and meal creations with what we had on hand. And it was also nice to take a complete break from using coupons or snagging deals. I'm anxious to jump back in now!
The best news is that we didn't touch any of the After-The-Baby Stash either, so we're plenty stocked for the coming months! We also used up a number of odds and ends of foods which would be going bad soon, too.
All in all, it was a great challenge and I'm so glad we did it! I'm especially glad that so many of you participated, too! That made it much more enjoyable. Maybe we'll have to do it again sometime soon, eh?
We took the $120 we'd usually allot to groceries for the past two weeks and split it–$60 is going into savings and $60 is staying in our grocery envelope to give me a little more wiggle room for buying items to replace our rather-depleted stock.
So it looks like not only was this challenge a great exercise in creativity and ingenuity, but we were able to save a nice little amount of extra cash while still having plenty left over to pay for groceries for next week. I'm hopeful that after a good shopping trip or two and our cupboards, refrigerator, and pantry will be well-stocked again. We'll see!
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