The Challenge

Using up some of our meat and poultry stores will admittedly
help prevent lack of rotation and tossing freezer burned items. 

At the beginning of the week, Hubs pointed out that we have a "full" pantry and a pretty well stocked deep freeze. He mentioned that we probably have at least a month worth of food. That may very well be accurate. I tend to shop sales and buy in bulk so that I maintain a well stocked pantry. I figure, that way, should our budget tighten or if I'm not able to get to the store for whatever reason for a couple of weeks, we are still usually in a pretty good spot and won't be hungry. Most of my cooking is based on using what I have on hand instead of deciding ahead of time what I'm going to make and then buying food to go along with it.

Thus enters the challenge. Could we actually make do with what we have on hand for a month? How about longer? Well, I'm going to start with a month. The challenge allows me to purchase some things that may not last or we go through quickly like bread (though usually I make my own), milk, and eggs.

Planning this month's meals, complete
with a few trash meals of not so healthy
foods. It's all about balance, right?

I've recently been trying to plan meals better. Not so much to buy for the menu, but create a menu based on what we have on hand. This helps me plan out our meals for the next month, especially if I'm not making purchases for things like meats and veggies. I can ration them out if needed.

No fears, I have plenty of tomato sauce.

One of the biggest challenges for me will be the lack of fresh produce. I'll have to depend on dry beans and frozen veggies for meals. I'll likely have to use some dried fruits for school lunches and snacks like raisins and fruit leather. It's a good thing I have a stash of frozen fruit - it's a great way to store fruit for future fruit leather or fruit snack use.

Another issue that made the timing of this challenge difficult is that I had several of the kids' snack items on my shopping list already. That means I'll have to get creative making snack items for school lunches and snacking at home. I probably shouldn't, but I rely on some crackers for easy, portable snacks, so we'll have to see what I can come up with.

We are nearing the end of the first week of this challenge. Typically breakfasts and lunches are easy, quick things, I don't usually cook for them unless I'm making something simple like an omelet or scrambled eggs. Over the duration of this challenge, I'll share the meals I've prepared and how I manage to make up for lack of easy snack foods for the kiddos.

This week's dinners were/are as follows:

Sunday - frozen pizza (no jabs about health factor here, sometimes I still rely on crappy food)
Monday - chicken chili (crock pot meal due to t-ball practice)
Tuesday - leftovers (I was feeling lazy and we had some red beans and rice and remnants of some other meals hanging out in the fridge)
Wednesday - burgers and fries (homemade burgers and buns)
Thursday - spaghetti and broccoli (ok, I used rotini instead of spaghetti, but it might as well be the same thing; homemade spaghetti sauce, of course)
Friday - teriyaki salmon and green beans (homemade sauce)
Saturday - chicken spaghetti

Homemade raisins, anyone?

Various things I've been working on in the kitchen to prep include finishing off the rest of our tomatoes for tomato sauce, started dehydrating the excessive grape stash for raisins (we were running out of raisins anyway), made two pots of shredded chicken/chicken broth, and made mango fruit leather. I have additional plans for more fruit leather, making fruit snacks, cooking up some dry beans for freezing, making apple sauce with some softening apples I have hanging around, making another batch of yogurt, making bouillon, and mixing up some homemade ice cream because I have some heavy cream that I don't want to go bad. It's ambitious and may not all get done before the week is out, but I'll get started on a bunch of it in the next couple of days.

Sadly, I couldn't even make it one week without a stop at the store. We were out of milk, so I stopped by yesterday to grab two gallons.

Stay posted for more updates as I see how this challenge works out for us!