And on to other things! PLANNING the food you eat.

The pantry & freezer have been cleared out a bit and now it's on to other things.  Honestly, I got tired of Turkey Burgers so it was time to have some RED MEAT!  I'm still keeping food shopping to a minimum, because my big plan is to carefully re-stock the freezer. 

The challenge of eating what we already have on hand really inspired me to be creative and save money.  It also made me realize I need to change the way I shop for and store food a bit.

One thing I think I can take away from this experience is to actually calculate how much food we will need for, say, a 6 month period of time, and kind of pre-plan what we will make.   For example, we can designate one night a week as "ground meat" night to make hamburgers, meatballs, spaghetti, etc.  and order 26 packages of ground meat.   

Up to now, I've just been going around all willy-nilly buying what's on sale - which is great! I'll continue to look for sales to stock up, but with an actual plan in mind.   

Now, I am not sitting down and making a meal plan for an entire 6 months, that would exhaust me and make me crazy, but I feel I can handle something like this:

Sunday: Chicken
Monday: Fish
Tuesday: Ground Meat
Wednesday: eat out or leftovers
Thursday: Chicken
Friday: Fish
Saturday: Beef or Pork

This is just an example I pulled out of the air.  But it will help determine how many servings of meat we need for the year.  Perhaps one night can even be a Vegetarian or Bean night - it doesn't have to be all about the meat.

Here's a link to some forms that may help if you're interested in trying this as well.


http://www.scribd.com/cookncents

Pantry Challenge Update

Hello!  Life has got the best of me and I haven't updated in a few days, but rest assured, we are still eating (mostly) from the freezer & pantry.   Our family had to do another grocery run (produce, milk, bread) for about $35 but we're still at it.

Right now, we have a lovely chicken roasting in the oven for dinner.




February 1, 2012

Last night, we had some nice pork chops & carrots from the freezer, along with muffins whipped up from my muffin mix. The muffins taste great plain or with some frozen berries mixed in (I did half and half).


 Some other things we've had over the last few days