Pantry Challenge Progress!

Sometimes it feels like I make such slow progress with the Pantry Challenge. And then I have days like today when I see so much progress!

We finally emptied one of the oatmeal bins today. We still have another full 5-gallon bucket of it, but one of them is empty! Hooray!

The 5 grain cereal is also being rapidly depleted as we mix it with our oatmeal each morning. It has been a battle some mornings when one girl in particular objects to the oatmeal but its' been a whole week with no complaints!

I have cooked three foster farms chickens that have been hanging out in my freezer. I needed them for my monthly freezer meal swap.

Speaking of the meal swap, I also used four packages of organic pasta that have been sitting in the pantry for months.

We had smoothies a few times using freezer peaches, blueberries, and pineapple juice I'd frozen for the purpose.

With all the tortillas I bought last weekend we've been having Mexican food and using up a huge jug of salsa that's been in the pantry, as well as frozen, shredded turkey in quesadillas.

And finally, we've been using a bunch of applesauce that was in the freezer, too.

Yay!

2 Week Menu Plan

It was still pretty easy to come up with 2 weeks worth of meals this time. I can't believe the Pantry Challenge hasn't been too tough yet. Maybe if I limited myself even further with the grocery budget I'd have to dig a little deeper creatively . . .

Dinners for 2 weeks:

Mac 'n' Cheese Pie - pasta from pantry, milk for sauce from freezer
Skillet Squash Pasta - freezer meal & DH teaching
Dinner at church
BBQ Ribs & French Fries - freezer fries & meat, pantry bbq sauce
Men's Meat night - Pork tenderloin (kids & I taking side dish to another dinner)
Soft Tacos - freezer meat, pantry salsa
Fettucini Alfredo with chicken - freeezer chicken, pantry pasta & sauce
Artichoke Heart Pasta - Making for meal swap
Pot Roast - meat from freezer
Burritos - beans from pantry
Baked Potato Soup - milk & bacon from freezer, potatoes from pantry
Pasta & Red Sauce - pasta from pantry, sauce from freezer & pantry
Turkey dinner

I'm also getting an influx of freezer meals halfway through this meal plan! It doesn't seem significant, but I can see the contents of my freezer & pantry slowly and surely diminishing. Another few weeks and it might really start to show!

DH's birthday was last week and he requested brownies with chocolate frosting for his treat. I had a brownie mix, but my frosting seems to have disappeared (none of the kids fessed up, but I'm SURE I had some). Hm. So I made frosting from scratch. It was a bit of a challenge to find a recipe that didn't call for cocoa powder (I have none), but I did have some unsweetened Ghiradelli baking chocolate and that did the trick. It was super yummy.

Katie

Weekend Shopping - $63.78

WOW I needed to grocery shop this weekend! Here's a photo of my fridge. I assure you this is very empty! Out of milk, 3 pieces of bread, no cheese, only a little bit of yogurt left . . . I did have a dozen eggs though!
This was TOP Foods on Saturday morning because we needed milk for breakfast! I also picked up some other sale items.

The bulk of my shopping was at Fred Meyer and a couple things at QFC.


I've been waiting and waiting for tortillas to go on sale! So I stocked up. Quesadillas are a standard lunch for us. I also splurged on 4# of strawberries and lots of creamer since poor DH keeps running out!

Katie