Eat From The Pantry Challenge: Week 4
This week is my fourth week of partcipating in the Eat from the Pantry Challenge. You can read how last week went here. My goal going into this challenge was to just buy fresh produce and dairy and keep my grocery spending to just $20 per week, or $80 for the entire month of January. I've done that and then some. This week I have $29.45 left to spend on groceries.
I'm pretty surprised that at this point in the challenge, I haven't had to use much creativity in meal planning. Apparantly we have more food stored up than I had thought. Through the past three weeks I've crossed many items off our "food inventory" list but there's still plenty more to use up. Personally I would like to dig right down to the bottom of the freezer over our fridge (we have another in the garage) and get all the odds and ends used up so I can start over fresh.
The refrigerator is getting pretty well cleared out, except for condiments and all those free Breakstone's Cottage Cheese Doubles I got for free (a girl can't pass up free!). Last night as I was getting ready to take out all the trash, I tossed any unidentifyable odds and ends and wiped down all the shelves. There's only the food in there that we will be eating this week and I can clearly see what all we've got. It's great! Come to think of it, this is how the fridge should look all the time. Since our beagle can't be trained to do this, I'll be needing to get a pet monkey.
This week's grocery list is pretty slim:
Cucumber $1.25
Lettuce $1.29
Tomato $1.50
Hamburger Buns $2.50
Milk $7.78
Grand Total $14.32
Here's what we will be eating this week:
Sunday
Inspired by Roxanne's Chicken Tampa I made oven fried Chicken Cutlets. Being this is a pantry challenge and I was out of several ingredients I had to go the plain old breaded cutlett route. Imagine chicken fried steak -- only with chicken. It was delicous served with mashed potatoes, gravy and broccoli salad. George loved this meal and has asked that I make it more often.
Monday
Comfort Ham & Mac Casserole, Coleslaw
Tuesday
Homemade calzones stuffed with Sauce, Cheese, Ham, Pineapple, Onion & Mushrooms
Wednesday
Quick and Tasty Mexican Casserole
Thursday
Sloppy Joes, Garden Salad, Corn
Friday
Pizza night
So, did you make the orange sauce to go with your chicken cutlets? I bet that could be made using fat-free evaporated milk instead of cream...
Hmm. I might have to try that next time!
Glad I could bring recipe motivation!
Hi Roxanne,
No, yummy as it sounds I didn't have anything on hand to make it. I'll have to give it a try sometime. I just made chicken gravy this time.
Trixie
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