I cooked up one of my bargain turkeys from the freezer today and we had a wonderful meal to kick off the week. Here's what's left to get us to next week.
My inside freezer has some pumpkin puree, frozen veggies, frozen soup, bread, a little Christmas ham, hamburger...
My fridge has veggies and fruit, tea and lemonade, condiments, turkey, eggs, pickles, and leftovers.
My outside freezer has some garden rhubarb, bread, chicken, beef and turkey, lots of broth, and a casserole.
My pantry has plenty of baking supplies, oatmeal, dried fruit, jars of applesauce and jam, a bit of top ramen, pasta, beans and some canned goods.
I also have a drawer full of rice, lentils potatoes, and garlic.
Not too shabby. I really have a lot to work with.
Would you like to share your shopping success, great coupon deal, or well stocked pantry? Please include a link directly to your post, not your homepage, and please include a link back to The Grocery Cart Challenge from your post.
12 comments:
Do you really not even buy fresh fruit and veggies on a week that you are cooking from your stockpile? There are only three of us, and I can barely buy enough fruit and veggies to last one week. Depending on how much snacking we do, especially on fruit, I will sometimes make an extra trip later in the week just for some fresh produce. I can't imagine being able to buy enough to last a family of six for two weeks.
I still had bananas, apples, oranges, cucumbers, green peppers, potatoes, carrots, and celery on hand so we were still good. We eat lots more produce when it's in season. The spring and summer we crave lots of fresh stuff and much comes from our garden but fall and winter we eat less.
Wow, you are doing great feeding your family on that. I know I always like to use up things that have been hanging around my pantry and freezer for awhile. This month I am targeting these items in particular and so far it has been interesting. Way to go!
I love your 'shopping' this week. It is surprising how much that can be accumulated even on a small budget.
Because I love your blog, you have been nominated for the Lemonade Stand award!
love your blog. just a heads up you probably already know but if not... add some water filled milk jugs to your deep freeze and it will run less and save electricity. when they are mainly empty they run more to maintain the cold. I keep jugs on top of my freezer to add back in as I empty my freezer. hth
love your blog. just a heads up you probably already know but if not... add some water filled milk jugs to your deep freeze and it will run less and save electricity. when they are mainly empty they run more to maintain the cold. I keep jugs on top of my freezer to add back in as I empty my freezer. hth
A great way to learn to shop at home is having young (or not, I suppose!) adult kids come home for a day or two and fill up a grocery bag or two for them to take home. It always amazes us all that we can share so much without missing it. It makes us feel quite fortunate!
Gayle, did you know that if you fill up your freezer with bags of ice or storage containers with ice or something that your power consumption for the freezer will be much, much lower? A full freezer is an efficient freezer. Save on your food bill and your electric bill!
Ditto on the ice jugs in the freezer, and this is the time to make up extra "cold" drinks ready to take with you on a moment's notice--just make sure they are the kind that can take the freeze w/o leaching plastic chemicals into your beverage.
We have a lot of $ items on sale this week so hope to take advantage of those. Thank you for taking the time to share with us--apreciate it. Blessings :)
Gayle I love you 'shop from the pantry weeks' and even though I'm in the UK your site is really helpful.. :-)
We have been eating from our pantry for a month (since mid-December) with no trips to the store. We won't begoing to the store at all in January, and we will be blessed if we are able to go by the end of February. My husband had a drop in income, and I don't want to have to charge food. His income can vary greatly, and we have lived before from our pantry for 27 months. We got 10 months to go shopping since then, and now we're back to eating from our pantry and garden.
We have lots of home-canned fruit to eat, and a little frozen fruit and vegetables. We have canned vegetables, and we started January with 200 pounds of potatoes (I bought 360 pounds for .20 a pound before Thanksgiving). We have eaten about 80 pounds since the beginning of January. (We are a family of 7).
To anonymous--a way to go shopping every two weeks--the first week, eat fresh fruits and veggies. The second week, eat frozen and canned. Also, many things will last you 2 weeks or more in the fridge--apples, carrots, oranges, lemons and potatoes, for example. We eat a LOT of fruits and vegetables, too.
Right now, I still have lemons and pomegranates from our garden.
We are blessed to live in a temperate climate where we can grow things in our garden year-round, but I have a friend who lives in North Dakota who grows 90% of her family's fruits and vegetables in her garden (it's not giant, either). She fills her freezer with green beans, swiss chard, etc. and she cans a lot of things, including apple juice and sauce from her trees. She only spends $20 in winter on produce, and she has several teenage boys!
Here's my month's worth of meals from our pantry:
http://theprudenthomemaker.com/winter.aspx
I love "looking" inside people's pantries, fridges, etc. What was funny is that I have the exact same side-by-side fridge you do.
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