Tags
budget, cooking, dinner, grocery challenge recap, ingredients, january grocery challenge, meal planning, week 4
and so ends the final week of the january grocery challenge. i should warn you that we didn’t exactly end the challenge on the best note: i forgot to take pictures of half the week’s meals. but i did throw in a “grand finale” meal from tonight that capped off the challenge well.
Day One
the meal: after all the fantastic food at our baby party, we were too stuffed to even eat dinner. but it was totally worth it
Day Two
the meal: rice crusted quiche
ingredients used: leftover brown and white rice, leftover artichoke hearts, steamed broccoli, a yukon gold potato, cheddar cheese, local eggs, parmesan cheese
Day Three
the meal: pot roast sandwiches, deviled eggs, and leftover pot roast and elbow macaroni
ingredients used: pot roast, cheese, homemade bread, elbow macaroni, deviled eggs (leftover from the party)
Day Four
the meal: taco bell. mmm, healthy. the youth group had its monthly “last tuesday” gathering, grabbing dinner at taco bell and playing games in the restaurant.
Day Five
the meal: deviled eggs and grains mix with pot roast
ingredients used: leftover pot roast, cheese, deviled eggs, trader joe’s mixed grains
Day Six
the meal: brunswick stew, salad, toast
ingredients used: frozen brunswick stew, homemade bread, salad mix
Day Seven
the meal: pasta and pasta sauce
ingredients used: elbow macaroni, pasta sauce, parmesean cheese
Grand Finale: 1.31.11
the meal: chili over rice, corn bread
ingredients used: last of the leftover brown/white rice, last of the grass-fed ground beef, kidney beans, black beans, last of the carrots, last of the pasta sauce, tomato paste, homemade corn bread, creamed corn, last of the sour cream
Overall, this was a really fun challenge. we succeeded in forcing ourselves to use ingredients we already had on hand, be creative with what we made, and spend hardly any money on groceries this month. not that i’d want to limit myself like this all the time (my grocery list for this month is a mile-long with all the ingredients that i can’t wait to buy again), but it was definitely fun to work with what we had. sure, there were a lot of repeats, but i was never scared we wouldn’t be able to come up with something for dinner.
Weekly Grocery Purchases
– salad
– bananas
– butter
– applesauce
more grocery challenge stuff: the why, week 1 recap, week 2 recap, week 3 recap