I dreamt of asparagus the other night. I’m not sure exactly what that means and as I’m not really into dream analysis, I’m just going to assume that I’m craving the lovely spears. Being that its just the beginning of January in Montana and asparagus is no where near “in-season” and that we’re just half-way through our 6-month no grocery challenge, I won’t be having any real soon.
For the most part, however; all goes well in the challenge. We haven’t felt deprived in any way. Oh, we’ve had cravings, of course, but nothing we couldn’t get through. We have cravings even when we’re not on some kind of challenge and talk ourselves out of those all the time. Mostly we eat like we always have:
Breakfasts are usually homemade toast with home-canned jam, oatmeal, home-canned fruit, occasionally pancakes, and/or eggs.
Lunches consist of leftover soups, beans & rice, sandwiches with store bought canned tuna, hard-boiled eggs, home-canned / frozen veggies, and/or home-canned fruits. occasionally there’s a muffin or other treat in there too.
Dinners consist of soups (it has been soup weather after all) roasts and stews from the local cow we purchased, roasted chickens, stir-frys, homemade pizzas, hamburgers, tacos, meatloaves, the occasional homemade pasta dish, etc. Like I said, nothing too out of the ordinary.
I imagine we’ll be out of onions by the end of the month. I’ve been trying to use them conservatively but I suppose I just don’t know how to use onions conservatively. We put them in most everything we eat. I’d be out of garlic, already, if some dinner guests hadn’t given me several wonderful bulbs as a hostess gift. I’m guessing the rice and rolled oats will run out before the end of the challenge, but probably not the barley. We still have lots of dried beans and a goodly amount of beef and a few whole chickens left.
I will say its been a challenge to not let things get too routine or boring. It’s been fun and to be honest we’ll both enjoying it. I love it when we’re eating something and Jeff says, “The potatoes/carrots/peas/beans/whatever came from our garden.” It’s a real treat and even though everything we’re eating hasn’t come specifically from our garden or our own hands (We had a lot of store-bought stuff on hand, too) – the food storage we have in place is good. I don’t mind saying that’s a mighty good feeling. I know I need to update my pantry building page and I hope to do that this weekend, so you can where we’re at with what we put up.
Whether or not you’re doing a no-grocery challenge, do tell how is your food storage system holding up? If you did some home food preservation, how’s that pantry working out for you as we head into some long winter months?
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been doing an eat- from- food- storage challenge. For the most part we are holding up okay. Potatoes are probably going to be gone in a month, onions are gone but we are still eating dehydrated leeks. But we still have a lot of garlic. Still plenty of fruit and pickles of all varieties. We are still buying local meat and dairy.
Bu,t I crave a nice leafy salad. I hope that we get a January thaw because I will go dig out the beet greens that are under plastic and hope that they perk up a bit.
I love the places this challenge is taking me. I am much more intentional about what does go on the grocery list. As I go along I anticipate my need to have easy to prepare meals for those hectic days. So I will make a large batch of black bean burger mix and freeze it. I will be making a large bulk food order towards the end of March and I feel confident that I have plenty of room in the pantry for it.
I did a little food preservation last fall, pickles, salsa, applesauce, peaches…and was able to use some for Christmas gifts, with appreciative comments from all recipients. I will definitely being doing more pickling with a plan for gift-giving…and more salsa for me!
Wow, it sounds like you are in very good shape, lots of choices for meals, and they all sound delicious.
We are contemplating a challenge of sorts, but Mike is slow to buy in
I want to try going for one month without buying anything except agreed upon staples. He’s ok until I argue that M&Ms aren’t staple. I’m going to work on it though, we really need to use some stuff up before buying more.
You are doing great, congrats with the success.
I’m doing an eat from your pantry/freezer challenge this month witha reduced budget for groceries and it’s been interesting. I’m trying to improvise with ingredients already on hand to make something from scratch rather than purchase store-bought. I think it’s great what you’re doing and hope to do some home-preserving this year.
Like the other commenters above, I, too, am trying to curtail grocery spending to only those can’t do without items (such as coffee
) since I also have a freezer still more than half full of vegetables (like squash and okra) and plenty of canned green beans and tomatoes. Anyway, your posts intrigue me, so I went back to the first of the 6-mo no buying posts and noticed you said a 14 soup rotation I would love to know more about those, i love soups and am always looking for more great recipes. Thanks
Barbara, That was mostly written as a joke (obviously not very well, I’m a poor a humor writer). Anyway my fear was that all we were going to eat was 14 soups through this challenge and that hasn’t been the case at all.
We eat a ton of soup around here in the winter, mostly its just a hodge-podge of veggies and left over bits of meats, rarely does it follow any kind of recipe.
I know what you mean, leftover beef means veg.beef soup with barley thrown in, leftover chicken in more of a chicken and rice or maybe a gumbo. Not exactly recipe material, but pretty much predictable. Anyway, when I run across a good one, I’ll let you know
I’m not in on this challenge, but we’ve been eating through our stores nevertheless.
Garden potatoes AND storage potatoes gone. Apparently if they’re there, we eat them. The storage squash is still hanging in there, but we should get to it soon. Canned tomatoes are almost gone–we didn’t do a lot but hope to do many more this year. We’re enjoying the applesauce and frozen beans greatly, and I’m nibbling dried apples as my work snack. The lesson for the coming season, I think, is to preserve a)more tomatoes in all forms and b) more variety. Much as we love beans and applesauce, we’re jonesing for other flavors–but supermarket veggies fall flat.
Because I don’t own or have room for a freezer, I can’t store much food. I do have berries in the frig’s freezer that I purchased at the farmers market. But our market is open year round and it doesn’t seem to be particularly useful for us to store up much produce. I did blanch and freeze a few lbs of green beans because the bean season ended last month.
Love the concept. I’ve finished a wine cellar and am just finishing a root cellar that will be ready for the coming season, and intend on making good use. I’m already storing food more, meal planning better, enjoying the economic and health benefits, etc. A very worthwhile way to live. Now that I’ve got wine, root veg, fruits, game meats and pork sorted, next step is cheese and dry cured meats..
This is so inspiring that you’ve been able to do this and that so much of what you are eating truly is coming from the labor of your own collective hands. Obviously I haven’t been keeping up with blogs very well the last several months, but it’s good to see that things are going well over there!!