Phew! We made it! We ate our way through the January Pantry Challenge and we didn't starve, nor did we resort to eating canned cranberry sauce mixed with limp celery and outdated cake mix for dinner. *grins* Here were some of our goals for the month:
~Pantry Challenge month goals:
- Reduce our grocery bill by half of our usual $800-$850 by only purchasing produce and meat.
- Eat at home every night once our guests leave.
- Pack lunches every day for work (DT and I)
- Bake all our bread
Well, 3 out of 4 isn't bad. I didn't bake bread but a handful of times in January but we smashed all of our other goals. We ate at home all month long, with Community Group Night and Sister-Girl Nights being the only exception, and those were planned in advance. DT and I ate packed lunches at work all month long. And we even came in UNDER budget! I did some fancy math and by my best counts, I plated up 520 servings during the month of January, between the 6 and then 5 people that lived here, The BIGS eating out some nights, and bringing friends over some evenings. I spent
$383.79 for the entire month, and that included things like laundry detergent, toilet paper, and pet foods as well as our meals. If I divide the money spent by the servings made, our amount spent for each serving was just under
$.74. That's a number I can live with for sure.
AND...If I subtract the pet food and other non-food items, the cost per serving drops to a mere
$.61! I'm a Pantry Challenge winner for sure. We ate homemade pizza together every week, we made enough food for people to pack lunches all month long, and while every meal wasn't our favorite, we all went to bed every night with a full tummy and lighter pantry shelves. I cleaned out the new fridge and freezer while my friend Laura was in town, we ate a good chunk of the things in the deep freeze and the pantry is looking much lighter and tidier between the Pantry Challenge and the 3 hours I spent cleaning, decluttering, and organizing it at the end of the month.
I kept an account of some of our Pantry Challenge fun on Instagram, using the hashtags #FeedingTeenagers, #PantryChallenge, and #TheManCrewHouse.
It should be mentioned that a friend gifted us a large turkey this month
and we enjoyed nearly an entire week of turkey themed meals, and
another friend and I ended up at a grocery store while we were out
running errands together and she sent me home with a few bags of
groceries, helping us keep our numbers really low this month.
If you've never tried a Pantry Challenge, I encourage you to try one. Use up what you have, make a few new meals, be creative (the Internet is FULL of creative uses for odds and ends groceries) purchase as little as possible while still serving up nutritious meals. I tried to only purchase meat and produce this year. I normally only buy fresh produce, but a few shorter Pantry Challenges earlier in the Autumn had depleted my meat stash in the freezer, necessitating the purchase of some to get through the month. Feeding these guys requires meat. LOL!
