Almost two weeks ago when I challenged myself to use the food we had in the house without spending any money outside of my allotted food budget, I had a little less than $3.40 remaining in my food budget to get us through without compromising the quantity of nutritional quality of our meals, plus my in-house groceries were much less varied than usual. But we did it, with 51 cents remaining!!
My oldest son kept commenting on how well we were eating while spending so little; it really didn’t feel like deprivation. It just took more creativity to plan meals with different ingredients than I was used to working with. Actually, our meals were nicer because they were planned out in advance, versus some weeks when I take it day by day and it isn’t as organized.
We did get some unexpected assistance from outside sources, though we would have managed fine without it. One source was a friend of my husband who works in a supermarket – he asked him if he wanted several loaves of whole grain bread, so my husband said, sure, why not. It seems that once a week, there is a pickup for whatever packaged bread hasn’t been sold in a week from all the stores in the area, and the bread truck driver offered to give it to this friend of my husband, who couldn’t use it but figured with our size family, we could. So we got twelve loaves of excellent quality bread, in an assortment of flavors. This friend has been working there for years, and had this opportunity every week for all that time, and never thought of it until now. And today he had the chance again, and forgot about it until it was too late. Isn’t it amazing that this particular week was the one that he happened to think about it? This made lunchtimes very simple for the last week. Of course, I had the ingredients to bake the bread myself, which is what I was planning, but it was nice that I didn’t have to.
To finish off the last meal of the challenge (tonight’s dinner), we had a couple of pizza pies. My mother in law volunteered for a community social event last night, and though eight pies were ordered for the kids at the event to eat from the local pizza store, they were virtually untouched. So the volunteers afterwards split them up amongst themselves and took them home. My mother in law thought the kids would appreciate them (she was right!) and brought them over today. Wasn’t that timely? She didn’t even know about my pantry challenge!
I always start the new food budget of the month on the 15th, which is tomorrow, and I have to be honest and say I’m really, really looking forward to stocking up. I’m not comfortable watching my food reserves in the house go down. I haven’t increased my food budget in quite some time, so with the recent surge in grocery costs, I’ve had to be even more careful to squeeze out a lot of value when I buy groceries. I’m trying to not only buy appropriate amounts for our monthly needs, but to simultaneously build up our reserves. I’m enjoying the challenge, though there are times like this month that I feel like it’s one step forward, one step back. Overall, though, I look at it as a challenge to be enjoyed, and I’m looking forward to finding some wonderful deals tomorrow!
Avivah
