And something is kind of wrong with this challenge. Or at least the way we're doing it. After three weeks, I don't feel like our pantry/freezer is any less full! Pretty sure that was the goal of the challenge. Oops.
Either way though, we have spent a lot less money on groceries this month!
As far as eating this past week, we did enjoy homemade pizza, artichoke chicken, Thai rice noodles and chicken and tacos. Oh yeah, I did have a chicken pot pie on Wednesday, but it may have been the store-bought freezer type. As you can see, the week didn't go exactly as planned.
Friday was out to eat with friends for me and pizza for Kody. Saturday we spontaneous ate sushi at one of our favorite restaurants and today we had tacos for lunch and leftover pizza for dinner.
And on that note, our pantry challenge is coming to a close for the month of January because the in-laws are coming into town tomorrow! Which, from past experiences, means Katie probably won't be doing much cooking this coming week, we probably won't be eating too many canned chicken noodle soup dinners (like Kody had on Wednesday) and we may be left with more food in our fridge than we can consume. These are definitely all very good things.
For some reason, I felt this gave Kody and I the excuse to splurge a little during our grocery shopping yesterday. We also went shopping while we were starving, waiting for the sushi restaurant to open, which may have contributed to our lack of self-control just a little.
We tried out a new grocery store called Caputo's, which is supposed to have amazing produce prices and it did! We also will definitely be buying our spices there - so cheap!
We picked up a 5lb bag of potatoes for $0.99 (not sure yet what we'll use them for because we rarely buy potatoes, but I figured it'd be good for us!), 10 yogurts, Snickers ice cream (If you can believe this, I haven't bought ice cream since the 10 or so containers we bought last summer! I've been dying!! Kody even encouraged me to get some being that I have to begin my half-marathon training in a week :( Splurge for one more week!), apples, pears, bananas, grapes, Pomegranate juice, bread and summer sausage.
We also got some oatmeal, milk, crackers, tortillas, Parmesan cheese and gummy bears at Aldi.
We spent $36.76 total, which puts our monthly total at around $85! I have never spent that little on groceries! I'm sure our bank account would be real happy if we can keep this up for a few more months!
My plan is to unofficially continue the pantry challenge for a few more weeks, simply because we still have a lot of food in there! I'm excited to get back to couponing, but I actually think I spend less money without coupons, simply because I only bought what we needed this month. It was hard to pass up some deals, like a deal on cheese that ends today, but it was such a relaxing month and we ate so much more fruit than ever before! Mainly because there wasn't anything else for us to take to lunch, haha.
Now, I think I'm going to help myself to a bowl of ice cream. And no, I didn't run today.
Way to go, Katie! You totally inspired me to use up more of the food in my house. I also made a dinner tonight with fresh broccoli that was going to go bad, and ricotta cheese that expired at the end of the month (as well as pasta and sauce that I had in the cupboard)! It's so sad to throw away food if I'm not smart about using it up. Enjoy the week with your in-laws and some good cooking! And the bowl of ice cream-oh yeah.
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