Update Week 1- Cut Back Grocery Shopping Challenge

Hey guys!


Here's that update I promised.
It's been one week so far since we started the no grocery shopping challenge and for the most part things are going okay. We are running very low on meat, but I'm okay with that. Looks like I will be working on quite a few meatless dinners this coming week. We have ran out of flour, which I use often for a lot of different recipes so I am not happy about that. I may eventually give in and purchase some because it is so versatile in the number of things I can make with it. Any who... here is a look at what this week looked like for us.

I've kept a track of our breakfasts, lunches and dinners for the week. Sorry I didn't take many pictures, thought most are nothing fancy. Keep in mind breakfast and dinner there are 4 of us but lunch is only three of us during the week. On the weekends we are all home.

We did go shopping on Saturday morning to Albertson's Supermarket. We needed to get milk since we ran out and picked up a few items. The little ones would not be able to survive without their cup of milk before bed. They've been wanting some bananas and we spotted asparagus on sale. This has got to be the least amount of things I have ever picked up when grocery shopping. 





Here is what we got.

Milk gallon $1.99

Milk gallon clearance 50% off $1.24

Milk quart clearance 50% off .75 

Bananas .55

Asparagus $1.50 

Cheese $1.99

Total: $8.02 (much better than our usual $80 - $120/week)

Week 1

Day 1

- Baked peanut butter and banana oatmeal

- Homemade pepperoni pizza

- Left over pizza w/ homemade boneless buffalo wings, mozzarella sticks and celery w/ blue cheese 

Day 2

- Cold cereal w/ milk

- Pasta w/ sauce and cut up vienna sausage

- Italian chicken w/ peppers, onions & veggies and side of leftover pasta w/ sauce from lunch 

Day 3

- Cold cereal / leftover baked oatmeal 

- PB&J for snack 

- Chicken nuggets and carrots

- Homemade empanadas, yellow rice with pork pieces, and pinto beans on the side 

Day 4

- Left over homemade pancakes (freezer)

- Left over pasta w/ sauce 

- Wild rice w/ carrots, broccoli and cauliflower. Baked chicken breast topped with provolone and tomato 

Day 5

- Leftover homemade pancakes (freezer)

- PB&J on homemade bread

- Fried egg, cassava and frying cheese topped with onion

Day 6

- Egg omelette muffins (cauliflower, broccoli, carrots onions, cilantro. Sliced and toasted homemade bread.

- PB&J on homemade bread

- Brown rice,Red rice mix w/ Lentils & chicken quarters 

Day 7

- Overnight oats with Greek Vanilla yogurt, fresh apples, and raisins. 

- Black bean and cheese burritos on homemade tortillas w/ oven fries 

- Garlic ginger soy baked chicken quarters w/ garlic parmesan asparagus

I can tell these next few weeks are just going to get harder. It's already getting tough. We ran out of bread during the week, so I went on to good old Pinterest and found a nice simple recipe and made my own. The kids enjoyed the bread without any complaints and my husband and I did as well. In fact, I found it more filling than store bought bread and what's best, it's much healthier and I feel good with serving it to my children. Unfortunately it wasn't picture worthy as I forgot to do the second rest period for the dough to rise and allow the yeast to do its magic. Oops! So it didn't rise too much when it cooked in the oven. As a result, it was a little dense, but I'll do better next time. It still tasted yummy though. Especially warm straight out of the oven. Needless to say we eat a lot of bread and went through this 1-lb loaf in two days. But now without the flour, things are going to be even tougher. 

We included left overs in as many days as possible. Including our leftovers not only made things a little easier for me since I usually just needed to heat and serve. It also prevented things from going to waste and saved me from having to figure out another meal to make.  I did also use the left overs to make something new in some cases. 

I will add updated pictures of the fridge and pantry tomorrow so you can see what we are working with starting this new week. I will say with this challenge we have also noticed we keep stock of things that are not really food that we probably should cut out if we want to maintain a good budget. Its junk we do not really need and is not good for us anyway. We have been wanting to make a better effort of eating healthier for the benefit of our health and setting a good example for our children. So ridding our pantries of these foods altogether will also kind of give us a fresh start. While I won't throw it in the garbage(we did pay for it after all) we will not be buying them again. 

Be sure to check back next week for Week 2 update.