Modified Pantry Challenge

When I went to open up my pantry to put away my extra baking supplies from Christmas, I found something that looked pretty much like this:


Image from Gluten Free Easily

When I wanted it to look more like this:

Image from About.com

I decided it was about time that J & myself did some sort of pantry challenge. We like to eat out probably (definitely) too much. We agreed to eat out less often for the next 2 months and make more food at home while reducing what we buy at the grocery store for those two months to basically eggs, milk, & cheese (+ any super amazing deals on food staples). This Sunday our grocery store was running a deal on gala apples for 88 cents a pound (I definitely stocked up on those hopefully enough to last us for the next month) and San Giorgio pasta was on sale for 78 cents a box (even though our pantry is full and we have plenty of pasta in there, we eat pasta most days and couldn't afford to pass this up - it was even cheaper than the store brand! I probably should have looked for a coupon... darn).

So far this month we have eaten out twice and gotten take out once (which is a significant decrease), we have made a delicious meal of chicken tenders and creamy cheesy pasta with leftovers to keep us satisfied for a few days! We are actually eating our leftovers which rarely occurs, and we only bought the bare necessities (+ 2 deal items) when we went out for groceries. I'd say that so far the pantry challenge is working! We used up some items that were about to expire for breakfasts and lunches which amazes me!

Tonight we are having waffles with the brand new waffle maker I got for Christmas. I am super excited (plus we already had all the ingredients at home, go us!)

After the challenge of this next month and a little more than a half, I will share with you what my pantry looks like after the challenge (hint: it's gonna be super organized and functional again!)



Kate