I feel like I am doing the lamest pantry challenge in the history of pantry challenges. That’s probably not true, since we are sticking to our major goal of “no eating out” pretty well (which actually makes up for my husband’s monthly pay cut almost exactly on its own), but seeing the tiny amounts of money others are spending on groceries this month is somewhat discouraging. As circumstances would have it, this month also turned out to be when we could buy our annual side of beef and receive a big dry goods order from the bulk food coop that delivers to our area. So I feel like I just spent a lot of money and my pantry is rather full at the moment, at least for things like dried fruit, cashews, grains, and beef.
On the other hand… while it’s a big chunk of change to lay out all at once, buying in bulk saves us money in the long run. (I think. I am having a really hard time figuring out how to account for our bulk purchases. Do I divide them up and subtract them from the grocery budget over the period of time we’re likely to use them? Do I take them out of the grocery budget the month that I buy them? Do other people expend this many brain cells trying to figure this out? I doubt it.)
The grass-fed beef we just got ended up being a bit over $5/lb. The last time I looked at grass-fed beef in the store (a year ago) it was $7.99/lb for hamburger. And I got brisket and steaks, too. So buying in bulk makes it feasible for us to eat much more grass-fed meat in a greater variety of cuts than we would normally be able to. It’s still a significant investment, though. (Here’s a good post on how to buy local grass-fed beef, if you’re interested.)
And, as I had hoped, we have spent a lot less on groceries this week after Andy went to Costco at the beginning of the month. Hopefully everything will average out.
So this is how last week happened, food-wise:
(I included last Monday and Tuesday of last week in my first pantry challenge update.)
Wednesday: Wednesday was rough. I wasn’t feeling too well, and thus not very creative when it came to food. I made the chicken sausages I was trying to eke out for lunch instead, and the 4 lbs of ground beef I was thawing to make enough soup to freeze turned into hamburgers for dinner instead. And the boys ate almost all of them — nearly 4 lbs of meat! Katydid made a big pan of homefries alongside, and those all disappeared, too. What am I going to do when more of these boys are teenagers???
(**Note: more on the boy theme… every time I walk into the kitchen somebody wants to be fed. So while I’m not saying anything about snacks, you must assume that there is snacking going on… sometimes on the food I was planning to make for dinner, which drives me a little crazy.)
Thursday: Lunch — Leftover buffet — the few hamburgers and sausages that were left + the leftover spaghetti carbonara from Tuesday night. The boys complained about the lack of buns and the fact that they all had to share small amounts of the spaghetti.
Dinner — Pepper Chicken, from Not Your Mother’s Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook 
After dinner, I sat down to pit cherries from the freezer and a couple of the kids sat down with me and ate them as soon as I had pitted them. So that relieved me of trying to figure out what to do with 2 + quarts of cherries.
Friday: Breakfast — Biscuits
Lunch — Pizza ( A rousing success. I used the last of the tomato paste to make the sauce and decided I liked using the tomato paste better, because it made a thicker sauce)
Dinner — Baked potatoes with Dubliner Cheese and Carmelized Onions (from Not Your Mother’s Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook
Saturday: Breakfast — Homemade Pork Sausage + bananas + eggs (for those who wanted)`
Lunch — Leftover pizza and/or potatoes + fruit
Dinner — Leftover Pepper Chicken and rice noodles + salad with the romaine, red cabbage, and 1/4 of a red onion left in the crisper drawer + oranges from last month’s bulk order
Sunday: I woke up with the twins’ sore throat and stayed home from Mass with them.
Breakfast — soaked oatmeal porridge (I didn’t have any yogurt, so I soaked it with lemon juice)
Lunch — Vegetable Beef Noodle soup, with the beef broth I made during the week + Tinkyada spaghetti style rice pasta + carrots, frozen green beans, the remains of a bag of frozen corn, and a can of tomato sauce. Everybody liked it, which surprised me. I ate mine with Bubbie’s sauerkraut.
Dinner — Steak, baked potatoes (again), and the rest of the salad. One of the ribeye packages from our beef order wasn’t vacuum sealed, so we thawed it to eat right away, along with the remaining small rib-eyes from the old cow. There were also pears.
Andy also made himself some Egg Muffins (using bacon and no peppers) for breakfast for the week. I had been planning on making some for him, but since I didn’t feel well, he took over. Nice man.
Monday: Breakfast — Fried rice and quinoa cakes with some leftover sprouted rice/quinoa I needed to use up. We ate them with lots of butter and maple syrup.
Lunch — The rest of the noodle soup from Sunday + oranges
Dinner — Cheese and/or steak (with leftover steak) oven quesadillas + apples. I had asked Andy to look for corn tortillas when he went grocery shopping on Friday, but to make sure they were really gluten-free. He couldn’t find corn tortillas, so he bought 2 packages of Rudi’s GF tortillas… more expensive than gold at $6.99/8 medium tortillas. Then one of my kids put them in the fridge instead of the freezer, so I needed to use them. They were very good, but my kids could have eaten another package… which would have made dinner cost just as much as when we picked up pizza from Little Caesar’s.
Tuesday: Breakfast — soaked oatmeal porridge again
Lunch — cheesy nachos + oranges
Dinner — Um. Something with cube (minute) steaks. Probably cooked in some kind of gravy.
At this point, life is getting interesting, because we’re in the middle of an ice storm. Power hasn’t gone out as of 4:30 PM central time, but my husband has been working from home for the past day and a half and I sent him out this morning to replenish our milk, eggs, and coffee. I boiled some eggs and made some kefir/yogurt, just in case we’ll be unable to have a hot breakfast tomorrow… but we have fuel for the camp stove, fire wood for the wood stove, and gasoline for our generators, so we should be all right.
Three Plus Two Homeschool 