Pantry Challenge Week or Month

Friday, January 21, 2011

Pantry Challenge Week or Month | Family Economics

Have you ever started to write out your grocery list or your meal plan and discovered that your cupboards are stuffed to the pantry challenge gills, and your freezer is practically overflowing? After weeks and months of stockpiling and taking advantage of the great deals on your favorite ingredients at the grocery store, it is inevitable that your pantry, fridge and freezer begin to burst at their seams.

When this happens, it’s time for pantry challenge week.

The goal is simple: Spend less than $20 to $30 at the grocery store for the basics like milk, eggs and bananas, and then get creative with the ingredients that you have on hand from previous shopping trips.

Here are some cooking ideas for the week:

• Do some batch cooking to use up extra flour, eggs or milk. Make triple or quadruple batches of pancakes, waffles or muffins. Double or triple a favorite soup recipe that calls for pantry staple ingredients like canned corn, canned tomatoes and other canned vegetables and beans.

• Perhaps you stocked up on cans of tuna when they were on sale for 50 cents per can or less, make tuna salad sandwiches for lunch every day or even dinner.

• Maybe your pantry is overflowing with canned pumpkin, leftover from the holidays; try using it to make pumpkin cupcakes, or pumpkin waffles (these have chocolate chips in them—yum!)

• If you’ve stocked up on frozen vegetables when they were on sale for 88 cents; use them to make slow cooker beef and vegetable soup or slow cooker curried coconut chicken.

• Also, survey the contents of your freezer and pull out the packages of meat or chicken that you froze, after stocking up during a recent sale. Make a meal plan so that you can use all those for dinner during the pantry challenge week.

Write out a short grocery list and set your spending limit for the week. You’ll be well on your way to a successful pantry challenge week!

What do you think? Are you up for a pantry challenge week?

3 Comments so far

On Monday, January 24, 2011, Crystal from Maryland wrote

Pantry challenges are great. I need to do one myself soon. Thanks for the reminder. However, I would like to discourage anyone from serving tuna every day of the week, regardless of how thrifty, especially if you're serving children or women of child bearing age. Mercury build up is not good for anyone, but especially detrimental to anyone in those groups.

On Sunday, January 23, 2011, California Momme wrote

This is my "pantry challenge" YEAR! After looking over my pantry, cool room and 2 freezers, I realized I needed to clean house! This is the year of less for me :).

On Sunday, January 23, 2011, Denise wrote

I am so up for a pantry challenge. I think I have about $40 or less left in the grocery fund this month. If I wanted to get up off the couch right now I could go check, but I don't. :)

Thank You

Your comment has been sent successfully.

We'll review your submission within the next few days.

POST A COMMENT

Please enter your comment.

Your Comment

Your Signature Example: "Todd from Chicago" or "The Silva's from Texas." To protect your privacy, you may want to use only a first name or nickname

Please read our Terms of Use in the link below.

Keep in mind that by submitting stories/comments/pictures/videos, you're confirming that you own them and they're only about you and other family members who have agreed that the content/images may appear on SC Johnson's web site indefinitely and anywhere in the world, without compensating you/them or obtaining any further permission from anyone. You understand that we may include your first name and state as the person making the submission.
In addition, as a family company, we support your family's right to privacy. Remember that if you post stories/comments/pictures/videos that include or mention family members - especially those under 18 - you're acknowledging that the items will be online and accessible to anyone on the Internet.

By submitting this form, I'm agreeing to the Terms of Use.

To help prevent spam, please enter the words you see in the box below.

Type the code shown

Looking for more great ideas? Visit our Green Choices blog for eco-friendly tips and activities to try with your family.

Visit Green Choices

Every year, millions of plastic trigger bottles end up in landfills. Concentrated refills use less packaging, decrease shipping impacts and reduce waste. Small green choices can make a big difference.

Learn More

&nbps;