Downside of my food challenge: I’m pretty much thinking about food all the time.
Upside of my no-waste month is I’ve hardly needed any groceries. So far I’ve bought milk (twice), eggs, and spinach.
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Since last week I have further eaten down without replacement:
- tetrapack quart of soymilk
- tahini
- jar of homemade “bacon” bits
- jar of homemade marinara
- package of fresh rice noodles
- herbal tea
- 1/2 lb bag frozen long beans (1 of 4 bags in the freezer)
- jar of homemade kimchi
This week I spent $15.83 (to bring the total thus far to $24.44) and purchased only often used perishables and veg (half & half, cucumbers, avocados ($0.50 each!), red onion, yellow onion, lettuce, lemon, lime, sweet potato, eggs, AP flour). Still have potatoes, carrots, some cabbage, frozen beans, frozen zucchini. Neighbors today brought me a few oranges, lemons, and grapefruit they brought back from Arizona.
I made and then consumed corn tortillas for several dishes. Opened a can of baby corn (some still left). Made homemade fettuccine and spaghetti and used up the open jar of homemade marinara, froze ~6 portions of uncooked pasta. Mixed up 1 cup of goats milk from the powdered milk and am liking it much less than the last time I was using it in coffee, not sure why or what I want to do about that. Made new batches of gochujang sauce and Thai sweet chili sauce but still have gochujang paste and fish sauce for at least one more round. Made more yogurt (used the rest of the milk). Still maybe 2 meals of fish/shrimp left. The current jar of jam is almost empty (not quite, next week!), have been thinning it to use as pancake syrup, a decent use. Opened a jar of cherry juice to mix with homemade seltzer because I am now completely out of herbal tea. Existing oatmeal and amaranth are almost gone. Rye flour is almost gone.
I have not yet added to my stock of bulk or staple items, so I am further net negative (which is good and the goal of this exercise for me). I will soon need milk, maple syrup, and possibly tahini (thinking on this). May make new kimchi soon. This week will be a little more difficult I think to find complete meals, but think I can be creative and go at least one more week without buying much.
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Tuesday evening I ate out (with friends) and kept things to 1/3 of my month’s eating out budget, so I’m at 1/3 coffee’s with friends and 1/3 meals out with friends, and hoping not to max out either of those categories.
Meal prep has also been going well. I haven’t been setting aside a set day to do all of it, but I’ve been doing more than the minimums I set weekly, and it’s definitely been helping me not by snacks/lunch at work – I think I’ve only bought one soft pretzel this year so far (I bought Peanut Chews at the same time – eek!) and haven’t bought lunch at all.
I haven’t done a Trader Joe’s shopping yet, but that will probably be either this coming Thursday or the following week.
Looking ahead today we’re eating “out” just at a friend’s house and have been tasked with bringing a 6-pack, so I’m going to count that in my eating out budget.
I dreamt I accidentally went out to eat.
Week 2 Checkin:
- Current grocery spending including treats, nearly halfway through the month: $40.12
- Current “eating out”: $4.60 - a fancy donut
- 1 night of “sad popcorn instead of dinner”
General feeling: I did ~okayish~ with meal planning this week. On Tuesday I biked 17 miles and forgot to pack enough food for that, and I ended up hangry by the time I left the office. I did make dinner, but I didn’t get anything else done after work - no skating, no work. So I planned better the rest of the week, remembering a longer bike commute + training = need more food. I’ve been bringing protein shake to work, and that’s the perfect mid-morning snack, not to mention I have way too much of it left over from a friend who gave it to me after she discovered she is allergic to stevia.
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Week 2 check in: eating out of that freezer regularly, though last night, with me down for the count worth bruising and soreness from my hard fall in the wee hours, it was frozen pizza from the fridge freezer, which hardly counts. But I did have more or the frozen blueberries in a glass of red wine at bedtime, so win?
The night before we used green tomatoes from the chest freezer in groundnut stew, and i plan to either use the rest of the chicken in tortilla soup or feed husband one of the 500,000 frozen burgers. I’ve decided he’s on his own with those (he’s the one who buys them and I think they are gross.)
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Week 2 check in
We are doing OK. I had home made lunch every day and Ponder had it twice, so I’d call that a win. I got groceries delivered Friday night after meal planning on Thursday. I’m only planning 2 meals a week and I think we need 3, but I got no ideas.
I’m aiming for $200/week. Week 1 we did great. Week 2 I spent an extra $100 because I reviewed our pantry and refilled everything. I was doing that almost every week in November & December. This month I’ve done it once, and I won’t do it again until the start of February. If we actually run out of something like toilet paper we’ll get more, otherwise, nope.
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Week 2: Food spend $157.70. I cooked a big dinner once and we are a few things down from the freezer. Have done a meal plan for the coming week. And no plastic in our weekly shop, I bought a small amount of meat in our containers.
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Week 2 Update:
- Eat down freezer Finished frozen broccoli, 1/3 frozen rice, and a roll
- Eat that Trader Joe’s lentil soup that’s been in my cupboard for 6+ months Done. It was pretty good. I’ll probably buy it again for a quick, nutritious meal.
- Buy snacks from bulk section with reusable containers Not yet, potentially tomorrow morning
- Drink 1 cup of tea a day So far, so good, but I still need to have a cup today
- Make pitcher of iced tea Not yet
- Bring lunch and snacks to work, and bring utensils, reusable napkins, reusable containers, etc when doing so I was late to a 9AM meeting because i was packing my lunch, but successful so far.
- Avoid buying from cafeteria and vending machines at work (I put a container of oatmeal in my desk in case I run out of packed food. I will bring a spoon and jar tomorrow to leave at my desk so I don’t use single use cups or plastic). So far, so good. I haven’t had to break into the oatmeal yet, either.
- Bring my own mug and tea to work Successful so far.
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Operation use-up-the-beans has begun (technically it began last Monday since i got in just after midnight).
Last week’s lunches were five-bean chili, which is one of my go-tos when I need something easy since I can just toss everything into a slow cooker and pick it up later, but in this case instead of my standard five beans (cannelini, navy, kidney, black, pinto) I swapped out cannelini, navy, and pinto for lima, cranberry, and garbanzo. Tasted a little different, but generally made for good lunches.
This week I picked up half a dozen decent-sized bell peppers in the scratch-and-dent section and since I’ve got leftover onion and tomato sauce I’m going to do Mexican stuffed peppers with the rest of the lima beans (still don’t particularly like them, figure the spices will deal with that nicely) and rice.
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The ready-to-eat steak & mushroom pie from the grocery store isn’t something I enjoy, and has way too many carrot chunks. This is good to know, because now I won’t buy it when it is 50% off and stick it in the freezer where it falls into the ice cube tray while the new ice is freezing. We have one more, but the shadowy one can eat it one day when I’m not home for dinner.
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Sounds like a great blend - I think what my chili has been missing is more types of beans 
So far bringing my own snacks to work has been going great, turns out it was easier than I thought and I just needed a little commitment to motivate me. I found jerky and raisins on sale this weekend so I’ll be set for some time.
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Week two:
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$129.96/$350.00 for groceries. Did a pretty big shop on Friday and I feel like we are pretty well set for the upcoming week. Still working on eating down the freezer and pantry.
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$88.84/$125 on eating out. This past week we just got two lattes, which I put in this budget category. Husband says instead of eating out for his birthday he wants us to make a Chinese food feast at home, so this category won’t get hit as hard as I thought it would.
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That sounds DELICIOUS!
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Checking in:
So far I’ve ordered delivery three times. I’m not thrilled about that, but this is the Bad Part of the month; it only gets easier from here!
I haven’t let any meal kits go to waste yet 
I ate all the ones in the fridge, I don’t get more until Wednesday, now I have to find the discipline to eat the ones in the freezer. I can do this fine for work lunch, but dinner after work? That’s much harder.
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We… haven’t really felt like eating out so far this month? Which is unusual for us.
I went to a party yesterday, though, and there was a communal order of vegan tacos, which cost me $8.
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Week 2 updoot:
- Spending: $180.70/$300. A good chunk of this was a birthday dinner for boyfriend, whoops…but groceries have definitely still been reasonable.
- Veggies: …I have no earthly idea. I should probably actually pay attention to this
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Checking in for week 2!
- Spent $6.07 at the supermarket. It technically wasn’t on food. My husband was sick and he stopped to pick up some tissues and seltzer. Im still counting it because it’s something I would have normally purchased on a shopping trip.
- See above. We technically didn’t buy any “fill-in” stuff, but I am still counting it as a trip to the store
- No restaurant meals (my dad is coming up tomorrow and we’ll probably go out to eat on Wednesday)
- No personal money spent on coffee - still using gift cards
- This went well! Among other things I made a jambalaya recipe that said it would feed six but might be closer to ten servings. But it’s a new week and now I need to come up with another meal plan.
2 and 3. I have fresh-ish bananas. Maybe I’ll get around to making chia pudding tomorrow before they need to become freezer bananas? I haven’t used up any freezer bananas yet. Does anyone have recommendations besides banana bread and smoothies?
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So I made a meal plan for the week and now I cannot for the life of me, find it. But I tried, so it counts, right? Have to make another one for the week tonight.
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Oops, I missed week 1 check in (I was out of town, working days on my feet in a super crowded event with thousands of people attending). I stayed at my parent’s house and ate their food mostly so didn’t spend a ton.
Highlights
- like 30 pieces of leftover shrimp i got to take home from work for free
- big bottle of seasoning another vendor gave me for free
- purchased at event (this is an agricultural event): 2 big bags of instant potato flakes, 1 very large lionshead mushroom, 1 very large winter radish
- got a free pack of basil seeds so if i can manage to keep something alive i might have on demand fresh basil in the future
- free recipe book w/ 90 recipes in it (unfortunately mostly meat based dishes—but I’ll work around this)
Best dishes I ate at home from my parent’s pantry:
mac n cheese with shrimp and diced tomatoes
butternut squash with shrimp and artichoke.
Meal prepped tonight after I got back to my apartment, have 5 cups of rice.
Used the radish and spice I got, for the following recipe:
Summary
olive oil in bottom of small pot, throw in three cloves of garlic
dice radish into medium pieces, add to pot and cook on low
now add around 3/4 cups of chicken stock
add 1 can of cannellini beans
throw in salt and hot spice mix
add in 2 tbsp of butter
bring up to a boil to reduce stock
return to low
This recipe is very tasty but the disappointing thing is that with the pale white radish and the beige cannellini beans, it looks kind of gross like a big pile of gruel. Cannellini beans are probably my favorite behind garbanzo, but they do NOT look very appetizing. I don’t really care when I’m eating it but it bums me out when something is good but sad looking.
I have sooooo much homemade yogurt too because I left it all at home when I left town, so I theoretically should be good on snacks, but I should also pick up some apples and cheese sticks?
I also have chestnuts I have to figure out how to roast…
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