This month, we’re shopping our kitchen in order to use up what we have so we can save money and clear kitchen clutter.
Here we go with Day 1 of the Pantry Challenge. I’ll confess, I did not do any of the prep I might normally do.
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I’m coming into the new year absolutely exhausted, so prepare yourself for less detail than I might normally share
In past years I’ve done a fair amount of pantry challenge planning in advance, but that hasn’t happened yet. I tidied the pantry and cleaned out the fridge. I made a quick meal plan, but I’m not sweating it.
I am so exhausted. I hope to explain later this week. For now, let’s just look at Day 1.
What We Ate Today
Breakfast – My daughter made my Basic Pancake Recipe for everyone. Some kids had eggs. I ate a leftover appetizer quesadilla from NYE.
Lunch – I baked four loaves of sourdough bread today, loosely based on this recipe. Lunch was a Snacky Lunch with veggies, cheese, bread, ham, and hummus.
Dinner – One of our new favorite dinners this fall is Potato Rice Coleslaw Bowls. I know, totally weird but it works. I make rice in the instant pot, roast potatoes, make this coleslaw, and cook some kind of protein, like skillet chicken or taco meat. The textures of the rice, spuds, and cabbage are really amazing together.
What did YOU do for Day 1?
PS If you notice comments from last year below, go ahead and disregard them. I’m basically reusing last year’s urls but rewriting each post as we go along through the month.
Emily
After following the last few years I’ve decided to join in the comments. My pantry challenge this year is not only about saving some money but using up the stuff that has been sitting for way too long. I won’t even bother posting what my kids eat, they eat anything that isn’t nailed down or the colour green.
B- Beans and cheese on toast with a Mandarin
L- a very random plate of leftover Mac and cheese, pb on rice cake, yogurt with granola and watermelon.
D- split pea soup with a grilled cheese with onions and bacon jam.
Snacks- hot chocolate bomb from Christmas, 2 chocolate chip cookies and leftover advent Calender gummy bears the kids didn’t like
Lynn from NC Outer Banks
Emily, I “lurked” a few years before joining in. Glad you’re here. It is a fun and informative month!
Brenda
We do special meals for New Years Day
Brunch Stuffed French Toast with eggs and hash browns and fruit
Snack. Finished apps from last night
Dinner Lentil Soup with Sourdough Loaf
Bunuelos and tea at end of day
Heidi
Jessica, popping in after a few years hiatus. So glad to get your email notifications and to see that time is still passing the same for you with now older kiddos as it is for me (mine keep getting older and reminding me that I am also getting older! – grade 10 and first year uni!). This pantry challenge is always something I enjoyed (slash needed?) doing when my kids were younger. We have now relocated 2500 miles within Canada, and I do not have an actual pantry OR a stand alone freezer. Times have certainly changed. But, I will be participating for the few weeks I’m not away visiting/assessing?/helping? (aging) parents in Arizona. Thanks for the many years of blessing me with this challenge. It forces me out of my comfort zone and to figure out what to do with the frozen snap peas in my freezer that I try to ignore 😉
Heather M
Hi Heidi! Just wanted to let you know that you are not alone in the lack of pantry or stand alone freezer. We, too, live by the cupboards and just the fridge/freezer in the kitchen. And, also, I really understand about the aging parents thing between my husband and I, we have all 4 parents still, aged 79, almost 81, 82, and 85. We are entering that phase for sure. I spent 32 straight days with my parents in CA after my day had an unfortunate “incident” that should have never happened and he was lucky to survive. And my mother’s health isn’s awesome so she needed the help. Anyhow, here in solidarity with you. Happy New Year!
Lynn from NC Outer Banks
Hi Heidi (and Heather). Yes, totally understand the situations with aging parents. My dear mother is the only parent my husband and I have left after losing his nearly 96 yr old mother in Sept. My mother will be 92 in 6 weeks, and thus far is doing pretty well, though her recent Covid diagnosis gave us all a scare. It’s hard whether you live away from the parents, or in the same city-for different reasons. We have always tried to make monthly visits (500 miles round trip) and are extending our visits now. We were fortunate that all of our parents lived in the same city. We’ll look forward to your posts when you are able. Happy New Year.
Danielle L Zecher
Breakfast: Leftover eggnog French toast.
Lunch: Leftover chili
Dinner: Collard greens, black eyed peas, and cornbread.
Dessert: I had leftover buttermilk pie. Hubby had a leftover brownie.
Lynn from NC Outer Banks
Hi Danielle! Welcome back.
Danielle L Zecher
It’s good to see everybody this year.
JulieT from Minnesota
B-leftover apple crisp(hey it’s oatmeal and apples!)and coffee for me and toast and milk for hubby
L- breakfast when we returned from church-diced potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions fried into a hash, rest of the bacon fried (left from the weekend), and fried over easy eggs
D-leftover shrimp and cocktail sauce, cocktail wieners in BBQ sauce from the freezer, taco dip and chips, and lunchbox peppers stuffed with Boursin cheese and wrapped in bacon from the freezer. An appetizer kind of night while watching football. Plus the last 2 small pieces of strawberry cheesecake.
I inventoried my 3 freezers and my home canned goods. I have a list of things I need to use up. Tomorrow I will work on meals for the month. All sweets and baked goods are gone so we start fresh and start to desugar ourselves after all the Christmas goodies.
My hope is to spend $50 this month for fresh produce, milk, and creamer instead of our usual budgeted $350. I would like to empty the small chest freezer and use 40 jars of home canned food. We will see.
Lynn from NC Outer Banks
Hello again Julie T! I thought of you when I saw all of those recent F.R.I.G.I.D. temps in Minnesota. Brrr. It was cold enough here for us in the teens.
I have read your posts on one of other blogs that you and I both frequent, as you’ve been eating down your canned goods. I’m just amazed at your bounty! (At least I think that is you!?) Happy New Year.
Stephanie M.
Hi Sandi. It’s so nice to hear from you! Thank you so much for the birthday wishes. Paying off my mortgage has become an obsession with me. Lol. I’m always looking for just a little more to add on to the principal. I’ve also been making very large payments each month and I’m seeing the results. I don’t know if it will help you stay motivated or if you just want to see your progress in a fun way but I built a tower out of lego blocks and I put stickers on each one starting at 70,000 because that to me was the final countdown. Each time I get into the next denominations like the 60’s, I remove a block until I get to the finish line. For me it’s a fun thing. I don’t need the motivation. I just like taking the blocks off. ??. Good luck with your journey. If you want to trade emails so we can cheer each other on, let me know.
Lynn from NC Outer Banks
Welcome back Stephanie M! Paying off a mortgage is definitely motivating and a good feeling once it is accomplished. I’ll be pulling for you.
Sarah B.
This is my first comment on here. Just starting following this blog at the end of 2021. 🙂 So I prepped some cream cheese and strawberry jam sweet rolls on NYE using ingredients I already had, and I baked them Saturday morning. It was my first attempt at making my own sweet rolls, and they leaked a bit and were slightly overbaked, but my husband and daughter and I still ate them up. Lunch was leftover stuffed pepper soup. We did go out for dinner for a friend’s birthday. I just discovered this challenge and I have lots of stuff to use up from the holidays. Hopefully, I can save us some money as January is tight budgetwise. 🙂
Jessica Fisher
Welcome, Sarah! So glad to have you join us!
Suz
We had out annual Indian food for New Year’s Eve… my favorite we got way too much snd ate that all weekend! We froze the last piece for garlic naan for next month as we are all good with Indian food. Goi g to start working on the fridge making meals on that so today unstuffed peeper casserole snd I will make thst into a soup tomorrow.
Lara
I read these every year, but this year will join in. Back on Thanksgiving, I bought two turkey breasts and popped one in the freezer. At Christmas, we thought we’d have 10 for dinner. Spiral hams had been recalled, so I bought two smaller half hams (still 9 lbs total). Turns out 6 of our 10 had to cancel for various reasons. No room in the freezer for that second ham due to the turkey. Ack! We’ll be eating lots of ham this week. I sent about half of the Christmas ham home with the guests, made some ham & bean soup, and we had sandwiches with the rest during Christmas week.
So….NY Day, I cooked up the 2nd ham in the crockpot. Hubby was in the mood for blueberry oatmeal bake for breakfast, so he whipped up a batch. My breakfast was a (previously) hard-boiled egg and a slice of rye toast. I had the oatmeal bake for lunch. Dinner was the ham, tiny hasselback potatoes (used up a bag of small goldens for this) and the rest of a bag of peas. NYE, I baked some choc chip cookies so we each had a couple for dessert.
1/2
Breakfast – Me: Hard-boiled egg & toast. Hubs: Oatmeal bake.
Lunch: Ham sandwiches, an orange and a cookie.
Dinner: Leftover pasta from 12/30. Finished it up! Small tossed salad and a couple of cookies for dessert.
Sandi
I didn’t end up getting a ham this year but love it so I’m a little jealous. I tried to get some after the holiday but they were all sold out. (Or recalled which I hadn’t heard about) Hopefully they will come back soon so I can get some!
Deja
Breakfast-omelette for hubs with bits of scraps found in the fridge, I had oatmeal with blackberries and walnuts, kids had turkey sausage with slices of your vanilla cranberry bread.
Lunch- random leftovers foraged in the fridge. I had leftover stir fry… I’m literally the only one who will eat the leftovers of this meal that everyone loves fresh made.
Dinner-roasted Turkey with all the trimmings. Carcass in the crockpot to make broth for soup on Tuesday.
Lynn from NC Outer Banks
Happy New Year Jessica! So excited to join you again with the Pantry Challenge. Thank you for hosting! Looking forward to hearing about your meals. I’m also looking forward to reconnecting with old posters as well as some new ones and learning from all!
As usual, my pantry, fridge and freezers are stuffed. I had thought that my family would come here first for Christmas, so I had planned lots of meals in anticipation. The plans changed and we all wound up going straight to my mother’s. I took meals with me, but not enough to significantly put a dent in my stores. So, I’m hoping that I can again make freezer space I need for local shrimp and get a frugal head start on the 2022 food budget.
1/1/22
B: I’m trying intermittent fasting so coffee only for me. Eggs, sausage and toast for DH.
L: DH: LO sloppy joes on a bun, fruit and chips. I had sloppy joes meat, crackers,
fruit
D: Traditional southern New Year’s Day food: pulled pork, cornbread, collards and black-eyed peas.
1/2/22
B: coffee, DH: avocado toast
L: sloppy joes meat, crackers DH: LO pulled pork on bun, chips, fruit
D: baked herbed chicken breasts, LO collards, LO cornbread, acorn squash, pineapple
Jennifer
Jan 1 – breakfast was homemade pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, yogurt
Lunch – leftovers from previous days, fruit
dinner – I mentioned yesterday we were at my sister’s too late and I hadn’t planned ahead for that. We ordered Chipotle for pick up – used the remains of a GC that was in my account and the rest was $23 for 4 people. Dd went out with a friend for dinner.
I did go through my freezer a little and have a plan for the first few days of the week so that’s good.
Kathy in Denmark
So happy to see so many familiar names and a few new ones too 🙂
We slept in after NYE – I am NOT used to being up so late anymore, so I needed it. I also got my booster shot on the 30th, so that may have played a part in my fatigue. We had a really nice NYE though and enjoyed good company, food and fireworks 🙂
Day 1:
Brunch: Toasted rolls with butter and juice
Early dinner: Nachos with salsa, guacamole and crème fraiche for some, pasta bake for DD2
Snacks: cookies, crisps and whatever munchies we had left over after Christmas and NYE
Late snack after kids were in bed: Rolls with butter for DH. Rye bread with last of leftover pork roast for me.
It was a really strange day mealwise, but everyone got fed and the kids enjoyed a lot of snacks! I typically don’t sweat the amount of sugar they consume around Christmas and NY. We make special treats for this time of year, and when they are gone, they have to wait until next Christmas to get more. Also, the kids grow like weeds and burn off calories a lot faster than us adults, so I think it’s better that they have the treats than me lol
The pasta bake was just some leftover pasta and marinara that I combined and topped with cheese. The nachos were made with HM chili beans. I had small amounts of shredded cheese in the freezer, so that got used up as well.
Natalie Kay
Breakfast we kept it simple with cereal and milk. Lunch was a New Years Day potluck eith family ans then I pulled out a taco chili I made with ground boar paired with cheese and leftover corn muffins for dinner.
Maureen
I’m really looking forward to all of the updates from everyone this year! My priority this year is a huge purge. I think that I need to change the way that I shop, so I want to clear out so that I can work on developing a better system that works for our family’s current season. January will be a busy month, so I don’t want to overcomplicate things for myself…my goal is simply less (MUCH less). I know that the support from this community will help me make much more progress than I would on my own, so I’m looking forward to the challenge.
Day1: I grabbed lunch out for my girls. We had done a good job of eating up holiday leftovers the last few days, so it was a small treat while we were out. Dinner was pasta and some leftovers…boring, but got the job done.
Cindy
We used up a few holiday leftovers yesterday, still plenty left!
Breakfast: Smoothie, the usual weekend breakfast of choice
Lunch: Leftover Christmas turkey, sliced and warmed with bbq sauce on leftover buns, leftover cookies for the hubby, a Mandarin orange for me.
Dinner: New Year’s celebration dinner, sirloin steak from the freezer, with a red wine reduction sauce consisting of rosemary, shallot and garlic all leftovers from the holiday (including the wine) no fresh mushrooms so canned had to do, fresh artisan bread I baked in the afternoon and a romaine salad as sides. No dessert necessary!
Molly
My pantry got a little overstuffed in the past two years, so this year I’m working on going two weeks between grocery shops. It’s interesting how our dietary needs have changed, too, like my husband needs more savory muffins at work instead of individual lasagnas, because he doesn’t have 15 minutes to heat up the lasagna, wait for the temperature to equalize, and eat it, but he does have time to grab a single savory muffin, heat and eat on the go, and then do that again an hour later. This will be a good reset, even if I don’t go as all-out as everybody else. I look forward to this month of posts and comments every year.
Heather M
Happy New Year Jessica and everyone! Excited to catch up with everyone and meet new people too ? Happy to be back for another round of the Pantry Challenge. The cupboards are stuffed and the freezer is full (we only have the freezer in the kitchen- nowhere to have a second). However, we are still in NY at my in-laws for our annual New Years trip. We’ll head home (DC area) tomorrow. And the 6th is my birthday and I don’t cook on my birthday, ever ? My husband is off work through the 5th (HAS to work the 6th, son & I are making plans for the day). And our son is still off from university and he heads back the 7th (daughter headed back on the 30th as she had to work NYE). I won’t officially start the Challenge until the 7th, though I imagine I’ll try to squeeze in a few days (or at least meals) this week. This week in NY has been a rough go foodwise- all yummy but very little veg and fruit and we eat a lot of veg and fruit in our daily diet, so I anticipate I’ll cook a bit this week before the 7th ? Best wishes to everyone for a happy, good 2022 and a successful Pantry Challenge!
Tasty
So happy to see the pantry challenge again. I wonder just how many familiar names will appear again this year. Good to see you again Stephanie – congrats on being so close to paying off the mortgage! I’m starting out again with 2 bulging freezers in the basement plus what’s in the freezer under the fridge in the kitchen.. Lots of options ahead for us 2 old farts and of course as we get older, we don’t have the same appetite as we once did.
B – hubby made porridge for himself, I emptied the cereal box in the pantry.
L – we finished off the snacks from NYE – pate, cheese, a little cold meat with crackers.
S – prime rib ( originally bought for Boxing Day but not used) with Yorkshire pudding, broccoli and carrots. Ice cream for dessert – another container emptied!
Heather M
Good to see you, Tasty!! I do envy you the extra freezer space. I hope you’re able to get it where you’d like this month ?
Stephanie M.
Hi Tasty!! I’m so happy to hear from you.
Tasty
Hi Stephanie,
Unfortunately , or maybe that should be fortunately, it will take more than just January to get the freezers where I would like them. However, having finished one carton of ice cream last night, I moved another one upstairs along with a container of muffins I made before Christmas and also a few cookies so I’ve already got a hole in one freezer downstairs – yeah!
Tasty
Sorry
Heather , I addressed my reply to Stephanie, instead of you. Blame it on advancing years! Good to see you back again too! Safe travels home.
Stephanie M.
Hi Jessica. Happy New Year!!! I’m so happy to be on board with the pantry challenge again. This year, my goal is to stop adding meat to my freezer when I already have enough for a few weeks. I have focused 2021 on doing a better job with shopping and my total spent for 2021 was down $2,000 from 2020 so I was happy about that. We are just about 4 months away from paying off our mortgage and I am being very intentional about the food I’m buying right now so I can use any and all extra money to send in toward my principal. So this pantry challenge has me all charged up and I’m ready to go.
Saturday, January 1, 2022
B – Paul had cereal with a banana. I had overnight oatmeal and peanuts
L – Paul had leftover Chinese take out from our New Year’s Eve dinner; I had a turkey sandwich and an apple
D – Steak, baked potatoes, stuffed clams, and broccolini
Sandi
Hey, Stephanie. Happy belated birthday (it was in my calendar but I didn’t know how to let you know). I’m in the same boat. My birthday is beginning May and I am bound and determined to have this house paid off before that day so I’ve been doing triple payments. Every penny counts so I’m anxious to make this challenge work even though I started it a little late this year.
Lily R.
So excited for your mortgage payoff! We are on track to have ours paid off in the next couple of years : )