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 4 of the Pantry Challenge.
Want to save this post?
Enter your email below and get it sent straight to your inbox. Plus, I’ll send you budget recipes and money-saving tips every week!
I am out of town today visiting my mom and then staying overnight with a friend, so I have no idea what my family ate or did.
I packed easy to pack snacks and used gift cards for meals out.
How did Day 4 go for you?
Kim from Colorado
B- cereal again, creatures of habit
L-Had to drive an hour away for my son’s basketball game and it is near a Cracker Barrel, which I love probably due to nostalgia…(I grew up in the American South). So we had to have a late lunch there!
D- I wasn’t very hungry after lunch so snacked. But had to feed the teenager, leftovers from the fridge for the win!
Kathryn M
Catching up to the pantry challenge finally… I cooked potsickers on New years day and ate leftovers for a couple of days after that.
4th of January:
No real breakfast – just snacks.
Ate lunch out at Cafe Rio since it was errand day this day…..
Dinner was pork chops, frozen corn, and dinner rolls.
Maureen
We had our final Christmas celebration with my MIL yesterday afternoon. So, everyone slept in and mostly snacked on very random things for lunch…bananas/fruit, nuts/trail mix, toast, cheese sticks, and some sweets. Very odd. The plan was to order pizza for dinner with MIL, which ended up happening at 3:30. I was surprised that everyone wasn’t hungrier when we got home that night, so it was just a bit more snacking. My goal for the week is to prep fruit, veg, and items that I want gone for easy snacking and adding to meals. I want to focus on minimizing waste, but still eating well/healthy.
Heather M
This is my focus as well! Using things up, minimizing waste, and still eating healthy/well. Sounds like it was a good Saturday!
Laurie in Texas
My stopped up head is making it hard to remember what happened yesterday. We were out of eggs, milk, pico de gallo, flour tortillas and bananas so hubs went to the store. No idea what he spent. Egg price is freaking outrageous!
B – I made pancakes for me and hubs and son made waffles
L – I had a piece of sourdough toast and hubs had l/o tri-tip
D – we made chicken tacos with l/o bbq chicken breast
Kathy in Denmark
Day 4:
Brunch: Soft boiled eggs, HM rolls, coffee, juice, jam and cheese to top the bread.
S: Popcorn while we watched a movie
D: Rye bread, fish fillets, veg. nuggets, boiled eggs, shrimp, veggies and salad.
We finished off the HM rolls from the freezer for breakfast. DH and I always have a piece of rye bread with out soft boiled egg. It’s filling and delicious 🙂
Dinner was what we call make your own “Smørrebrød” aka open sandwich. You top rye bread with whatever you like. We like to add a piece of lettuce or salad to the bread before we put something else on it. This makes it seem more fancy, ads crunch and a little greens as well.
This cleared out a few things from the fridge, which needed to go.
I am working on eating the shrimp from the freezer. I am the only one who likes it, so I thaw a little at a time. I’ll get there!
Lynn from NC Outer Banks
In your earlier post you mentioned the baguette mold. That sounds like the perfect souvenir from France, especially with all the baking you do. I have priced them here before and they are expensive! We actually were in France in October but I never thought to buy one there. Smart you!
We enjoyed all the great Mediterranean food while in Greece, along with the country itself. I’ve incorporated some of the options into our eating tho they may not be as obvious in the challenge as I try to use up what we’ve got! Delicious cuisine.
Heather M
oooo France and Greece! So fun! we did not manage to leave the country in 2024 like we’d hoped. Life was too complicated. But we are planning to, hopefully at least twice this year. Once for our 30th anniversary this spring, and then in the very early Fall with our grown kids. Hoping for new places for all of us on each trip! We’re just in the early stages, coming up with ideas and dates. And, re Greek food…. It’s so good! we eat a lot of mediterranean and greek inspired food in our house. So yummy! Would love to hear more about Greece.
Kathryn M
I am going to Greece in 2026. Looking forward to almost a month there. I have a cruise going into Barcelona (from Miami) already booked for April. I plan to fly to Athens then ferry hop to some islands for a bit till the end of May. After that a 3 or 4 day stopover in Copenhagen on my way to Iceland. I was in Iceland August 2024 and didn’t see or do everything I wanted. I decided that June would be a good time for a week there to do a little more exploring.
Kathy in Denmark
The baguette mould was 3 euros – a total bargain! I got two, so I can make four baguettes at a time. We also brought home a giant salad spinner, a few coffee mugs, butter dishes and different foods. We also brought home champagne, since it was that region we visited.
One of the great things about living in Europe is the fact that you can go to so many different countries by car. That means you can bring home more souvenirs and we took advantage.
Your trip to France and Greece sounds wonderful! I hope you had a great time.
Kathy in Denmark
Kathryn M: That sounds like a wonderful trip you’re going to take. I totally understand staying longer on the continent, once you are here. I would also spend a long time in order to see more, if I flew to the US!
Heather M
Hi Kathy! And there is a word that is fun/hard to pronounce for me. The D is interesting in Danish, as are the V and the R. And then all these vowels with very different accents and sounds from what I would expect. I speak English and Spanish and can survive in French, with a bit of an understanding of Italian. And these Danish vowels are so different! The other thing i have hard time understanding is why some words use the et and some the en for “the”. It doesn’t seem as clearcut as it is in the romance languages, which I’m quite familiar with. It seems random, but there must be more to it. Learning new languages is fun! hard, but fun!
Kathy in Denmark
“En” and “et” are really difficult to learn. I actually don’t think there is any rhyme or reason for it – you have to memorize which is which.
The only thing is that if a noun is called “et” for instance “et hus” (a house), then ‘the house’ is “huset”. So that makes it a little easier to remember 🙂
If you speak French, then you are familiar with our hard R 😉 And our soft D at the end of words is a lot like th in English.
V is pronounced a lot like ‘oo’ in the end of words.
I really commend you for taking on Danish!
I think I’ll try to learn some more Italian before our next holiday there. I learned a few useful sentences before we went last year, but would love to be able to speak some more. Also, even some young Italians don’t speak English or only very little. I found this out when I was making a dinner reservation on the phone! So learning more would be a good idea 😉
Tàsty
How nice to have 3 of us from Ontario this year – and none of us in a big city!
Erin in Ontario
Yes! Northern On here, hours away from anything but a grocery store and pharmacy, basically.
Tasty
I’m on the edge of Lake Ontario, a couple of hours east of Toronto.
Lynn from NC Outer Banks
Yes, Ontario is well represented this year! So good to interact with our neighbors to the north!
Danielle Zecher
I hope you had a good visit with your mom.
Breakfast: McDonald’s. It was planned. We had to do some outside work in temps in the 20s and planned that as a little treat. I cannot stress enough how much I truly hate the cold!
Lunch: Leftover cheese tortellini and garlic bread.
Dinner: Beef pot pie using some stew meat from the freezer, some celery that was getting to the “use it or toss it” point, and leftover carrots from the NYE veggie tray. I topped it with the cheddar & scallion biscuits from the GCE 30 Minutes cookbook. I somehow forgot to add the scallions, but it still made a delicious topping.
We snacked on cinnamon rolls and peanut brittle. I chopped and froze the leftover bell pepper strips from the NYE veggie tray and fed the leftover fruit (it looked a little too far gone for humans) to the neighbors’ chickens. I also sliced and froze the last of the NYE cake. I feel like I put more IN the freezer yesterday than I used from it, but at least it’s food that isn’t going to waste.
Kathy in Denmark
I hear you on putting more in the freezer than you take out! As you say, at least it’s avoiding food waste and in my case it’s freezing some treats that we really don’t need right now, but will enjoy very much at a later date 🙂
Danielle L Zecher
Exactly! At some point, I will be very happy to have the cake from the freezer. 🙂
Heather M
I am right there with you and the cold. I hate it. I also hate high heat. Wimpy girl from San Diego by the beach where there is amazing temperate weather and also one who’s body can’t cool itself down or warm itself up very well. Your pot pie sounds like a total win! Great topping idea!
Danielle L Zecher
I’m not a big fan of extreme heat, but I definitely handle that better than extreme cold.
Allie from Ontario
Jessica – I keep meaning to mention that I am using a tip/idea you gave last year about a “thawing station/shelf” in the fridge. I have been trying to keep around 2 – 3 days of meat from the freezers in the fridge which means I’m far less likely to bail on specific dinner plans I’ve made 🙂
Jessica Fisher
Yay! Glad it’s working!
Erin in Ontario
My daughter needed new scrubs, so she and I were gone all day yesterday (nearest place to buy them is almost 2 hours away from our home in the boonies). We stopped at an all day breakfast place for eggs and toast around 2 pm.
The only meal at home that I know about for sure was supper….Costco cheese tortellini (from our freezer stash) with the option of some alfredo sauce or pesto which we had leftovers of in the fridge.
You can tell we’re still winding down from a busy holiday season! Normally 99 percent of what we eat is made at home from scratch, and I look forward to getting back to it.
Allie from Ontario
1st I must announce that “Victory is mine!!” which is what I yelled yesterday in the pantry while holding the missing jar of beet chutney over my heard…fists up like Rocky. The cat seemed unimpressed. Anyways…..
What we ate on Jan 4:
Brunch – I had an English muffin with melted cheddar and some home canned tomato jam early and then a few hours later I also had some of the previous night’s shredded beef with a 1/2 piece of rye toast. T had his usual yogurt and then made an egg, tomato & cheese sandwich. He snacked on his beloved salted pistachios in the afternoon.
Dinner – I took 6 boneless skinless chicken thighs out of the freezer and we had “sticky sauced-pan roasted” chicken served over mashed potatoes with some roasted broccoli. The sauce made more dents in the many open pantry & fridge jars that are on the go right now. We each had a couple of the mini toffiffee chocolates and we have a couple left for tonight. We also made a vow to NOT buy more of those damn (ie yummy) things!
Kathy in Denmark
LOL regarding “Victory is mine”. Glad you found the chutney!
Lynn from NC Outer Banks
Hooray to your success! It is so aggravating when you KNOW you have an item but can’t put your hands on it!
Heather M
I’m impressed (I did laugh out loud as I read this). Best feeling when you know you’re right and it’s confirmed. 🙂
Tàsty
Day 4
B: our usual mix of fruit, yogurt, granola and muffins. Used the last of the granola so after breakfast, got another batch made up and used the last of the apricots from the pantry.
L: Tomato soup made just the other day – so good – tastes like summer
S: ham and pineapple pizza. This used the last of the ham from new year a d put good dent in what was left of the pineapple. Even made the crust which is a thing I haven’t done in possibly years. We don’t have pizza very often – we don’t need all those calories. My notes on the crust recipe reminded me to add some Italian seasoning and onion powder. I also added the little chunk of parmesan (grated) and it turned out really well.
I have to say it was a good challenge day.
Hope you are feeling better Jessica.
Lynn from NC Outer Banks
1/4/25
B: last of plain Greek yogurt with nuts and tsp of hm jam. We visited Greece last spring and there got accustomed to plain yogurt with minimal sweeteners. This has been a good development!
L: I had the last of the hm vegetable beef soup. DH had soup along with a sandwich.
D: herbed chicken thighs that I just bought, baked potato for DH, cauliflower rice for me, tossed salad
S: handful of almonds, 2dark chocolate Hersheys kisses 🙂
With the frigid weather upon us, cold and sniffles may not be far behind. So I used 3 of the chicken thighs to make chicken rice soup in the crock pot. I used veggies from the fridge and containers of chicken broth from the freezer. I have no room in the refrigerator for the crock of soup, so it will go in our “overflow “ fridge, aka as the screened in back porch. The low tonight is 28 degrees so it should be fine!
Jessica, hope you had a good visit with your mom. You were smart to have a plan for on the road meals. We usually pack a lunch when traveling. Lately, on occasion, circumstances have prohibited that and I am just stunned at the price of fast food these days!
Allie from Ontario
Lynne…I can relate to your “overflow fridge”! The previous owner of our house put an addition on which means when you come in the 1st front door, you are in an unheated little room before coming into the main house via another front door. That area is our “overflow fridge” in the winter and I realize how much I use it when it is summer and it turns into an “uncooled” oven of a room.
Kathy in Denmark
I haven’t been to Greece, but would love to go! I bet you had a wonderful time.
I have actually started to eat more in the style of the Mediterranean Diet the last six months of 2024, but with a focus on the local ingredients available. I quite often have Greek yoghurt for breakfast, topped with chopped up fruit and a mix of nuts and seeds.
I am amazed at how well it fills me up, and it means I start the day with fruit, which I am usually not very good at eating. Veggies are no problem, but fruit is hard for me.