Every Saturday I do a shopping “top off”. I needed to pick up a couple of things so that I could make my meals for the week. Last week I talked about embracing The Art of Intentional Usage. I am trying to use what I have with intention, deliberateness, and focus. The budget item that I am supper focused on for the month of October is one of my favorite things ever-FOOD!!
I love food. I love looking at it, eating it, thinking about it, cooking it, going to markets, and basically anything else associated with food…that’s normal (ahem).
So, when doing a challenge like this one I am deeply focused on maintaining quality, staying healthy, ow sodium, in addition to saving money. That means that I still will continue cooking my food and creating yummy Pinterest worthy and blog worth meals.
So how did the first week go?
It actually went pretty well! I had a pretty interesting experience at the grocery store. Here’s the recap.
Food finds in the Pantry or I wanted to buy it but it was already in my freaking HOUSE!
- Mueslix-I wanted it for breakfast. It’s delicious if you haven’t had it! I would have gone over my budget if I purchased it so I had to but it back on the shelf. When I got home and looked in my pantry I discovered a brand new (unopened) box of mueslix.
- Black Pepper-I needed black pepper. Again, I could have purchased it. I looked through my pantry and discovered a pack of fresh black peppercorns purchased during my fresh chai making days. I ground the pepper up and I’m ready to go!
- Nutritional Yeast-WTH?! Ok, I did a vegan challenge at the beginning of the year and am trying to eat more vegan meals throughout the week. I found some recipes that I wanted to try but they needed nutritional yeast (a vegan staple for cheesy tastes) Well…it was still in my pantry. Vegan/Vegetarian challenge is on this week.
- Panko/Bread Crumbs-I was starting to stress because I wanted to cook some things that included panko or bread crumbs. I prefer panko (a Japanese bread crumb-much lighter in texture) I was about to make my own when I discovered I still had some in my pantry!
Additional Food Purchased (sort of) outside of Groceries Expenses:
- Starbucks-Free (free-used TRowe Price Starbucks gift card from FinCon)
- 2 cups of coffee at Whole Foods (2 different times) for free-had punch cards that I redeemed
- 2 chocolate toffee bars to pair with the above coffees ($2.43)
- Chicken soup on Friday ($7) I didn’t prep anything for Friday so I bought a delicious freshly made soup from a local business.
- Total: $9.43
As I go through the process of embracing this challenge I realize a couple of really important things that are helping me be successful at tackling this:
- Knowing how to cook is key-I would say that around 90% of the food I eat is food that I prepare in my own home. I love, love, love good food/happy hours/ and dinners out. However, I would prefer to cook the entire month to have the one meal I eat be KICK A@@ then eat subpar food throughout the month and spend unnecessary money.
- Being open to different type of foods is huge! I cannot eat the same thing all the time. It is horribly boring. Because of that I have a lot of fun exploring recipes from different countries (and U.S. regions). A lot of these recipes are inexpensive, delicious, and require very little tweeking in order to cook to my palate.
- The internet is awesome-If you need additional inspiration go to Pinterest or just Google recipes using a food item that you aren’t sure about using-but is in your home.
- Motivation helps-If you’re motivated then you can’t help but rock a challenge like this one.
- A Plan-Or, you have to be organized to make this work.
This week’s recipes include the following:
- Lentil Fritters-Lentils, green onion, garlic, cilantro, and simmered in a vegetarian broth. Cook a little dry. You can add shredded fresh zucchini as well. Then, fry! Topped with a Greek yogurt and horseradish sauce
- Macro Rice Bowl-With pickled cabbage, wakame (yes, I actually have dried seaweed) sweet potatoes, and black beans.
- Soup in adorable containers inspired by this Pinterest pin. Am.In.Love.
- Saigon Rolls-Inspired by Native Foods (vegan restaurant)
- Vegan Shrimp Scampi-made with garlic and Sophie’s choice vegan shrimp (they are DELICIOUS)
- Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Garlic-these are in the process of going bad. So, I will clean the outside and then roast them. Delicious.
- Lemon Olive Oil Cake-Yummy!
So, we’ll see how this vegetarian/vegan thing will go while eating only what’s already in my home. I love doing challenges!
Are you doing a challenge this month? What type of challenge?
How successful have you been so far?
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I love food too! We’re also doing the vegetarian/vegan thing, which saves us so much money every month. I really don’t even miss meat at all. And the dairy that we do eat is tasty, but infrequent. Agreed on the importance of planning ahead–we never eat out, so we have to make sure we’ve got the ingredients to cover us at home!
I travel a lot and am iron deficient so eating meat is good for me on many levels. I am really working on cutting the amount I eat for weight loss and environmental reasons…but, I do like to eat from time to time. It’s all about planning ahead and being recipe adventurous.
Sweet~ We are vegetarian but eat vegan about half the time. I love trying new vegan foods, although I wish I was better at making ethnic foods. I really suck at making Thai food- my favorite.
Great job on your savings =)
I didn’t realize you were vegetarians! How did you manage in New Orleans??!! I am having a lot of fun with vegan meals. The problem is they have to have a certain composition in order for me to feel full. Grains/veggies/a faux meat option. So far the savings are pretty good-we’ll see how the rest of the month goes!
Nice job! Your meals sounds pretty delicious as well!
I’ve already had the roasted brussel sprouts-super delicious! and am enjoying the Pinterest inspired soups. Will take some pictures of those.
You’re killing it! And I love how your meals aren’t boring. My meals are pretty boring! But I actually have been a lot more creative lately thanks to Pinterest. If I find a recipe that looks good I just substitute ingredients for whatever I have on hand. I made some crock pot buffalo chicken and no bake peanut bars last week.
The girls and I also made a HUGE batch of sugar cookies to decorate. It wasn’t very frugal but they like decorating the cookies and my brothers like being gifted cookies, so it all works out 🙂
Alexa, I can’t eat boring food!! And Pinterest is soooo helpful. I just discovered zucchini chips and carrot chips-things I normally would buy but now will make homemade. Yummy! I love no bake peanut butter bars and if I weren’t on Weight Watchers I would be eating those sugar cookies. As long as the girls had fun it’s all good!
I love food too, and I love cooking! My last week, I made a spaghetti and added some ingredients on it and I definitely love the result! I should try your Lentil Fritters, it seems delicious!
The lentil fritters were pretty good. I am adding some shredded zucchini to them tonight to bind them better. Nom Nom. I made a yogurt/horseradish sauce for them and it was a nice pairing.
Your doing really well, Michelle, and motivating me to try this. Hubster said he would consider doing 1 – 2 vegetarian meals a week so that’s got me excited.
I am also on Weight Watchers! So, if I can: save money, lose weight, and use what’s in my pantry it’s a win, win, win! Check out Pinterest for meal inspiration! I’m making veggie pot pie next week with leftover phyllo dough as the top of the pie. Lower fat and delicious.
Lentil fritters sound amazing. I think the key to successfully cooking at home is finding recipes you look forward to eating and aren’t too hard to make. Otherwise, it’s way to easy to just go out.
They were pretty good but I didn’t make them quite right so they broke apart a little bit. I’m going to make more this week and I plan on adding a little panko and shredded zucchini to bind the fritters together. And you’re right I get excited about trying new recipes.
Those lentil fritters sound delicious! I eat vegetarian at home and eat meat very occasionally. Nice work on the shopping your pantry and cooking. You are doing a great job!
Melanie, they were really good! I’m trying to eat a lot cleaner. So far it’s going well. THanks for the encouragement 🙂
I don’t know how people can’t NOT cook, it saves so much money honestly. I cook all meals except allow one dinner out per week- nothing fancy but usually grab something like subway on friday night. I love when I make a list of ingredients only to find I have more tahn I thought.
There have also been studies that the time savings between purchasing food outside of the home and making it is minimal. I understand that people might not enjoy cooking but I think that they need to suck it up and learn 10 simple meals if they want to: stay healthy and save money. That simple.