Pantry Purging

Well, it's that time of year again. Time to start growing things and putting fresh, bountiful harvests away for the winter (oh, and enjoying lots and lots of it while it's still fresh). We had our first CSA meeting of the year, and the lettuces, spinach, and root vegetables are in the ground (covered, of course, since there is still threat of frost). The asparagus should be on soon, in fact, our next meeting is April 4th...hmmm, so exciting!

I'll get into the CSA details more on another post.

Today I'm focusing on living on our bounty from last year and clearing some space for the new.
Many of my other "bloggy" friends have been commenting on how taking a week and eating out of their pantry has saved them a good deal of money over time (meaning, pick a week to NOT grocery shop, and glean from yourself). For example, if you plan on spending $60/week on groceries, but only shop 7 out of 8 weeks in the year, you're really spending $52.50. I have a guess that with all the farm produce we get from our CSA (for $200/year!) we're spending a little less than that. I've never sat down and calculated how much we spend a week on what we eat, I just know that our storage is growing and the budget isn't changing much. I'm curious now. Perhaps I'll do that on another post.

The reason I'm posting this is that I need to be accountable. I need to promise myself that I will not run to the store for every little thing (given it's so easy for us, with Martins & CVS only oh...three blocks away?). So, I'm following my friends' examples, and posting what we ate (plus, then you can see how often I bake, which means I might bake less...might.)

Sunday
Breakfast & Lunch for the adults: n/a--it's our fast Sunday
Kids breakfast: cereal & milk, oh, and Chayce wanted an egg, so I gave her that as well.
Kids' snack: baby carrots--I cannot believe how they fought over the # of carrots each recieved. Personally, if it's not chocolate, I don't fight for it, but obviously baby carrots are amazing.
Granola bars in the car on the way home.

Dinner: Chicken Curry. Pretty mild, due to the fact that our dinner guests weren't spicy fans...well, let me rephrase that. One was, one wasn't. Oh, and he's now indebted to me because I got his wife to eat curry and she wouldn't before, since she'd been burned by it. Now, he's looking for his crockpot curry recipe for me, and I'll share it if it's good. Plus, they brought AMAZINGLY YUMMY brownies. Can't beat that.

Monday
Breakfast: Cereal again, in a hurry due to needing to take Zac to get glasses fixed.
Snack: granola bars (because I like them!)

Lunch: grapes. Lots of grapes, out of the crisper. Yum. And leftover brownies. Cheese.

Dinner: Apple and gorgonzola pizza (I got on clearance at Target last week for $4. ) I won't be buying that again. Not that the flavor wasn't good, but the kids complained about the smell in the house from the stinky-cheese. Made me want to go get the Stinky-Cheese Man from the library.
A sausage pizza as well, that they actually enjoyed. If I had to pick, though, I'd have chosed Digiorno. Those are cheaper at Aldi, and more filling. If I'd have known how very un-filling these were going to be, I'd have left them at the store.

A green salad, purchased last week, needing to be eaten. For the dressing, I tossed some grapes, a wrinkled clementine and some olive oil in the blender. Turned out great.
Cookies, made from scratch with some macadamia nuts I found on clearance in Shipshewana.

Tuesday
Breakfast varied. Stephen and I ate eggs, as did Payge. Chayce had a cookie (with milk! I was upstairs tending to the baby as she fended for herself before I came down). Zac well, I uh, don't remember. I offerend him an egg...and then for some reason my mind is totally blank as to what he answered.

Lunch: Hard boiled eggs, and these yummy little mascarpone & orange things I had stuck in the freezer. Mmmmm. Oh, and carrot sticks.

Dinner: Chicken soup, using the water from the chicken I boiled for Sunday (that would be stock, right?), left over chicken pieces, carrots, garlic, bayleaves, and celery.
Home made tapioca pudding--easy peasy: 1 quart milk, 1/2 cup of tapioca soaked for a few hours (not the instant stuff), 1 C sugar, 2 tsp vanilla, three eggs. Boil first 2 ingredients til pearls are clear, then add the other stuff & boil til thick. Again...mmmmmmm.