goodcheapeats pantry challenge

Jessica Fisher over at goodcheapeats.com is having her annual eating from the pantry challenge. Not only is this a good way to use up what you have but it saves you money.

Our pantry probably is closer to Brandi's over at www.theprudenthomemaker.com

I have 26 shelves in the pantry, 10 are double or triple stacked. I have a 27 cubic, a 20 cubic and a 7 cubic deep freezer along with my French door 26 cubic frig with it's freezer. I have 250 lbs of potatoes, over 300 winter squashes and close to 100 lbs of onions in cool area storages. One being my mud room that we insulated to keep warmer and now have to keep the kitchen door shut as we opened the windows to cool that room down to store produce.(I adjust the windows to keep it at the correct temp) (thankful it got cold before I had Hubby put in the AC in the window)plus I have 12 shelves in the butler's pantry with half of them double stacked and 2 shelves of dried fruit and dried veggies in the dining room china cupboard along with a 5 shelf cupboard  also in the dining room filled with spices and herbs and extra brown and xxx sugars and salts.

In total at last inventory I had over a year's worth of meals. GOOD for me, been a time that grocery money was very little for a period of 2 yrs. Thankfully the gardens did well but winter was a time of hunger.

This month we started eating from the pantry. I usually do it in late Nov or early Dec but we were actually still eating fresh produce from our gardens and the Amish produce auction we go to regularly. With warmer than usual Dec turnips, radishes and other root veggies were still coming in fresh.

It's nice to have some support from other bloggers about eating from the pantry for a period of time.

I did buy a calendar (on clearance) to keep track of a menu as I want to look back next year and see how we did....4th day in and I can tell you I haven't fixed one thing that was already on the two week menu I did. Like today was going to be cabbage rolls...but I am playing catch up with the laundry because I was down (kind of still am) with crud and a strained adductor. With a wringer washer it's more hands on than an automatic (but my electric dropped $30 a month) so I decided since I had cooked hamburger I would do pasta and cheesy bread and salad...all things we have in the pantry.
I will just write what we eat on the calendar and put a highlighted orange star on it.

Are you eating from the pantry?