This Is This Week

This week was the first full week in no-spend September!

I began training for this month-long challenge two weeks ago with my $50 grocery challenge last week and my $100 grocery challenge the week before that.

The Preparation

The key to any no-spend week or month when thinking about groceries, for me, is shelf cooking.

If you aren’t familiar with the term, shelf cooking is essentially taking whatever is already in your inventory (on the shelf, in the fridge or freezer, etc.) and building your meals around those items.

In preparation for no-spend September, then, I made a pretty thorough list of my pantry and freezer/refrigerator.

I then brainstormed possible meals I could make using the items I had plenty of. The key here is to ensure that these possible meals require few (or better yet – no!) additional ingredients.

Here’s the list of possibilities I developed:

I won’t necessarily make all of these meals, but this gives me a good starting point.

This Week’s Plan

If you have kids, then you are likely familiar with the complaints about what is for dinner.

I recently shared this meme with a few mom friends. No truer words:

I’ve never been one to cater to my children’s preferences. I try to strike a balance between things I know they like to eat, things I think they should eat, and things that I (or the other adults in my household) like to eat.

This means that sometimes we eat spaghetti, sometimes we eat vegan BBQ tempeh sandwiches, and sometimes we eat Indian curries.

I wanted to start no-spend September with minimal complaints, though, so I wouldn’t burn out before the month got challenging. I asked the boys what they wanted for dinner this week (giving them options from my list), and here were their selections:

• Chicken soup (with matzo balls)
• Burgers
• Potato soup

Tell me why it is still 80+ degrees and humid here most days and these kids want soup?

Their selections, though bizarre for summertime, actually worked to my advantage. I really didn’t need much in the way of ingredients to make these dishes work.

What I Bought

As mentioned in my previous posts, I purchase meal kits for my mom most weeks. I used my final coupon available on this week’s meals for her: a taco dish, a penne dish, stuffed peppers, and chicken and pepper sandwiches.

Her meal kits cost: $36.96

In addition to this, I spent only $24.63 in additional items (including a pack of blank note cards that cost $4.99). My grocery total, thus, was under $20.

• Mini cucumbers (sadly our garden cucumbers are winding down)
• A pound of baby carrots
• 8 oz shredded cheddar
• A small container of unsweetened almond milk (for making the potato soup)
• Three spices that needed replenishing (basil, oregano, chili powder)
• And two pounds of butter (for the other peoples in my household)

In all truth, I could have managed without these items. Even the cheese, which is intended to elevate the potato soup, could have been skipped.

But I feel pretty good about easing into the month with this small of an expenditure.

The Preparation

My preparation this week (after picking up my small grocery order) was really important.

Previous meal planning attempts have been foiled by failure to thaw.

Thus, Step 1: thaw necessary ingredients

Step 2: premake whatever I can whenever I can!

Step 3: assess any leftover items or fresh items that need to be used (because rule #1 in this household at all times is “no food waste!”)

On Tuesday, I prepped a pound of bacon (half left in strips, half cut into bite size pieces), scrambled a dozen eggs, and assembled bacon-egg breakfast sandwiches on English muffins I thawed from the freezer.

I also cooked a pack of mung beans in the InstantPot (not intending to use it this week but I had the idea to do it, so I prepped and froze this dish).

What We Ate

Monday

• Brunch: we celebrated Labor Day by doing a family brunch of penne with vegetables (one of the meal kits mom had gotten)
• The rest of the day was spent with family at A’s house enjoying a variety of snacks (chips, crackers, and dips) and a hearty dinner (turkey, potatoes, corn bread, veggies)
• Dessert: blueberry buckle and cream pie

Tuesday

• Breakfast: vegan split pea soup (I had a few of these microwaveable containers at work for when I forget my breakfast or lunch)
• Snack: Some multigrain Crunchmaster crackers (also in my desk at work) and the remaining Bolthouse Farms cherry juice from the previous week
• Lunch: a roll leftover in the fridge, a few tastes of the mung beans I prepped
• Dinner: half a Nardelli’s sub and cucumber-tomato salad (we had credit on GrubHub and there was a $5 off coupon, but this was still a violation of no-spend September…in the first week!)

Wednesday

• Breakfast: smoothie bowl using items from the freezer and pantry
• Lunch: Crunchmaster crackers at work and something else that I honestly can’t remember?
• Snack: leftover blueberry buckle from our Labor Day celebration
• Dinner: Roast chicken with baby carrots and green beans (from the garden); garlic bread from the freezer

Thursday*

The kids came home sick/recovering from a head cold and A ended up getting sick this day too; I shifted all my plans accordingly

• Breakfast: kids had the egg sandwiches and I made a smoothie bowl
• Lunch: leftover chicken and roasted veggies from the previous night’s dinner; some watermelon
• Dinner: chicken noodle soup with broken spaghetti and peas from the freezer

Friday

• Breakfast: kids had the rest of the egg sandwiches
• Lunch: ground turkey and rice “unstuffed peppers” that were leftover from a previous meal kit my mom didn’t use
• Dinner: burgers, salad using leftover romaine from a previous week plus cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden, other leftover broccoli and green beans

Saturday

• Breakfast: faux French toast (maple cinnamon bread toasted and smeared with butter/syrup) for the kids; I had the “unstuffed peppers”
• Lunch: all the leftovers from the fridge, a baked zucchini-pancake dish I made using zucchini from the garden and pancake mix
• Dinner: potato soup; green beans from the garden sauteed and tossed in sliced almonds, vegan feta, and a mustard vinaigrette (all items I had hanging out in the fridge); corn on the cob I picked up for free earlier that day (yay for amazing neighbors!)

At some point the kids also finished the corn muffins that were leftover from our Labor Day meal with A’s family and had some miscellaneous snacks that were in the house (goldfish, seaweed snacks, honeydew melon from the garden)

Sunday

• Breakfast: more faux French toast
• Lunch: homemade ramen since A was still sick and I wasn’t feeling 100% either
• Dinner: more ramen, some chocolate from the freezer

The Week in Review

I kind of blew my no-spend plans this week because everyone got sick. I ended up having to make a trip to WalMart on Thursday for some cold medicine and supplies for A – including orange juice, oranges, and honey. I’ll share more about all my no-spend month fails in another post.

I’ll be sharing more about our no-spend month in the weeks ahead. The fails and the successes!

I do enjoy challenging myself to cook from my shelves and freezer though. I’d love to hear the interesting dishes you come up with if you try a similar shelf cooking challenge!