Living off the land.

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I think it’s time our family lives off the land for a while, by that I mean our pantry and deep freezer.  They’re both full.  Of what, I’m not so sure.  Many odds and ends here and there, but I’d have to bet if I took the time to sort and organize a bit I’d come up with a long list of meals.

I often say that if we had to, we could live off of our stockpile for XYZ days…now I’m going to actually put that to the test!  We just got back from a weekend away at the snow.  We stayed in a cabin, so we purchased (and brought along) precisely what we would need for the 9 meals we’d eat there.  Honestly we did eat out twice, but that was out of sheer exhaustion from hours of sledding and fun!  What got me thinking though was that since where we were staying was a good 20+ minute drive to the nearest market I’d have to plan and plan well.  I thought I was doing semi-ok in this area at home, but when you’re really put to the test you see how seriously you’re lacking.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m always so much more satisfied by a home cooked meal than anything we could have eaten out.  Well that’s not entirely true, a good pizza sounds great every once in a while.  But on the average,  our home-cooked meals hit the spot.  I’m not sure if its because they’re really that tasty of if I’m just happy to not have spent $40 easily on one single meal out for the family.

I’m taking on Money Saving Mom’s Eat From the Pantry Challenge.

Here are my rules:

30 Days
30 Home Cooked Dinners (breakfast & lunch too)
$30 a week

We’ll be taking advantage of the huge stock pile we have in our pantry and deep freezer, after all it’s been purchased with a purpose – to be eaten.  We can’t store it forever!  Before January 1st, I’ll be taking an inventory of our food and I’ll begin to make a meal plan for the month.  I’ll post here each week with the meals we’ll be eating and how much we’ve spent on groceries so far.