Good to the Last Drop .. Creativity and Savings Come from Eating ALL Your Food

A few years ago I realized that we had a lot of food sitting around.  Things that we had bought and never used.  In the pantry, in the freezer, even some things in the fridge.  A box of pasta that was a shape no one ever seems to want to eat, a can of black eyed peas, 4 hot dog buns, a lot of homemade chicken stock, a bag of frozen broccoli.

I decided that I needed to do something about that waste.

I decided to stop grocery shopping until we ate all the food.

I loved this exercise so much that I do it every couple of months.  Here are just a few of the reasons I fell in love with doing this ...

1. We are not wasting food.
2. We are saving money.
3. We are forced to be really creative in coming up with the random ingredients we have to make up a meal.  Sort of like that old show Ready, Set, Cook!  Or maybe Stone Soup!
4. My kids eat better knowing there is really nothing better that they are going to get at the next meal.
5. We eat less because we eat little random bits of leftovers at some meals instead of creating a whole big new meal.
6. We talk about our food more since the kids want to know what random things they are eating.

We are doing this exercise this week because we are headed out on vacation and I like to leave with a clean fridge.  Tonight I made a fabulous stir fry with a package of sandwich steak, some frozen bok choy, a few limp carrots I found in the crisper, a pepper, the last of the brown rice and the dregs of a bottle of hoisin sauce.  Healthy and creative and my kids gobbled it up.  For lunch today, one daughter had make her own PB&J with saltines and a container of peanut butter and a container of jelly.  The other had a very small serving of leftover pasta.  I split one apple between them and a few carrot sticks.  And breakfast was some pancakes I found in the freezer, yogurt, juice and the last of the fruit.  My husband has been polishing off the soup in our freezer for lunch and I have been trying to finish off the eggs, the cucumbers and an assortment of  random crackers.  The best meal of the week was either the pasta sauce I made out of a few leftover slices of bacon, the rest of the onions, a few tins of anchovies, wilted celery and a can of tomatoes or the scrambled eggs with leftover kale and some sort of cheese.

Tomorrow is going to be a real challenge since I think we are down to yogurt, capers and beer.  But you never know!

YOUR TURN
Don't go grocery shopping for a week!