{"id":1996,"date":"2010-01-29T20:52:10","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T02:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/?p=1996"},"modified":"2010-01-29T20:52:10","modified_gmt":"2010-01-30T02:52:10","slug":"results-of-the-eat-from-the-pantryfreezer-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/29\/results-of-the-eat-from-the-pantryfreezer-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Results of the Eat From the Pantry\/Freezer Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

First a quick update:\u00c2\u00a0 The Littlest Apple’s gastric emptying study<\/a> went better than expected yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0 His arms weren’t strapped down this time, and he only screamed for the last 15 minutes or so.\u00c2\u00a0 Hooray!\u00c2\u00a0 As for the results, we haven’t heard the official verdict from the doctor, but we were able to watch the screen shots as the scan was proceeding.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m no doctor, but it didn’t look like things were moving much at all.\u00c2\u00a0 That little white blob in his stomach was basically the same sized white blob at the end of the study.<\/p>\n

Now, on to the real post of the day, the results of the Eat From the Pantry\/Freezer Challenge<\/a>!<\/p>\n

It has been fun challenging myself to come up with meals from what we had on hand this month.\u00c2\u00a0 I only made 2 trips to the grocery store this month, but we had plenty of stuff on hand already, with a crammed pantry and a freezer full of meat.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll be the first to admit that there were several flops this month, most involving leftover turkey<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 The turkey soft tacos and turkey etouffee were inedible.\u00c2\u00a0 The turkey gumbo was only slightly more tolerable.<\/p>\n

My favorite meal creation was the Chicken Soft Tacos<\/a> with Homemade Tortillas<\/a>, Mexican Rice<\/a>, and refried black beans.\u00c2\u00a0 I also made some pretty tasty homemade pitas this week (recipe coming soon!) to eat with Greek Chicken Pitas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you remember, I was trying to keep our grocery bill to $500 or less, which would be an vast improvement from last year.<\/p>\n

My total grocery store expenses for January…..<\/p>\n

$317.59<\/strong> !!!!!<\/p>\n

Pretty amazing reduction, right?!\u00c2\u00a0 I almost couldn’t believe my eyes!\u00c2\u00a0 That even includes a purchase of some frozen convenience foods for The Littlest Apple from Schwann’s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

BUT, to be honest, that’s not the whole story.<\/p>\n

I think it is important to note that our dining out expenses for the month of January were a little HIGHER than normal.\u00c2\u00a0 Too high, if you ask me.\u00c2\u00a0 And honestly, it was just laziness.\u00c2\u00a0 We certainly weren’t lacking food at home.\u00c2\u00a0 We got tired of eating sandwiches for lunch every day and The Picky Apple didn’t take his lunch to work like he normally does.\u00c2\u00a0 Also, I was counting on leftovers from all of those dinner flops, and that didn’t work out.\u00c2\u00a0 (I guess the lesson here is to use some tried and true recipes instead of experimenting too much when you’re trying to save money!)\u00c2\u00a0 I need to do a better job of planning for lunches and having them prepped and ready to go.\u00c2\u00a0 Same for breakfast.<\/p>\n

Which brings me to my challenge for February: preparing a wider selection of lunches and breakfasts<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 I am going to continue grocery shopping every other week, because I like the way this is working out (and because I hate grocery shopping!).\u00c2\u00a0 I am hoping to keep the monthly grocery bill for February under $400 and to decrease our dining out expenses as well.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First a quick update:\u00c2\u00a0 The Littlest Apple’s gastric emptying study went better than expected yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0 His arms weren’t strapped down this time, and he only screamed for the last 15 minutes or so.\u00c2\u00a0 Hooray!\u00c2\u00a0 As for the results, we haven’t heard the official verdict from the doctor, but we were able to watch the screen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homekeeping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1996"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2010,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996\/revisions\/2010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}