Eat The Pantry Challenge - Week 1

Pantry - Day 1 of  Challenge

We have a chest freezer in the basement, and part of this challenge is to make an effort to clean it out so it can be defrosted properly, and to make sure we eat the items in there that tend to drift to the bottom and are never heard from again. We pulled everything out, and made a list of all of the items we found. We also took the opportunity of having it empty to knock the worst of the built up ice off and clear it out a little bit before putting everything back in.

We filled a bucket half way up with the ice we knocked off of the sides of the freezer!

We took a quick inventory of the upstairs freezer as well and put things back in a more organized way to make it easier to find things and hopefully help us make use of the food we've already bought.

Our week 1 got a little accelerated - we had 2 "normal" days - and then day 3 of our first week we got a phone call from a friend of ours who was in a motorcycle accident on Saturday. We spent most of Sunday with her (her husband is in the hospital, she was injured as well but not as severely) driving around to pick up a trailer, then pick up the wrecked motorcycle from the tow company, then back the hospital, then dropping the trailer off at their house. We'll go back over to her place today to help unload the bike. We decided to make a few meals we could take over to help stock their refrigerator so at least they don't need to worry about cooking for a little while. We made large batches, and kept some of the items in our refrigerator for our own meals, and are packing the rest of the food up to take to them.

Here are the meals we made this week:

BBQ Chicken Pizza with Caesar salad.

BBQ Cheddar Meatloaf and Mashed Potatoes

Spaghetti Sauce with Meatballs and pasta (I doubled the meatball recipe, and froze half of them uncooked to use later).

Shredded BBQ Chicken, Macaroni and Cheese, Honey Glazed Carrots

We made all of these meals with items in the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry. I'm looking forward to what we come up with for the coming week and hoping to try to make it through the next 3 weeks without buying groceries. We'll see if we're up to the challenge!