Grocery Shopping Trip

As we enter the second week of the Eat From Your Pantry Challenge, my freezers, refrigerator and cupboards are quite bare! I went to three places today in hopes of replenishing our foods. As I posted early, I am on a strict diet and I am also trying to avoid foods with red dye 40. It is amazing how many yogurts geared towards kids have red dye 40!!! Any ways, I did pretty good sticking to our $100 a week budget. Because I did really well at Target and Aldi's, I am going to bore you all and give you the break down!
Target Trip
Bought 2 Juicey Juice 8 pack juice boxes for 2.25 each
Bought 2 bottles of Juicey Juice for 2.25 each
Yo-baby yogurt - 2.29
Coupons used -
2 Target coupons - $1 off 2 Juicey Juice
Stacked with 2 MFR coupon - $1 of 2 Juicey Juice
1 $.40 off yo-baby yogurt
Total Spent: 6.89

Aldi's
5 Grapefruits - .39 each
Broccoli - 1.59
2 packages of peppers - 2.59 each
bag of onions .99
Bag of apples $2.39
Bananas .99
Box of Saltines .89
bag of mini marshmallows .69
Bag of baby carrots 1.19
2 bags of salad 1.99 each
Gallon of milk $2.09
2 containers of grape tomatoes 1.99 each
Box of vanilla wafers $1.99
2 dozen eggs $1.17 each
Package of cheese 1.99
can of black olives $1.19

Total: 32.72

I also spent 40.40 at Walmart bringing the week's total to $80.01. Not bad! Best part of my shopping trip - I went with a good friend and had a coffee and adult interaction:) Now off to make cookies with my youngest.

Eating Healthy

I have found a very informative website aimed at helping people eat healthy foods that do not have all of the additives and preservative our society has decided to add to our foods. Check out Nourished Life here. I am taking baby steps to overhaul my family's nutrition and I would love to wean us off foods that contain unhealthy additives and preservatives while keeping our grocery costs down. Currently I am trying to avoid all products with yeast, sugar, dairy(to some degree) and any processed foods. It is difficult to do especially since we are in the middle of our Eating From The Pantry Challenge. I am planning on using our left over grocery money from this month to try and stock up on some healthy alternatives but in the mean time i am trying to do the best I can. This will certainly be a learning process but I truly think our overall health will be most improved from this diet change.

Decluttering

I spent a lot of time over the Christmas break trying to organize different parts of my house. I was able to get the toy closet in good shape, clean out my sock drawer(for some reason this is the drawer I stash things in!), organize my craft closet a bit, clean out the linen closet and under my bathroom sink, and organize the Christmas decorations. I definitely have a ways to go in the decluttering though. I love the idea of getting reid of at least one thing each day for the next year. For more specifics go here. I don't think I will actually get rid on one thing a day but I will try and spend some time in the next few weeks going through different parts of our house and get rid of things we no longer use or need. I hate throwing things away since our landfills are already bursting. I would rather try and find new homes for our things or recycle them if we can.
Seriously though, we have so much stuff it is amazing! Half the stuff we are no using but it is certainly taking up space. I do have to admit I am a bit of a pack rat and have a tendency to not let things go. If I look around our basement, there are boxes and boxes of textbooks left over from my college years. Why do I still need them? Since I haven't done anything with them except move them a zillion times in the last, ahem 16 years, I think it is time to let them go. I plan on helping the kids declutter their rooms and our toybox this weekend. My youngest son's daycare is having a toy drive to help replenish their toys. It would be a perfect place to donate toys no one wants anymore and help declutter our house. Next week I want to try and tackle the basement. We have a few shelves up that are filled and I would like to clean them out and use them to store all of the food I have stocked up on. That is, if we have any extra left after our month of eating from the pantry!

Cleaning Closets

An annual activity that I always feel compelled to complete this time of year is cleaning out closets and storage spaces. I tackled the kids' toy closet last week; today was our linen closet and under our bathroom sink. Would you believe I found 6 deodorants and 8 toothbrushes?! I threw away more expired medicine than I imagined we even had. I found leftover iron pills I ahd to take after my youngest, who is now 4, was born. Wow, apparently I haven't really looked under the sink in awhile!

Menu Plan - Week 1

Alright - here is what we will be eating this week -

Breakfasts

toast, cereal, pancakes, or eggs

Lunches

Soup for Dad
Soup and salads for Mom
Kids- some days the bigger boys are buying, other days I still am trying to come up with ideas. Maybe cheese and crackers, leftover pasta, leftover pizza, grilled cheese, or BP&J.

Dinners

Ham with scallop potatoes
Individual Pizzas - Mom and Dad - roasted peppers, oldest boy - white pizza, littler boys - regular, salad, carrots, and fruit
Chicken with mash potatoes, veggie and fruit
Pasta with egg and parm. cheese and salad
Leftovers (pasta and chicken)
Kielbasa with rice and veggies
Homemade Waffles

Snacks/Desserts

Smoothies
Fruit
Popcorn
Popsicles (my kids are addicted even in the cold weather!)
Bread and butter
Applesauce

For ideas and menus, check out I'm an Organizing Junkie's website here.

A month of meals

I have been thinking and planning for the Eat From The Pantry Challenge. I think,as I stated before, we will try and spend $100 a week, mostly on perishables, and try and eat the core of our meals from the pantry. I sat down earlier today and tried to plan out a month menu. It really was difficult to figure out what we are doing for the entire month AND plan our meals around our activities. Instead, I decided to take inventory of the main courses we already have in the freezers and list out 27 meals. This way, each week I can pick from this master list. I only have to plan 29 meals because I already planned the 1st and the 2nd's menu, plus we will be getting together with my family 2 times this month to celebrate my sister and my birthdays.
Here is what I found in our freezers:

3 Kielbasas and 9 meals worth of chicken
Wow, not a lot. I really thought I had more meat in the freezers. Maybe there will be a super sale on meat this month! I am planing on adding the following meals to my list:

Pasta 4X
Homemade Pancakes 2X
Homemade Waffles 2X
Homemade Pizza 2X

Now I just have to come up with 6 more meals. I am thinking grilled cheese and soup, maybe ground meat will be on sale one week this month, and eggs for another night. I am trying to come up with lunches for the boys and I am having trouble thinking of things to pack for them. I am trying to stay away from lunch meat because of the additives and preservatives that are in them. I have been packing cheese and crackers and left over pizza for them. I think I could get away with leftover cold pasta for my oldest and a cold grilled cheese for the youngest. Breakfasts are easy - cereal, toast, bagel or pancakes. We have a lot of bread and bagels in the freezer and I have a good stash of cereal. I think that I just need to commit to planning out each week, cook some of the food ahead of time (pancakes, waffles, pizza dough), and making sure we follow through!

Eat From the Pantry

Some blogs are hosting Eat from the Pantry Challenge for this month. Check out Life as Mom here. While I certainly can't avoid the grocery store all month, I decided, with support from hubby, to only spend $100 a week this month for perishables. This way I can certainly use up some of my stockpile but still have fresh healthy foods. I need to sit down and plan out what we are going to eat this month - a month menu! I have been struggling with completing a weekly menu lately so a month will be a challenge. I also am going to try out a few new recipes for snacks for the kids. I have been really exploring the whole food movement and really want to concentrate on avoid a lot of the preservatives and food dyes found in many snack foods. I will be sharing by monthly menu as soon as I can made one up! Meanwile, I still have to pack up all of the holiday decorations, take down the tree(I have been itching to do this since December 26th!), entertain some friends this afternoon, play with my boys and enjoy the last few days until it is back to the grind!