Welcome to Gramma's Quilting Room.

Saturday, January 06, 2018

January Pantry Challenge-Week 1


In December, I told you about the January Pantry Challenge that I planned to participate in. 

Here is my week 1 recap.

I had previously made a dinner menu plan for the month.
Dinners on days 1-4 were not what I had planned.
There were things in the fridge to get used up.
A Taco Soup craving happened. 😀🙋
No big deal.
We still ate from what was in the fridge and pantry.

I had said that I was only going to shop to stock the future pantry.
On Tuesday the grocery ad comes out for Safeway.
They have cheese on sale-2# for $5, limit 4.
Since my Wednesday group was cancelled, 
Ernie volunteered to go shopping for me.

Armed with his detailed list and asked to check for on sale beef, off he goes.
He came home with all the list items plus
2 big packages of hamburger and
4 big packages of chicken thighs.
Good shopping!

We got that all packaged up for the freezer.
Thank goodness he likes to vacuum seal.
(I kind of want to go get more cheese and thighs to can.)

On Tuesday evening I had taken 4 pork loins out of the freezer.
We got them on sale last year for a really good price.
I think the price was so good because they were the toughest pork I had ever had!
So after they finally thawed,
I cut the meat off into chunks and we ground it up into sausage meat.

I had watched this video about making Sausage Eggs cups
and knew I wanted to try canning sausage.
Don't turn up your nose until you've tried it.
(I did make some egg cups using diced ham...yummy yummy!)

I got 22 1/2 pints canned up and yesterday tested it making gravy.
OMGoodness! Sooo good.
I still have more roasts to thaw and grind.

So I consider my week a huge success.
I bought no real groceries,
I stocked the pantry and freezer with some yummy food.
 I have my husband on board with my challenge.
I don't mind being flexible with my menu plan.
It's working for us.

My plan for next week is looks really yummy and exciting!

Do you do kitchen and cooking challenges? 
Here are a few of my past freezer challenges.
I'm so easily entertained. 




5 comments:

Suzanne said...

Sounds like a complete success...congrats! We are headed out to shop at our grocery store, which we just found out last night is closing in two weeks. I am not a happy camper.

Mary said...

My Challenge is to get into the Kitchen. It's a Fly over Zone during Quiltville Mystery time. Taco Soup...yum!

AnnieO said...

Since it’s just the two of us, we fly by the seat of our pants for most dinners. We are aiming to eat a lot more vegetables and a lot less meat this year—good thing we love salads.

Julie said...

I avoid anything mentioning the word cooking... Yeah doesn't work around here but I can't stand to be in the kitchen and only do it because I don't have a choice. We have a freezer full of meat and I try to cook in bulk so we can just heat up leftovers, especially on work days! My daughters are both menu planners, not me! Good luck with your challenge.

The Joyful Quilter said...

What an interesting challenge!! Not something that I would do (with all that canning.) I could/should certainly "freezer dive" for dinner more often than I do! Thanks for the reminder.