Budgeting Experiment 2: Eating From the Pantry

I knew coming into this month that it would be pretty lean. My freelance work has dropped off, so we're basically living on one income until I can wrangle a few more clients.

Since groceries are our top expenditure (after the monthly bills), this month I thought I would try to prepare meals exclusively from the ingredients we have in the pantry and the freezer.

For one month, I will try not to buy anything at the grocery store. Well, almost—the three exceptions have to be milk, coffee, and eggs—as we have a tendency to go through these fairly rapidly... and I'm guessing, at least once this month we might *need* ice cream (or chocolate of some kind). BUT for those things (especially the coffee, chocolate, and the eggs) I will try to only buy them on sale AND with coupons.

So here's the thing—I know me, and I know that I won't be able to not spend anything. It's just not feasible. So I'm going to try to hold myself to a $100(ish) budget. Given that our average monthly grocery expenditure (for two people) is about $400, this will be a challenge.

Thankfully, we have plenty of dried, canned, and frozen food to work with, so the big hurdle will be having the meal plan jive with what the household wants to eat. (We still have that luxury.)

My meal plan for the month looks something like this:

Possible Meals

Week 1:

• Fish tacos—one piece of Hake (white fish) left + corn tortillas + salsa
• Tuna noodle casserole—enough to make 2 batches
• Chicken pot pie—enough to make 2 pies (If I'm on it) > [update: I wasn't "on it"- we ended up only having one. I'll do better next month.]
• Potato soup—potatoes + chicken stock + salt / pepper + butter + milk [makes about 8 servings]

Week 2:

• Pasta Frittata—pasta + onion + eggs + garlic + cheese or veggies
• Black beans & rice—I have dried black beans and black rice in the pantry; pressure cooker meal [makes about 6 servings]
• Veggie chili—dried beans + water / stock + spices + onion + tomato sauce + veggies [makes about 8 servings]
• Tomato soup—canned tomatoes + chicken stock + spices + olive oil + onion [makes about 6 servings]
• Grilled cheese sandwiches—use homemade bread

Week 3:

• Chicken & rice—crockpot meal [makes about 6 servings]
• Quesadillas—leftover lentils, veggies, or rice + cheese + flour tortillas
• Pasta with Italian sausage—I have 2 leftover sausages in the freezer
• Rice & bean burritos—flour tortillas + rice + dried beans + cheese + salsa
• Baked potatoes—loaded with butter, cheese, & yogurt (we ran out of sour cream)
• Pizza—homemade crust + tomato paste + cheese + any veggies that need to be used up; we have enough cheese for 2 pizzas.

Week 4:

• Tuna noodle casserole (repeat)
• Chicken tenders—frozen
• Minestrone soup—if we have enough chicken stock left + chickpeas + tomato paste + frozen veggies
• Lentil tacos—lentils, corn tortillas, spices, 1/2 onion, salsa
• White chicken chili

Week 5:

• White chicken chili (leftovers)
• Pasta with brown butter & garlic—easy; doesn't take a lot of ingredients
• Pizza—homemade crust + tomato paste + cheese + any veggies that need to be used up
• Spaghetti with red sauce—I have lots of pasta & 1 jar of marinara sauce in the pantry and plenty of canned tomato sauce in the pantry
• Black bean & chicken burritos—use whats left of the rotisserie chicken + dried beans + flour tortilla + cheese *make a batch and freeze for later

Breakfasts:

• Swedish pancakes—flour + milk + eggs (good with jam or syrup)
• Ricotta pancakes—made with homemade ricotta (I messed up a batch of yogurt)
• Eggs & toast
• Potato latkes & eggs
• Breakfast burritos—eggs, + flour tortilla + cheese + salsa
• Yogurt & granola—homemade
• Cereal (we ran out after the first week)
• Smoothies—frozen berries + smoothie mix + water/juice + homemade yogurt
• PB&J—on homemade bread

Pantry Supplies:

It's amazing the recipes you can dream up, given only a few stock ingredients. It's always good to have a stocked pantry, but even if you don't, you can still create some good meals.

I try to keep these minimal things on hand:

Milk	Eggs	Butter
Flour	Sugar	Salt
Yeast	Onions	Garlic
Tomato paste	Dried beans
Lentils

Some of our go-to recipes:

Lentil tacos
Chicken & Rice
Beans & Rice
Veggie chili
Pasta with brown butter & garlic
Swedish pancakes

So, how did we fare?

The amount of money I spent at the grocery store this month:

Week	Costs
Week 1: Stock, potatoes, can'd goods...	$31.80
Week 1: Juice, cereal, ice cream, etc.	$31.71
Week 2: Milk	$5.91
Week 2: CostCo run	$26.73
Week 3: Milk & coffee	$16.10
Week 3:	$7.61
Week 4: Milk + veggies	$26.33
Week 4: Stuff we probably didn't need	$11.61
Week 5: Milk + coffee + other stuff	$27.59
Week 5:	$12.63
Total:	$198.02

Note: This was much harder than I thought it would be.

By day #11 (technically week 3 on the calendar), I'd already spent  most of my $100 grocery budget. Weeks 1 & 5 were the hardest, because we were running short on recipes for which we had all of the ingredients.

That said, our usual grocery budget was $400 / month. So, while I wasn't able to keep my spending to $100, I *was* able to cut my spending in half.

If I can maintain this level of spending, I can save $2,400/year.