The end of the challenge

Well, I made it through. Even if I didn't keep up with detailed day-by-day, meal-by-meal accounts of what I ate! On Saturday, one month after I started my challenge, I had to go to the store to get some heavy-duty garbage bags (three of which I have filled so far with clothes that don't fit, to be donated to a local thrift shop. How the heck did I get so many clothes to start with?) and while I was there, I told myself that, as a reward for making it through a month without buying food, I could get myself a treat. I considered chocolate, granola bars, ice cream, and other goodies around the store that normally would have been tempting impulse buys. But...I just couldn't see the point of getting any of them. They were a waste of money, and things I really didn't need.

However, today I went grocery shopping (used up the remainder of the $20 gift card and then some), and gave in to the lure of two kinds of cookies, some ice cream, and sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. Clearly, my impulse shopping has not been entirely curbed! But it's good to know that I can set a goal and stick to it. And of the masses of meat in my freezer, I'm down to one bag of chicken legs, three pork chops, and a bag of chicken thighs thawing in the fridge. I still have a lot of beans and pasta, too, but even if I don't use those up, they'll travel well. Next goal: getting rid of all the junk I've been toting from apartment to apartment and never using. But that's not kitchen related, so I won't be discussing it on this blog. (Okay, I've got a lot of kitchen stuff I've been toting from apartment to apartment, but I can't see myself getting rid of even the things I never use.) I'm not entirely abandoning this blog, though, I expect to still post things from time to time, such as recipes I've created or adapted, or other food-related challenges, etc. See you when I see you!

5/14/10--A trip to the grocery store

I finally used some of the $20 card. I went to the store today to buy milk and a little fresh produce. I've been wanting fruit, so I got myself a pineapple and some strawberries. With difficulty, I avoided buying a huge chocolate bar that was on sale for $1.25. I guess I do have some willpower, after all! I also bought a bag of popcorn kernels, but now I can't find my air popper. I really can't think of where it could be, and I can't imagine I would have gotten rid of it! Hmph. The grocery bill for this first excursion came to less than $8, leaving plenty for the rest of the month.

Anyway, I didn't eat breakfast today, so I've sliced some strawberries and sprinkled sugar on them. I'm letting them sit for a bit while I type this, and I'll probably eat some real lunch after the appetizer of strawberries. Oh, and I should take the other loaf of absurdly dense rye bread out of the freezer to thaw.

Clearly, I am not cut out for daily blogging! Well. Monday afternoon I had burritos with my homemade tortillas and refried beans. I also made some pecan caramel bar cookies, which were very good but perhaps not the wisest choice, seeing as how I finished them off by breakfast time yesterday. They were pretty much pure butter and brown sugar.

Tuesday, I ate too many cookies all day long, then thawed some curry and rice for dinner. On Wednesday, other than cookies, I had a couple of fried eggs for lunch, then went to my parents' house to work on my lathe and ended up having dinner there. And today, I made a half recipe of buttermilk biscuits for breakfast (and ate all 6, good grief), then finished off the lemon ice cream. Finally, for dinner, I made enchiladas with the tortillas and refried beans and some ground beef I'd frozen. I had a can of enchilada sauce in the cupboard.

I think I'd better give in and make my first run to the grocery store tomorrow or Saturday. I definitely need milk, and maybe some fruit. I'm almost half-way through the challenge now, so theoretically, I can use half the money on the $20 card.

Um...Saturday and Sunday

Sorry, due to internet connectivity issues, being busy, and being lazy, I'm a little behind. On Saturday, after the symposium, I finally made some tortillas. Since the ground beef was thawed, I made tacos for dinner. I don't usually use flour tortillas for tacos, so it was kind of weird. And then I forgot to put the rest of the tortillas in the fridge or even in a bag until 11 pm...I hope they'll still be usable!

Sunday morning I made a butterscotch peach pie to take along for Mother's day dinner. I also figured I'd better do something with the thawed chicken, so I made curry for breakfast. I made enough curry that I had to do two batches of rice in my rice cooker to go with it! The extra servings are safely stashed in the fridge and freezer. I also made refried beans. I used the black bean recipe I like, but with pinto beans. I think pintos have tougher skins than black beans; they seemed to take longer to cook. And the refried beans are more oniony than I expected. I guess I'm used to it with the black beans! Anyway, a different flavor and consistency than canned refried beans, but good. And I did all that before church.

My sister and I made meatloaf and baked potatoes for dinner over at our parents' place. And I had leftover curry and rice for breakfast today. Okay, I'm all caught up now, right?

5/7/10 Breakfast, lunch, and later

Um, it's past my bedtime, but I figured I'd better check in in case anyone was worried that I didn't eat today. This morning I made biscuits. Because I haven't gotten milk yet (trying to put off using the $20 gift card as long as possible), I used some buttermilk powder I had in the fridge. I was planning to make a 1/4 recipe of regular biscuits (usually I make drop biscuits), but due to errors and inattentiveness, I ended up making a half recipe of buttermilk drop biscuits. I ate three for breakfast. (480 cal, 27 g fat)

Right before running off to the afternoon sections of the woodturning symposium, I threw together a sandwich. A couple of slices of the absurdly dense rye bread, light mayonnaise, some monterey jack cheese, a little salt and pepper, and some lettuce. It really does make a good combination! (377 cal, 14 g fat)

I put the last three biscuits in a plastic bag and put it in the bag I was carrying with me at the symposium. I snacked on them through the afternoon. I never exactly had dinner, but I had the biscuits and I got a cup of hot chocolate from the free drinks concession at the symposium. And on my way home tonight, I ate some more of my crackers. I really need to make more crackers, but I'm not sure when I'll have time. Speaking of time, it is now time for me to go to bed!

5/6/10--Dinner

For the rest of the week, I'm attending a major woodturning symposium located at one of the universities in town. This, as you might expect, is going to mess up my eating schedule. For example, this morning I was running late and still didn't have milk, so I just slapped some peanut butter and strawberry freezer jam on a graham cracker and chomped it down while I hunted around for socks and my keys. Then, when I got to the symposium, I found that a table of breakfasty-type foods was provided. I ate an orange roll and a few grapes, and stashed an almond-poppy muffin in my bag, since I hadn't had time to pack a lunch. I don't eat very well a lot of the time, do I....

Anyway, since I skipped the swap meet, I was able to come home to fix some dinner. The same time constraints I mentioned yesterday still eliminated tortillas from today's menu. But this time, I had a plan. As soon as I got home, I started some rice in the rice cooker. When the rice was done, I sauteed some raw peanuts in peanut oil, added whatever seasonings and herbs seemed reasonable, then dumped in the rice and an egg. I think I could have used more flavorings, but it wasn't bad. 662 cal, 42 g fat. I finished off with the last of my single-serving-size cups of lemon ice cream. It's gonna get trickier to just eat one serving once I'm scooping it out of a bigger container! But this stuff has got to last me, seeing as how it's one of the few sweet treats I've got around, so I'll try to be careful. And now it's almost time to head back for the evening session of the symposium. I'm going to go to the area where the people who are teaching the various sections will all be competing to make cool stuff! I know I won't be able to afford any of the items, which are being put into an auction, but it should be fun to watch people who really really really know what they're doing.

5/5/10 Breakfast and dinner

So, I spent too much of the day sitting out in the sun. If I had realized I'd be outside all day, I would have put on sunblock. Alas. I am quite sunburned. I was volunteering at the local woodturning store for their big sale today so that I could get free admission to a rather excellent woodturning symposium going on for the rest of the week. So I had to be up and out much earlier than usual.

I ate more rice and monterey jack for breakfast, and packed a sandwich and crackers and Jello for lunch. But it turned out that I got a free lunch at the sale (including the hugest hot dog I have ever seen in my life), but as I didn't cook it or pay for it, that's all you need to hear about my lunch!

Well. When I got home, I wasn't exceptionally hungry, and the only things I could think of to cook required either too much time, meat that was still frozen, or milk. I can't tell whether milk is still safe to use by smell, so I tend to give up on it as soon as I think that maybe it might be bad. I'm going to try to make it through the rest of the week before I go get more. For dinner, I finally decided on frying two eggs. Quick, easy, and fairly filling. (180 cal, 14 g fat). I may have some ice cream or Jello for dessert.

Today I did buy what is technically a grocery item, but since I'm using it for skin care rather than food, it's an acceptable purchase. I acquired a fairly impressive sunburn today while I was being a cashier at the clearance sale, so I picked up a gallon of vinegar to use for a home remedy. This will only be my second time using this method, so I haven't decided yet if it really works!

5/4/10--Dinner and musings

I tried making rye bread today. The recipe calls for molasses, which I don't have. A little astute Googling produced a handy list of substitutions which not only gave me a nice option, but will also probably be helpful for other things as my experiment proceeds. I used brown sugar in place of the molasses.

The bread didn't rise as much as I expected, even though I ended up leaving it for longer than originally planned. The result is a bread that is probably denser than it's supposed to be, (and sweeter than I expected,) but that is quite edible.

So for dinner I used the heels of one loaf and made the same broiled cheese sandwiches with basil mayonnaise as last Friday. To go with it, I figured I might as well use up the hard-boiled eggs I had in the fridge. I cooked them last week to use in sandwiches, but I seem to have lost my desire for egg-mayonnaise sandwiches...some tastes come and go. I made them into deviled eggs (which I have not lost my taste for). Dinner came out to 796 calories and 43 g fat.

Dieting is not a part of this personal challenge, but I find that just the act of recording what I eat and being aware of the fat and calories makes me eat more reasonable portions and snack less. But stopping the fast food and impulse buying is tough. It seems like everywhere I drive, all I see are billboards and signs for fast food that makes me want to go get some. And today when I went to a store to get some non-food necessities (deodorant, dish soap, and wiper blades, if you really want to know), the first things I saw as I walked in were Grasshopper cookies and strawberries, both of which were calling to me strongly. I've successfully resisted all the temptations so far, but it has been difficult. Even more difficult has been not getting candy from the vending machine at school. I probably could, even within the bounds of this experiment, because I would be using the money on my student card, which has already been designated for buying food, same as the gift card I got for dairy and produce this month. But I've still decided that it wouldn't be in the spirit of the challenge. And I'm the one who sets the rules for myself.

In other news, as I was fixing dinner tonight, I noticed a box of curry mix in the back of one of my cupboards, and realized that would be an excellent use for my slightly old carrots and potatoes! So I moved some chicken and ground beef to the fridge to thaw--chicken for the curry, and ground beef to be divided up into single serving sizes and used for things like burritos and enchiladas once I get more tortillas made. I also need to make another batch of crackers; I'm running low.

--Edit, 5/5/10--I realized today that I used the wrong quantity in the drop-down menu on www.nutritiondata.com when I was calculating the calories and fat of the deviled eggs. Turns out there's a big difference between '1 large' and '1 cup chopped'. Yeah. Should have noticed what the default was!

5/4/10--Breakfast

Well, my grumpiness has not gone away yet. So I took the easy way out for breakfast and just had leftover black beans and rice again, this time with a double helping of Jello. Are you catching on to my eating style yet? Yes, it's very usual for me to eat the same thing several meals in a row. Boring, maybe, but easy.

I was planning on making bread today so I can make sandwiches this week. But of the two recipes I wanted to try, I'm missing one vital ingredient of each. I may end up trying to think of something else I could substitute, or just make a different kind of bread, or something.

5/3/10--Breakfast (sort of) and dinner (if you can call it that)

Breakfast was leftovers of the rice and the black beans. No lunch. For dinner I'm cooking one of the chicken bunles and will be reheating some more rice and beans and probably having some Jello and maybe some lemon ice cream because I'm grumpy. No pictures tonight, because it's pretty much all stuff I've already shown (imagine the breaded chicken from the other day rolled up, and that's what the chicken bundle looks like).


Scratch that. The chicken is inedible. Just eating the rice and beans and then going for as long a drive as I can without being late anywhere.

5/2/10--Happy Birthday to Val!

Today is my sister's birthday, although to the best of my knowledge she does not know about this blog. Happy birthday to her, anyway! Due to her 35th birthday festivities (okay, probably not that festive, just dinner and cake), I will be eating at our parents' house today. Which means I'm not going to bother discussing today's meals, since I'm not cooking them. I do know that the cake will be chocolate with peanut butter frosting, which is one of the few kinds of frosting I actually like. I'm getting hungry already....

5/1/10 Dinner

Since part of the reason I'm doing this is to use the meat in my freezer, isn't about time I had a meal with meat in it? Okay, here we go.

I couldn't remember how much chicken was in the bag I'd pulled out to thaw. Turned out it was four boneless skinless breast halves. So I smashed them all flat. For some reason I like chicken better when it's flat.... Anyway, I pulled out a little cookbook my sister gave me when she was living in New Mexico and used one of my favorite recipes: Mexican-style Chicken Kiev. Okay, it's a really bad title, since there isn't that much similarity between this and chicken kiev...maybe it has more of a similarity to chicken cordon bleu. I kind of picked and chose which parts of the recipe I wanted to follow, and made three chicken bundles wrapped around pieces of monterey jack cheese and breaded. Then I put them away to eat another time, and just breaded the other piece and fried it. I ate it along with the black beans I'd been cooking all day and some rice cooked with garlic and chicken broth. By the way--second staple to run out: my jar of minced garlic. Fortunately, I still have some fresh garlic that I don't think has started sprouting yet, and plenty of garlic powder. I should not have a problem continuing to have garlic breath for the rest of the challenge, if I wish!

Sorry, lousy picture. But it was a good dinner!

5/1/10 Breakfast and lunch and the first ingredient to run out!

Well, I've done it. Run out of the first of my kitchen staples: black beans. To go with the chicken that's been thawing, I decided to cook up my favorite bean recipe. I'll be cooking some rice, too. But there weren't quite enough beans. I had a bit less than the 1 cup of dry beans the recipe called for. I'm making the recipe the same way as usual, not reducing anything. But even though I've often gone a whole month without cooking black beans, it makes me kind of sad to know this is my last batch for the forseeable future. I have a lot of other kinds of beans in the cupboard--at least 4 varieties, plus split peas--so I guess I could see what it would be like to cook this recipe using a different kind of bean! Not sure about that, though.

Breakfast today was burritos. I used the last two of the tortillas I made earlier in the week, and finished off the can of refried beans I started on Monday, too. I also used some of the beef fajita strips I'd marinated and frozen. I still have several bags of that meat in the freezer! And because I like cheese, of course there was some cheddar on the burritos, too. Oh, and while the meat was defrosting in the microwave, I had a first course of Jello. (594 cal, 22 g fat)

For lunch I decided I'd better make a salad, since I happen to have a head of iceberg lettuce in the fridge. I'm not sure that was the best idea, since I don't have many other vegetables to put in, and no ham, which I would often include in a salad. So it was a little bland. Lettuce, sunflower seeds, cheddar, a hard-boiled egg, and some ranch dressing I made using a recipe from www.cooks.com. I may need to add some more mayonnaise into the dressing; it was really thin. (382 cal, 28 g fat)

Hopefully dinner will turn out better than lunch. Which reminds me, I'd better go tend to the black beans simmering on the stove!

4/30/10--Breakfast and dinner

Simple breakfast this morning--oatmeal with a little brown sugar and some raisins. With a little milk. (155 cal, 2g fat). I also made some crackers using this recipe to eat for snacks or pack with lunches. The recipe calls for a mixture of whole wheat and all-purpose flour, but since I don't have any whole wheat flour I substituted some bulk seven-grain cereal I'd gotten for making some multi-grain bread. (I have plenty of the cereal to make the bread too, later on.)

I had thought of packing lunch and dinner, and not going home in between the various things I had scheduled for today. But part of what I was planning required the chicken I was thawing, which was still frozen this morning. Actually, it's still kind of icy even now. So I'll probably start using the chicken tomorrow. Anyway, I changed my mind (or rather, hadn't made another decision by the time I needed to run out the door to go to my voice lesson) and didn't pack anything. So after spending some time on campus trying to work on my thesis, I came back to my apartment to eat a lunch/dinner sort of meal.

I'd gotten an idea while I was on campus. I used half of half of the french bread loaf I had left. I cut it in half and spread it with some mayonnaise mixed with dried basil. For the past two years, I've grown fresh basil on my balcony, and had forgotten I had dried basil at the back of my collection of herbs and spices. Due to my plans to move, I didn't plant a garden this year, and I've already been missing having basil around. The dried stuff isn't quite the same, but it works! So. Bread spread with basil mayonnaise, which I then topped with shredded cheddar and monterey jack cheeses and broiled. While it was cooking, I pulled a little bag of last summer's green beans from the freezer and cooked them in the microwave, then sprinkled them with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Some of the jello I made last night rounded out the meal. (Estimated total 555 cal, 28 g fat)
The green beans tasted a little freezer-burned, so I don't think I'll want to use them straight again. Next time I use some, I'll cook them into something with enough flavor to cover. The broiled bread and cheese was fantastic! I'm toying around with the possibility of eating a little of the lemon ice cream I made yesterday morning before I dash off again, or putting together some snack I can eat while I'm off gallivanting around tonight. I've gotten in the habit of getting strawberry limeade from Sonic to drink while I'm on long, late drives, but I need to avoid that and find another way to keep myself alert while I'm driving home tonight!

4/29/10--Dinner

Okay, so here's the dumb thing. As soon as I finished writing my previous post, I started getting really hungry. Like by declaring that I wouldn't buy (almost) any more food for a month, my stomach decided it was going to starve. A quick reminder to my stomach: one of the main reasons for this is that I have too MUCH food in the house! Got that, stomach?

Okay then. Despite the astounding amounts of meat in my freezer, I think tonight I'm going meatless. I have some bread that I made on Sunday (which I thawed yesterday) that I want to eat before it goes bad. Also, I have some bananas that I need to eat before they get brown and sweet and gross. So, tonight I am making french toast with my homemade french bread, with syrup and sliced bananas. But I did move some chicken from the freezer to the fridge to thaw.

First, though, I am making some Jello. I have a packet of strawberry Sugar-free Jello, and I will put in slices of banana and strawberries, so that I can use both before they go bad. (Produce has a tendancy to go bad before being used around here.) I can use the jello as snacks and desserts.

I made a 1/3 recipe of the french toast mixture, but because my french bread loaf has such a small diameter, I cut five slices. I have about half the loaf left. The french toast, syrup, and banana came out to about 683 cal, 16 g fat (nutritional information estimated from recipes, labels, and www.nutritiondata.com)

Oh my, it was delicious!

Beginning.

I have decided to give myself a food challenge. I will spend the next month eating (for the most part) only what is currently in my kitchen. I have made this decision for a few reasons:

1. I have been eating way too much fast food lately, which is bad for me and bad for my budget.
2. I am planning to move far away as soon as I finish with school (mid-to-late-June, most likely), and I have a LOT of food in my freezer that needs to be used before I move.
3. I need to reign in my spending overall.

The second point does not refer to pre-made frozen meals. No, what I've got in my freezer is a lot of meat, especially chicken, quite a bit of zucchini and peach slices I froze last summer, and many other odds and ends. Not everything in there will be edible; some has been in there long enough to be quite freezer-burned by now, I expect. In my cupboards, I have a lot of rice and beans. I know how to make my own bread and pasta (and am learning to make tortillas), so hopefully I have enough flour for all of those items for the next month.

I qualified my goal by saying "for the most part", because I know that the milk I currently have will not last an entire month, and even for the sake of a challenge I cannot make myself use dried milk powder for everything. In order to allow myself to buy fresh dairy and produce as needed, I have purchased a $20 gift card to one of the nearby grocery stores. Not the closest one, the one whose cheddar cheese I like the best. I've got my priorities. However, for the next month, that $20 is all I will be allowed to spend on food.

Because I know that being held accountable for goals is the best way to make sure I keep them, I am keeping a record of what I eat and spend. And naturally, I am doing so in a publicly searchable blog. Hey, that's how these things work in these days of the internet, right? Also, although this challenge is more for tightening the belt on my wallet than on myself, I think I will also log calorie and fat content (as available), just because.

Right. I'm ready for this. I think.