Pantry Challenge Update

It's been a little over a week since I started my pantry challenge and I've noticed a few things.

I *still* suck at menu planning. 

I need a garden. 

I need chickens. 

I need to use up the dried beans/lentils/peas I have in a gazillion jars in my cabinet. 

It's really hard to stay out of the grocery store! 

I need to start making 2 batches of homemade bread a week. 

I need to learn to can something other than jelly and preserves.

The idea of canning meat both interests me and skeeves me out. 

Maybe my zombie apocalypse plan isn't as well thought out as I'd thought. 

These have been just a few things I've discovered in the last week.

Do you ever have those days where you're scouring the pantry and think, "We have NO FOOD!"
Yeah, that's been my way of thinking quite a bit and it's a lie. I HAVE food. I have quite a bit of food. But it's not pre-fab food. It's like the food IKEA. There's all these parts that just need to be constructed into meals and some days I just want to be like a scene in one of those manly movies. You know the ones where you toss an explosive device in there and walk away in slow-motion to some modernized Zeppelin riff. That's what food IKEA does to me. And some days I can make June Cleaver look like one lazy, bon-bon munching, well-dressed couch potato. There is no medium. I need a medium.

I've done pretty well on grocery shopping (I think). I plan on going once a week for staple items: milk, bread, eggs, apples, and other produce. So I've done well on that.

I've also been listening to podcasts and reading blog posts on pantry challenges for inspiration. On this podcast I heard something that really struck me. Maybe this is a "Duh" for y'all, but it made a lot of sense to me. We really cook or purchase to eat things that we want rather than what we have. This really hit close to home with me because as I look through my pantry, I see things that I've said, "Meh, I don't really feel like making that today." or "I don't really want to eat that." That's not a cardinal sin or anything, I'm just saying, if you're buying this stuff and then never making it, you just wasted your money. That's something I'm going to work on, cooking what we have and not just what we want to eat. Now this doesn't mean I'm going to sit the whole family down and force them to choke down things I know they don't like.

Seriously. That would NOT happen. There's only one of them left that's smaller than I am and they can all pick me up, so NO WAY, NO HOW!

My plan for this is to make a menu plan and stick to it. **Enter rage face here**

While I'm getting better at menu planning, I am no expert. Some people get all excited about menu planning. They love it. They're great at it. It makes them smile. I am not that person. I'm the type of person who gets itchy middle fingers when you mention menu planning. There may be a slight urge to punch the mentioner in the face and then run around in circles in the kitchen throwing the California Howdy all over the place. (If you don't know what the California Howdy is, go watch The Beverly Hillbillies movie.) But this is what it's going to take. Not just the writing the meals down on assigned days and then not going by it. ACTUALLY DO THIS STUFF. I'm going to have to call Shia LaBeouf in to encourage me.

My thanks to The Google for this pic. 

So my goals for this week: Use up the dried black beans, black-eyed peas, and start making a dent in the quinoa. I cooked a giant ham last week and I still have some left over. So I'll make black-eyed peas with ham in the next few days.

I've also invested in some giant mason jars for storage so things I want to keep for a while stay fresh. I got some half-gallons and some pint and a half jars. The half-gallons are to store things and the pint and a halves are to make jelly in later this year.

I've also been reading up on gardening, mentally planning out my plots, and mentally prepping where I'm going to put things up and how we will do our beds. We do have plans for a good fence that the evil cows can't get in and eat all of my tomatoes. That happened once and my heart still has a hole in it. You don't mess with a girl's maters.

I'm also figuring out how often I'll have to bat my eyes and look cute so I can get some chickens. We need eggs. The amount of eggs we use a month is obscene. I'll need 5,000 chickens to keep up with the egg consumption.

I'm not giving up. I shall prevail!! Who's with me? Anybody else doing a pantry challenge?