pantry challenge, week 2: settling in

This month I issued a challenge to my household: we would refrain from buying anything that resides in a package, to clear out pantry (and freezer) clutter.

After last week's mad veg-acquiring rampage, between the market and the CSA, we really didn't need much fresh produce this week.  We did go to the market on Saturday, but mostly just bought a lot of eggs.  We didn't even feel the need to place a CSA order this week.  It has provided a great opportunity to clean out the random bits in the fridge, and there's actually some elbow room in there!  It's a rather odd state of affairs for me.  I'm far too accustomed to a fridge that is bursting at the seams, often with a tendency to attack when opened.

Wednesday saw a stop by a real grocery store on the way home from work, largely because we needed more food for the pets.  While there I did pick up some baking soda, but it is a standard baking resource and we were only out because I used it up for scrubbing out the bathtub.  I'm a fan of cleaning products that don't contain noxious chemicals.

This week, we've used up:

• some leftover frozen lentils and quinoa from various salads I made for a camping trip several weeks ago; they went into homemade carrot burgers and a sort of a dill-yogurt salad for a lunch
• a container of ends of veggies, used to make stock
• a bag of hamburger buns, frozen for who knows how long
• a bag of mustard-flavored pretzels
• a jar of home-canned green chile, and one of peaches
• 2 lbs. of ground lamb; it became a delicious mediterranean meatloaf, that was then repurposed into pseudo-gyros

food budget tracker: week 2

farmer's market: ~$25*

grocery: $58.11

total: ~$83.11

* Farmer's markets are inherently cash-based expenditures, and unfortunately I didn't keep terribly good track of how much was spent this week.  Bad me.  But that's a pretty good estimate, based on what I remember getting.