Update #1 on the Pantry Challenge

It’s been almost two weeks since I put a moratorium on buying food until I finish all the food in my kitchen, and I’ve been doing pretty well so far, though not perfectly.

The good:
– I’ve come to loooove hot breakfast cereal.  I had a lot of creamy rice cereal and oatmeal when I started this challenge, and I’ll eat the last serving by tomorrow.  I’ve eaten it every day, sometimes multiple servings.  It’s become a little ritual.  I’m sad to see it fade, but I look forward to reacquainting myself with the ritual once I’m back in grocery-shopping mode.  I think this will be a big money-saver in the long run — I can save a lot by buying the cereals on Amazon, and they are calorie-dense, portable (just need hot water to make), and versatile.
– I’ve come to appreciate food in a way that I imagine my grandparents’ families appreciated it during the Depression.  This actually sounds naive to me — it’s not like I ever doubted what their families went through, especially as they came from large families.  But as thin as my finances have run at times, I’ve always had the money — cash — to choose what to eat on impulse.  I’ve never been forced to eat what’s in the kitchen.  I’ve always been able stop at the grocery store and buy a box of crackers on the way home.  Now I realize how wonderful each potato is, beyond the fact that they’re potatoes.
– I’ve stopped taking food for granted.  I know hunger exists in the world, even in my own country, and just hearing stories and seeing photographs is — it’s beyond words.  But when I almost dumped my rice cereal out of its container the other day, I panicked to catch it.  It was a tangible demonstration of what it’s like to rely on a simple half-cup of grains.  And it reminded me how stressful having few resources can be.  I get stressed out about money even though I could rely on family if everything fell through.  I can’t imagine what it would be like to have no safety net.

The bad:
– I’ve cheated a couple times — stopping to pick up a snack or two; no grocery shopping/fast food/etc. — because I was out and about and unprepared to meet my hunger needs.  I tend to graze, which means I rarely sit down and eat a full meal.  I came into this challenge with little food that I can eat on the go, so while I calculated that I had enough calories to last about 25 days at 1800 calories per day, I forgot that most of those calories are in meal form.  In other words, eating has just as much to do with the way you consume the food as how many calories the food contains.  This issue has surfaced when I’ve been depressed — if there’s no convenient food in my house, I won’t eat.  So I may have to overhaul my rules here — and then figure out how to align my grocery shopping with my eating style without breaking the bank.
– I’ve gorged myself on free food at family gatherings and at work.  It’s a little ridiculous.  At first I thought it was because I was afraid that I would run out of food, but I actually think it’s a rebellion against the constraints I’ve put on myself.  I’ve noticed this as a problem in dieting — we use food as celebration, as reward, as rebellion, and until we recognize it as such and figure out other outlets for those desires, diet changes won’t stick.

The caveat I forgot:

– I forgot to take into account the brunch I have with friends every week.  Last Saturday was the first brunch I attended since starting this challenge.  At first I thought I would just have coffee or tea — being a good patron while keeping the spending as low as possible — but this past week I ordered my usual meal.  I’m not sure how I feel about this.  I budget for this meal separately from my grocery bill, but it’s still an act of eating outside of the kitchen.

While my performance hasn’t been perfect, I’ve already saved a lot of money, and I’m coming back around to appreciating whole foods.  I’m hoping to get to August 10 without grocery shopping, but I have to figure out how to deal with the snack factor first.

Food Inventory & the Pantry Challenge

Today, right now, I am putting a moratorium on buying groceries or any other food until I eat all the food that’s currently in my “pantry” (which includes the refrigerator/freezer).  I’m doing this challenge in part to save money, in part to recenter my diet on cooking and eating whole foods, and in part because it’ll be fun.

Here is the food that is currently in my “pantry.”

Grains

1 cup white rice
3 cups brown rice
7.5 cups quinoa
5.5 cups creamed rice cereal
9 cups rolled oatmeal
4 cups unpopped popcorn

Beans, Lentils, Split peas

1 can white kidney beans
1 cup lentils
4 cups split peas

Nuts & Seeds

1 cup raw cashews
1.5 cups peanut butter
(I hereby declare that peanuts are nuts, and that peanut butter belongs in the Nuts & Seeds category)

Veggies

1 can fire-roasted tomatoes
1 can stewed tomatoes
1/2 bag frozen peas
1 bag frozen sugar snap peas
1 bag frozen broccoli
1 bag red potatoes (approx. a dozen)
1 shallot (may or may not be usable)
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 avocado

Fruit

4 bananas
1/2 box of blueberries
1 cantaloupe
1 bag of cherries
5 cups flaked coconut

Meat

5 tilapia fillets (frozen)
3 cans of tuna (4.5oz each)
6 eggs

Dairy

1/2 bag shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 container cream cheese (about 4oz)

Oil, vinegar, spices & cooking/baking ingredients

20oz safflower oil
3oz olive oil
10oz coconut oil
10oz balsamic vinegar
White vinegar
Salt
Black pepper, oregano, basil*, thyme, bay leaves, cumin, dill weed, rosemary, nutmeg, garlic powder, chili powder, white pepper, crushed red pepper, turmeric, crushed mesquite smoked pepper, cinnamon
Ginger capsules.  I have no idea if these would substitute for ginger in cooking, but I’ll write them down.
1-2tsp vanilla
Baking powder, baking soda
Powdered unsweetened cocoa
Agave nectar
*I also have a few basil plants, but I generally just let them grow

Processed foods

8 slices of bread
1/2 bag frozen french fries
1 box (3 veggie burgers) frozen South West Sunshine Burgers
1 box (3 veggie burgers) frozen Garden Herb Sunshine Burgers
3 bags Sierra Soups, which are bean-based soups-in-a-bag that make about 10 cups of soup each.  Unfortunately, all 3 I have require adding onion.  But maybe I’ll figure something out.  The three I have:
– Italian Lentil Soup
– SIzzling Black Bean Chili
– Tuscan Peasant Soup

Condiments

Yellow mustard
Sweet & spicy mustard
Ketchup (organic ketchup)
1/2 cup hot chili pineapple sauce
3 tbsp pure maple syrup
Half a jar of cashew & cumin cooking sauce in the freezer… we’ll see if that is still usable

Miscellaneous

The miscellaneous items are all tea!  I’ll list them for fun.
2 bags orange & cinnamon spice tea
1 bag ginger tea
1 bag root beer rooibos tea (ooh!)
10 bags senna leaf tea
6 bags Yogi Women’s Energy tea
4 bags Sleepytime tea
Oh, I am woefully low on tea!  I have some at work, though, and that totally counts.

While nothing on this list is a surprise to me, looking at all of my food written out like this, I realize I have much more to go on than I thought I did.  I’m still not sure what it means in terms of number of meals or days of food, but just writing this inventory has convinced me that I can make a good go of this challenge.

I expect that the first few days of this challenge will be very difficult.  I have been avoiding cooking as much as possible, so I’ll have to switch gears quickly.  I’ll also have to consider the order in which I eat the foods.  I want to make it through the fruit, eggs, and cheese before they go bad, and the potatoes before they grow legs, but I don’t want to end up eating meal after meal of unadulterated grains.  In fact, if I get to a point where I have just rice and/or quinoa, I’ll declare myself a winner and move forward with my next plan.  After all, I am not going to limp on eating all my spices and drinking all my tea until every last speck of food is gone.

A note: I am free to accept food if someone offers it to me, but I will decline any food that doesn’t fit in with the list above.  For example, there is a lot of candy at my workplace right now, and I know indulging in it will making coming home and cooking that much harder, so I’ll forgo the candy party.  Also, if I somehow grow the ability to detect and eat wild berries without killing myself, those would be fine too.

I’m going to keep an eye on nutrition as much as I can during this challenge.  Several years ago, when I was eating a diet that was 100% whole foods and very high in fruits and veggies, I used the Food Advisor at World’s Healthiest Foods to make sure I wasn’t missing out on nutrients as I cut back on meat and grains.  I’ll do the same here — and maybe doing so will give me some ideas about how to use the food I have.  I’ll also use their website to make sure I’m eating enough calories.  (The World’s Healthiest Foods website is a great place to go if you want to geek out on food and nutrition.)

I am not a very experienced cook, so if anyone has ideas about how I can maximize my use of the food I have, please feel free to comment!  And please comment if you have ideas about food storage — like, can I freeze a potato?!

The Food Budget (or lack of it)

Food is where I do my largest discretionary spending each month.  Yes, I have to eat, but I don’t keep track of how much I spend eating, so I am pretty sure the amount I spend eating each month is way, way up there for a single person.

There are two factors at play here:

1) I have bouts of depression, and when I am depressed, I lose interest in food.  I am at the low end of the BMI chart to begin with, and I can easily become underweight while I’m depressed.  In order to make sure I eat the amount of food I need to eat every day, I’ve stopped worrying about how much money I spend on food.  I focus solely on eating.  What is appetizing?  What is easy?  And while it’s worked in terms of keeping me fed, the dollars have added up.

2) I have a health condition that gets better when I follow a certain diet.  “Diet” here means the division of foods into those I can eat and those I can’t.  It has nothing to do with losing weight, number of calories consumed, etc.  So I am not “dieting.”  Let’s say I have a “nutritional plan” instead.  Luckily, the foods that are best for me are among the foods that are best for everyone — whole foods.  But there are a lot of newfangled processed health foods that make you feel like you’re eating whole foods, and eating meals based around those foods costs a lot more than cooking from scratch.  I’ve been relying on such foods for convenience’s sake for a while now, and my wallet has taken a hit for it.

So the challenge is to get the foods that are good for me while spending conservatively, and to do so in a way that will keep me eating even when I’m depressed.  I think the latter goal here is actually an issue many of us face: we may have rice and beans at home, but we don’t find them appetizing, and we’d have to cook them.  Let’s get takeout instead!  It’s very easy to run to the nearest sandwich shop, but it doesn’t look so good on the bank statement.

Couponing?

Extreme couponing has become a thing in America: gathering zillions of coupons, doing a lot of math, and buying a ton of groceries at once to come away with $300 worth of groceries for $19.  There are television shows showing extreme couponers in action, rolling trains of grocery carts out to their cars, filling their closets and garages with household items that will last them the rest of the century (sometimes literally).

I never used to take coupons seriously.  For one, you have to want to eat the food that the coupon is for, and that’s not usually the case, especially now that I’m on a restricted diet.  But more importantly, I never saw how coupons would save me enough money to make hunting them down and gathering them up worthwhile.

Since extreme couponing came on the scene, I have more respect for coupons.  If you really know your stuff and you have the time to spend, you can save a lot of money.  Personally, I’m not going to consider extreme couponing.  I don’t want to spend the time it takes to come  up with such huge deals, and I don’t want to buy most of the stuff the extreme couponers buy.  (Besides, I don’t have the storage space!)

A little while ago, I read this Eating Well on $1 a Day Challenge.  A man’s sister bets him he can’t eat healthfully on just $1 a day.  He wins the bet, and he does so by doing a micro version of extreme couponing.  He buys Scrubbing Bubbles the first day because doing so spits out coupons worth more than he what pays for the Scrubbing Bubbles after applying a coupon he has.

Reading through his month-long challenge is dizzying — at least for a couponing novice like me.  I love seeing how a person can use coupons as shortcuts to get the food he wants to buy.  He also incorporates lazy couponing, which makes it all the more appealing.

Buying bit by bit

There are lots of “eating on $1 a day” challenges out there, and while the one above is impressive, it’s still based around prepackaged foods, which I’m trying to avoid as much as possible.  So after some googling and wandering, I happened upon the blog Less is Enough.  The writer there took up the challenge of eating on $1 a day and did it in a totally different way than I had seen before.

Rebecca at Less is Enough used the approach of buying very small quantities of food as she needed them.  She allowed herself $2 the first day and bought tiny amounts of wheat berries, cornmeal, split peas, sea salt, and sunflower seeds.  She continued the approach through the month, spending mere cents on some grocery trips.  Some of her receipts look absurd, or at least very out of place in this century.

Rebecca’s approach struck a chord with me.  She ate whole foods throughout the month, buying food as she needed it.  She didn’t have a lot of produce, but she managed to work some in.  By the middle of the month, she had accumulated enough food to create an appetizing menu.  I’m guessing she was low on the calorie count, and she noted at a couple points that if she expended more energy than normal or changed her schedule, her menu didn’t keep up with her energy demands.  But all told, she blew the couponers out of the water (in my opinion, at least) by breaking her groceries down into teeny tiny just-enough-for-now purchases.  She demonstrated that with a little creativity and discipline, eating well on a limited budget can be done sans coupons.

I am not looking to do a $1-a-day challenge anytime soon.  For one thing, I need to gain weight right now — about 10lbs according to my doctor.  But also, I need to recenter myself on a whole foods diet.  Several years ago, I was eating whole foods exclusively and managing 9-12 servings of fruits & veggies a day.  I haven’t had the drive to do that in a while, and I’m hoping this blog will help me bring it back.

I’ve decided that my near-term grocery goal is to eat all the food that I currently have in the kitchen before buying any more.  This will have two benefits: 1) I’ll save the money I’d otherwise be spending on groceries or takeout, and 2) I’ll be forced to eat more whole foods.  While I’m clearing out my kitchen, I’ll do some thinking about how I’d like to save money on food.  Maybe by then I’ll be up for a $1- or $2-a-day challenge.  It does sound like fun!