Grocery Challenge - Day 1

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It's time! The All*You Grocery Challenge has officially begun. For the next four weeks, we'll be spending no more than $50 per week on groceries, household goods and kitties excepted, and getting rid of a whole ton of things that's been hanging around in the freezer and pantry for way, way too long.

And, of course, it's a holiday, so we're starting off with a challenge on top of a challenge. Luckily, my dad asked to have dinner at our house and we had plenty stashed away. We didn't need to run out for anything! (Of course, it helped that he brought his own drink, since we don't usually have diet soda or iced tea on-hand.)

One thing that makes Cochinita Pibil so fast and easy is that we have several bags of frozen whole cranberries stashed away. At the end of the season, Winco was blowing them out at 25c a pound! Also, when we buy pork roasts, I chopped up about 2 pounds specifically to stash away for making this recipe so I could just grab a bag and go. Very fast, very easy.

In fact, I do this with a lot of things. I buy beef roasts, pork picnic roasts, and country-style pork ribs (well-marbled, inexpensive and little-to-no bone to remove), then process them at home into various meal components. I usually break down the meat into sets of stir-fry sized pieces, 1" - 2" cubes, and meat for grinding. I package all of it into individual meal portions - about 1/4 lb to 1/2 lb, depending on what I think we might make - before freezing. The meat for grinding gets marinated if it's being turned into sausage or ground for use later as meatballs or burgers and packaged in 1/2 lb packets.

So, today, we used quite a bit out of our pantry, but this is a really average meal day for us. As you'll see over the next few weeks, breakfast is never vegetarian for us though lunch and/or dinner may be.

Meals for June 20, 2010:

  • Breakfast: English Muffin bread with Breakfast Sausage Patties and a fried egg. Coffee for him, iced mocha coffee for me.
  • Lunch: Tacos - refried beans with canned green chiles, mock beef taco meat (TVP w/ Mild Taco Seasoning and beef bouillon), shredded cheese and cabbage. Water.
  • Dinner with Dad for Father's Day: Cochinita Pibil with 1/3rd TVP, Golden Rice (recipe forthcoming), sauteed Mexican zucchini and carrots. Diet soda, coffee or water for all.