As we get closer to moving, I’ve been trying to use up the foods that we have on hand in the freezer and pantry. I really don’t want to move much food with us, so I’ve been getting creative with our meals. It’s been a fun challenge, but I’ve also realized that we have way too much food on hand. While I’m thankful it isn’t wasted because most of it is in the freezer or pantry, it still annoys me that we have so much that we aren’t using. I do pride myself on not wasting food – I rarely throw food out because it’s gone bad. We either eat it or freeze it before that has a chance of happening.
I’m looking forward to starting fresh and buying less. Doing this Pantry-Clean-Out has caused me to break away from the rut we can get in of eating the same thing over and over. Also, Lovebug loves her Muffin Tin Meals and while I love doing these for lunch I don’t really want to do them for dinner too often, but sometimes when it’s just the two of us it’s easy to fall back on that. Not exactly a real sit-down dinner!
One of my goals this year is to eat even less processed food and make more of our meals using whole foods. We already avoid artificial food coloring, artificial sweeteners, and high fructose corn syrup. That eliminates a lot of the processed foods, but I’d like to cut back even more on the pre-packaged (more expensive!) products that we use. This also helps our grocery budget, which I’m working on lowering! Buying meat in bulk on sale and pairing it with in-season produce and a side of rice/potatoes/pasta can be pretty cheap. I want to focus on planning our meals around the store sales, and buying less pre-packaged snack foods unless I get them on a good sale!
One of the meals I made this week was this Pork Chops with Sour Cream & Mushroom Sauce. One of the things I love about AllRecipes.com is that you can search by ingredients. You can put in a few things that you have in your pantry and it will give you recipes that use those ingredients. That’s how I found this one. I had a couple cans of soup leftover that I wanted to use up and some pork chops on hand. Perfect! I served it over brown rice (also on hand) and a side of green peas from the freezer.
It’s also how I made yesterday’s chili recipe the first time. I substituted pasta sauce for the plain tomato sauce because it’s what I had on hand. I also used mayo instead of eggs in my cornbread today.
In an attempt to avoid buying much additional food, we’ve also been eating a lot of PB&J sandwiches for lunch. Simple, cheap, and tasty. Serve with some celery & carrot sticks or apple slices and it’s a great meal.
Once we get moved and stop eating-on-the go for a couple weeks, I’ll get back to menu planning. My friend, Brit at Living with 3 Boys is a great inspiration for me. She’s great at this! I look forward to sharing my menu ideas with you as well as how we manage to eat healthy foods and stay frugal while traveling!
Any tips you have for frugal, healthy meals? I’d love to hear them!
