This is a challenge where I only eat at home for 7 days, using up as much of the food in kitchen as possible to cut back on food waste and save money. For more details, check out the intro post or days one, two, three, four, five, six or seven.
What I discovered
The most fun part was probably the weird things I found in my kitchen. Some highlights:
-A lifetime supply of lentils, none of which I bought
Realizing even in this circumstance I didn’t want to eat them, I donated the, along with some cans of beans, closed boxes of tea and other items to a free food fridge near me.
-SEVEN bottles of hot sauce, incl. 2 bottles of Crystal and 2 of Frank’s (just, why?)
I used a lot of this to make buffalo sauce, which I love and hadn’t made in a while.
-Tons of products from when I was on keto in Jan 2019, like MCT oil, powdered protein and multiple kinds of artificial sweetener.
I didn’t eat any of this, but it was good to remember I have it.
Taramasalata – a delicious Greek spread that’s essentially tiny roe (think sushi tobiko) whipped with olive oil and lemon juice.
It’s salty and flavorful, even if I didn’t have pita to eat it with. (Don’t eat it with tortilla chips; they’re already salty.)
Some days were also punctuated by great finds, like :
-A frozen half of an everything bagel from my favorite bagel place
-Frozen pie crust!
This became chicken pot pie
-Extremely well wrapped frozen, cooked chicken leftover from a barbecue.
I had a few realizations and definitely over-prepped some food items. How many matzah balls can one person eat in a week?
But mostly it was just really nice to have a firm grasp on all the food left in my kitchen and to have cleared a lot of it out. There’s still a considerable amount of food left, but so much less in my freezer!
I’m not going to quite do this challenge again next week, but I think doing it will encourage me to have nearly everything cleared out that I can by Thanksgiving.