Pantry Challenge to save money

The fridge and freezers are always full at this time of year and so we normally do a pantry challenge to make sure that everything is used up and nothing is wasted.  This year we have been lucky enough to buy lots of Christmas cheese with 75% off, reduced meat, and some reduced fish, before the new year started.  Left over cooked turkey has been frozen, and we also stocked up with half price joints before Christmas which made our own sausages and mince.  Fruit and vegetables that we got for free from out community fridge have also been stored and preserved. We therefore have no reason to have to visit a supermarket, and so the pantry challenge is to avoid them.

Lots of people will have left overs that need eating up.  However, going to the supermarket each week is a habit for many and lots of things are wasted.  In our house we always shop from our cupboards and fridge first, but are sometimes tempted to go and buy things that we see on offer, or to pop in and have a look round. We rarely come out without buying some loss leader, or bargain. During January and February we are doing a pantry challenge to try to change those habits and to save my annual food budget for later in the year.  Last year spending less in the supermarkets and using what I had, meant that I could afford to buy some organic food from a better source.  I would never have believed that I could do that on my budget.

A pantry challenge also improves my skills, helps me be more creative, and makes me think out side of the box. In a weird way the longer I do it, the more joy and satisfaction I get out of it, and the easier it becomes.  That is because my mindset has changed.  A positive outcome is that it stops me eating all of the good stuff at once. I know that we have a  long time to go until we can restock.  It therefore helps with any greedy tendencies.  I always feel that Christmas brings out the greed in me and so it is a good reset.

My pantry challenge may be a bit long or extreme for some people, but you can set your own rules.  For some it may just mean missing a week from shopping. Other people may want to try to go all month and just buy milk, fresh fruit  and bread.  An alternative may be to give yourself a small budget for the necessities, say £10 a week.  You will probably still be saving money and using up what you have already in the house.

The rules for me over the next 2 months are that I can only spend £3 a week on food which will be used mainly for milk.  I can go to the community fridge twice a month as well. That will ensure we still have some fresh produce over the long period.

I don’t need to worry about stocking up on things whilst they are still reduced this year, as I have been lucky enough to have found many bargains already.  We have also preserved or stored some great harvests  I don’t feel deprived during this time as I actually love the challenge.  Doing this also ensures that my small food budget lasts us the year. I will have the money to buy things when they are in season, or on offer next November fand December for Christmas.

This isn’t the only time of year that I do a pantry challenge.  I usually do it during the summer for 3 months when the garden is producing a lot of fresh food. My budget then is £5 a week as we often need some staples for preserving, like sugar, salt or vinegar. I stock up at Easter for the bigger items when once again there will be meat or other bargains on offer.

When doing the pantry challenge I need to be careful that I am not using more energy to cook and bake.  I will therefore need to plan well to only put the oven on a couple of times a month for bread and baked goods. I will fill the oven with as much as I can at these times. We have the air fryer for in between, or the slow cooker.

Yesterday I started the challenge by making a large vegetable and lentil chilli which I can use as a side dish or a main meal.  It used up a lot of vegetables in my fridge from Christmas that were starting to turn. This will make us at least 3 meals each, and can be frozen if we want.  We have also had a couple of lunches made with things that needed eating up in the fridge including pate, soft cheeses, smoked salmon, pitta breads, and  salad. My priority at the beginning of the challenge is to use up the fresh produce so that it does not waste.  We therefore had cooked meat, chips and salad for another meal. I also crushed up a packet of biscuits and used some left over cream cheese to make truffles, which I froze to cover with chocolate later as a treat.

For treats we will be  eating up mince pies, fat rascals, short bread, and ginger bread men which were surplus from our hampers.  The Christmas cake and pudding will still be ok for February and so we are saving those for then.  We have plenty of foraged fruit in the freezers for compote, and we made some yoghurt this morning with the last of the old yoghurt.  We still had lots of tomatoes and cucumbers that we got from the community fridge on Christmas eve when they were begging people to take the food away.  I made some fridge pickles with the cucumbers this morning which will last us 6 weeks, and some of the tomatoes went in the chilli instead of one of my homemade jars of passata or pasta sauce.  The rest of the tomatoes are washed and in glass jars in the fridge, though I have heard that they store well in wood ash. We have plenty in the wood burner and so I might risk a small box full to try it out.

I find that planning ahead really helps me keep to the challenge rules.  I don’t just plan or cook for this particular week.  I think about what I can make for the following weeks, and make sure that the ingredients aren’t all used at once. I share them out over the weeks. Butter is always a challenge to make it last.  I have some in the freezer that I have made from reduced cream earlier in the year, but not enough.  I therefore think of alternatives that I can make to put in sandwiches or on toast, for example hummus.  I can therefore save the butter for baking.  Eggs is another thing that we have to use sparingly. I try to bake eggless recipes or use substitutes like apple puree which I preserved from foraged apples. We have stopped eating breakfasts now and so it should be easier than last year.  We have plenty of flour, sugar, pasta, and rice, and so we will not go hungry.

The trick is to make the food interesting so that boredom does not set in.  There are apps like Super Cook that you can put in the ingredients that you have in, and they will give ideas of what can be made.  I like to look through old war time recipes that were made with small rations, or concoct our own weird recipes.  One year near the end of the challenge I made some pasties with some mashed potato, chorizo and onions cooked in some tomato puree, and put some grated cheese in. We didn’t have much else in the fridge. We make these intentionally now as they travel well when we go away.

Are you doing a pantry challenge?  What are the rules that you set for yourself?

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