The Four Week Challenge

I don't know about everyone, but the COVID-19 pandemic has caused me to think about the food in my house and my use of the food items I already own. The whole "stocking up" notion, the infrequent trips to the store, the need to best organize how and when we eat the foods we buy, and making sure to use the foods we already own have me looking at what I waste and what I'm not using. 

For example, when this stay home stuff all started, I ordered some frozen items from a meat supplier.  As a result, I have easily 30 pieces of chicken in the freezer, frozen tuna, and some hamburger.  This is on top of the things I had already stored in the freezer.  Some of that chicken is for Taz, but some was ordered with the thought of me making my own meals. 

I have cans of soup and broth, oatmeal, frozen vegetables, and all sorts of other things, much like I image most average kitchens in the U.S.  Yet, when I go to the store, I'm often buying fresh chicken, cookies that I shouldn't be eating, or adding in another jar of pasta sauce just in case even though I have enough pasta sauce to give myself a tomato sauce bath. (that thought makes me gag by the way because something about washing pans with tomato sauce in them and the smell of wet tomato sauce embedding itself on my hands is really not ok with me. Why do I buy and force myself to eat pasta sauce when the idea of washing pans full of pasta sauce makes me gag? It's time to free myself from the tyranny of pasta sauce.)

Here's another interesting tidbit.  I also get a general feeling of panic and dread when I have too much clutter in my house.  Having full cabinets with things shoved in there without being able to segregate and properly order them makes me a little anxious like I'm suffocating under all my things.  I have friends and family members that have so much stuff in their fridge and freezer that it makes me panic just to open the door and look around.  How on earth do you even know what's in the back of that shelf because there's so much piled up? What's good? What's bad?  My god, how do people live that way? I like everything in my fridge to have it's own space with several inches of clearance around it.  Kind of like social distancing in the fridge.  When I stock up at the store now and have to stack things and put some stuff at the back of the shelf, behind other things that are stacked, it's hard to take. I never claimed I was normal, folks.   

I was cleaning and sanitizing all my groceries and seeing my shelves fill up again, when I thought, "I wonder how long I could really go with all the food I currently have in the house." I have two choices when faced with the food in my house and wanting to use it the best way possible: 1.  Feed myself for the next month or 2. Hold a block party for 100 of my closest friends and neighbors.  Since we are social distancing, I can't cook well enough to satisfy the taste buds of people that want food to taste good, and I hate hosting parties, that leaves me with feeding myself for a month on my existing stores of food. 

Four weeks seemed like a manageable yet somewhat challenging amount of time.  I'm pushing myself, but I won't be eating nothing but oatmeal and rice for two weeks. I'll still be able to have vegetables everyday, and fruit for at least part of the time.  I won't be eating canned tuna each day, especially because I only have three cans of tuna. 

I decided to make this next month into a game.  I will eat what I have at my house for the next four week.  I can go to the store once in those four weeks, and I have to spend $50 or less.  I imagine that will be to stock up again on things like eggs and fresh produce.  I can order food out 5 times in the four weeks.  That's one meal out a week and an extra meal out to use whichever week I choose. 

I'm hoping this month helps me think about conserving money, reducing waste, impulse control, making do with what I have, and also eating better.  I didn't think to do this until after I had gone to the store yesterday, and I am sure some of my food choices would have been different if I had considered this before my shopping trip.  I would definitely have purchased way more brown sugar cinnamon pop tarts (don't need) and probably another steak (also don't need but better than pop tarts), but that's part of the challenge. 

So, you know where I'll be for the next four weeks. I'll be here, scratching my head and planning out how to best use my groceries.  As I mentioned, I'm pretty heavy on chicken, so if you have any easy chicken recipes that don't call for lots of ingredients, drop me a line.  My first meal will be steak and roasted root vegetables.  Then, tomorrow, I'll cook a pot roast that will go well with the leftover vegetables.