Store Cupboard Challenge.

Over at The Yarn Yard, Natalie is having a Store Cupboard Week, which basically means cooking from your store cupboard etc and buying as few extra foodstuffs as possible. I do this to a greater or lesser degree every so often too, and find it a good way to break out of the usual routine meals, plus of course clear out the cupboards and freezer a bit. So I think I'll join her for a week or so.

I will have to buy a few things, of course. I still have some vegetables on the allotment and a pile of things like potatoes and onions in store, but Mairi's favourite cucumbers only come from the supermarkets. There are still apples and pears and raspberries to be picked too, but the kids like bananas and grapes more! So, I've drawn up a rough shortlist of things I'll let myself buy.

Milk and soya milk. (Mairi doesn't drink the cow variety.)

The white bread that the kids like. I can make the crunchy variety for hubby and me. I'll need to buy yeast though.

Fruit and veg that I can't grow'

Tea bags.

Orange and apple juice for the kids.

Anything that's on offer that's too good to miss. I have two legs of lamb in the freezer that cost £3 apiece, for example, and there's 2lbs of cooking apples through there that cost 20p in the reduced to clear section of Tesco. That sort of thing!

School dinners.

Yoghurt.

Breakfast cereal.

Cat food.

Few other basics like tinned tomatoes, ketchup, eggs and baked beans.


Err...what else? I've got a freezer full of meat, lots of dry staples like rice, noodles and pasta, lots of exotic jars of this and that which need used up. (Don't we all?) We've got plenty wine as well. I don't think stuff like loo rolls and detergent fall come into this challenge either. The kids (and Hubby) will grump at no junk snack foods, but I'll bake a couple of times for that.

Anyhow, I usually work with cash for the weekly household budget so I have taken this out the ATM as usual but only placed half of it in the housekeeping purse. We'll see how I get on like that. I'll do this for a week at a time, I think. I've got a feeling that one week will be easy, two more difficult and we'll be onto curried cat food by the end of the month, lol. But the stores need a clear-out, so we'll see how we go.

Today's menu?

Lunch. Soup and bread for adults, pasta and cheese with salad for the kids.

Dinner. Pork chops, potatoes, cabbage and peas. Apple and bramble crumble.

And I'll dig out a couple of packs of stewing beef from the freezer to defrost and make some sort of casserole tomorrow, to use up the assortment of veg in the fridge.

Yarn content later!