I received an invitation today from ella of the foodie/cooking blog From Scratch which has me both nervous and excited. ella has launched the From Scratch Budget Challenge, in which participants must skip their weekly grocery shopping and make do with the food on hand. A challenge indeed! I feel suddenly like a pioneer out on the windswept prairie. A pioneer with satellite TV. But back to ella:
Whatever day you usually food shop, don’t. Cook with whatever’s in your refrigerator, freezer, cupboards or pantry. Pocket the savings.
…No stockpiling, knowing you’re going to skip a week. No endangering your children, ie: don’t stop buying milk. I’ll go a step further and say continue to buy any beverage you usually buy. No making yourself miserable; if you absolutely must have something, buy it.
Whew! We won’t have to do without freshly brewed coffee next week. I’ll have to stretch the point about children to include the furry feline variety. Everything else seems doable.
“In these tough economic times,” as the national preamble goes lately, this sounds like an instructive exercise at the very least, a way to really see what resources you have and to think creatively about using them.
Participants are encouraged to post pictures of their challenge cuisine on a dedicated flickr group (ella has the details), and to share stories and tips from the week on a group message board.
Ducking out for a double cheeseburger at McFastFood is, I imagine, a violation of the spirit of the challenge. Good enough.
Looking forward to the test. I invite my readers – all five of you! – to consider joining in.
I’ve actually done this a few times recently (put shopping off for a few days, not a full week) due to a combination of too busy to shop and not caring enough to make the effort.
It wouldn’t really be fair for me to participate since I shop using the What’s On Sale? method. Whatever is on sale is what I buy, which means I always have a good supply of something. The I’m-out-of part of my list is usually limited to a handful of items. I stocked up on fish sticks and filets recently to get me through the too-busy-to-stop-and-cook-or-even-get-fast-food days. (Recently developed a fish stick jones after not eating them for probably a decade.) Then, there are two chickens, a pound of shrimp, some cubed steaks, and maybe some other things in the freezer. Two months’ supply of rice, dozens of cans of veggies. Plenty of eggs, cake mixes, fresh strawberries…
This just wouldn’t be a fair fight.
But for you, who cooks gourmet-light every night, this could be interesting.
Wow, fish sticks. I haven’t had those since my grade school cafeteria days. I have seen a recipe or two for homemade fish sticks that seemed interesting, though…
Yes, this will be a challenge for me. Wonder what’s in the freezer. M will kill me if we wind up eating ramen four times next week.
Hi, Phil. Thanks for taking the challenge and of course kitties are people. It is fun but also reminds me, as I dig through the freezer, how fortunate I am to have a stockpile.
The site looks great! Is this comment form part of the beta upgrade?
Cook on!
I shop the same way as Pam. Last week I went to a one-day sale at Dierbergs and stocked up–pork loin, bratwurst, and ham. Every two weeks when I shop, I browse the discounted meat at Schnucks.
There were many times when we had three growing boys at home that I had to make do with what food was in the house; I really have no desire to revisit those days
ella: Hi! Looking forward to the challenge. Better budgeting for groceries has been on my mind lately (duh), so this is timely.
About the comment form: The visual editor and the edit-after-posting features are provided by two plugins – MCEComments and WP Ajax Edit Comments. Very useful; I like them a lot.
The default form for TH 1.5b looks pretty much the same as the old, though its innards have been rewritten to fully accomodate threaded comments. I don’t use threads here because MCEComments doesn’t work with them, and I’d rather have the editing functionality than threads (if I have to choose).
Kathy: What you said dovetails with ella’s thought that she is fortunate to have a stockpile of food. What’s an exercise for some people, some times, is just the way things are for others. M and I were just talking about this very thing last night.
Thanks for the info on the plugins. I still haven’t tried the latest incarnation of the beta. So much copying, renaming, redoing, etc involved with it. I’m just too pooped, despite using up spinach in the fridge!
You’re welcome re the plugin info. And yes, do take a break from ugrading the theme. It is a beta, after all; a true production blog like yours should certainly wait until Th 1.5 goes gold.
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