Days 1-3 OK, so I'm eating what's IN my house...

OK, so I challenged myself to buying NO groceries this week and only cooking/eating things we have in the pantry/freezer/refrigerator. I started Sunday. Mind you, I did not stock up on groceries the week before. In fact, we had just purchased a new refrigerator which was delivered Thursday. The fridge was nearly empty! We only bought a few items at the grocery store Friday night, and REALLY needed some basics, so it is making this challenge much more difficult!! SUNDAY - Day 1 I made a pasta sausage bake. I usually use a ziti noodle with this, but didn't have any, so macaroni it was. No sausage, but alas, DH got a deer a few weeks ago and had some of it made into yummy sausage. (MEMO- MOMMY HATES, STRONGLY HATES, DEER MEAT! But you can't tell what it is if made into sausage. Maybe it is the spices. Don't know and don't care.) And although the white sauce called for grated parmesan cheese, I was out of that too, so I just omitted this ingredient. Turned out just as great as the original recipe! We always have a lot of apples on hand, but I made the mistake of using all but one to make an apple crisp. (Well, except for the two that my 4-year old decided she had to eat behind my back that day.) I can do this no grocery thing, sure. MONDAY - Day 2 We ate steak, fried potatoes and broccoli. No *wow* meal here, but we had it to make. What have we been eating for other meals, you ask? Well, we are low on cereal, but there IS oatmeal, but NO eggs, a few frozen meals, no snacks, and boy am I glad my kids eat lunch at school. Oh wow, there was a little apple crisp left over today. That never happens. Shovel it in... Not thinking about what to make for Tuesday, nope. TUESDAY - Day 3 OK, it is getting much harder. I made a grocery list. Yes, I sure did. But then I pulled out 2 cans of sauer kraut, a pork roast and a partially eaten box of instant potatoes. (Not the box, but the potatoes.) Hmm, I cut the roast and well, it didn't look like pork, but who cares, right? Too late now - it is defrosted and ready to go! Toss in crock pot with sauer kraut, a tad of water and brown sugar. I usually cook this with beer and since we don't drink or keep this on hand - well, is this considered going to the grocery store? I say yes, so, no beer. I'm lucky I have butter to go in the mashed potatoes or I might have called this quits.... DISCOVERY OK, so we are chowing down on our rotten cabbage and mashed potatoes and we bite into the pork. What is this? Hmm, I dunno, but this isn't pork, that is for certain. Hubby doesn't remember cutting up any beef, although it kinda tastes cowish, but suddenly remembers... THIS IS DEER MEAT! Uh oh, Mommy might pass out right into her shredded rots and taters. What now? Let me tell you something: The best way to disguise a deer roast is to cook it in sauer kraut. You will never know what it is! Anyway, Mommy actually ate her protein while the two teens in the house decided venison was not on their menu for the evening. After supper, my darling husband decided to make pumpkin cookies with the little apple eater while I sat down at the computer to key out thoughts about my day. We just happened to have ALL the ingredients in the house to make pumpkin cookies! To be honest, he wasn't on board with me during my challenge. But he looked at my grocery list and smelled supper cooking, then looked up at me and said, "I think this list can wait for another day". Tomorrow is going to be much tougher. Wish me luck!! UM, YEAH, WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT? I'd be happy to answer that. Let me start off by telling you just a little about me and my life, and then I'll get to that point. I've been married to Mr. Wonderful for 21 years. We have 4 children. When Mr. W. and I were first married, we lived on a teeny tiny income. I was great at budgeting, and we may have had squat, but our bills were paid and we ate just fine. The apartment we lived in was right next to a supermarket. Every week I would get the store circular and see what was on sale. Yep, that's what we were gonna eat. Sometimes I had coupons, but most times I did not. I budgeted $40 per week for food. I usually spent $30, unless we had run out of staples. (Not the kind that holds paper together, either.) We never went hungry and I even packed my husband's lunches for work every day. We didn't have old canned goods lurking in the back of our cupboards, and our frozen foods never stuck around long enough to get freezer burnt. We had enough for the week, and that was it until my husband got another paycheck. It isn't so often that I think back on those days. But recently, I had been. Add that to the fact that we had to get a new refrigerator since the old side-by-side decided to switch sides and freeze the freshies, thaw the freezies. And while talking to my mother about what to do with the food, she mentioned something she read about a woman going a week without buying groceries and eating what she already had in her house...hmm... Kinda sounds like a good idea, but I think I'll pass? We have another freezer in our laundry room, and I needed to rearrange items in there to be able to store what was in our refrigerator's freezer - well, until the Home Depot delivery guy brought us a new fridge. I get my gloves on and start pulling things out of the freezer. I can't believe how much meat is in that thing! Well, besides my son's palomino trout and my husband's albino squirrel that both need mounted, yep, there is so much we are not eating just piled up in that thing! That was it. I didn't even think about what we needed at the grocery store. I just decided that moment that we are not buying groceries - nothing - for an entire week.