The grocery fast is going strong! Weeks 5 and 6 found me spending more money than I wanted to–but my food stores are going down! I even had room in my deep freeze for two gallons of my daughter’s breast milk in dozens of 4 ounce bags! I was so excited to say that I had extra room!
Financially, it definitely got harder in weeks 5 and 6 than the first four weeks! I finally decided that the grandbabies’ food, diapers, and wipes that I get here for when I keep them each Wednesday would not be included in my grocery fast budget. When I needed to purchase these, they came up to an entire week’s budget, so I didn’t include them in my totals. (I am including all of our food, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, but not eating out, which we aren’t doing as much as I would like to for empty nesters because we have so much food to use here!)
My boys are crazy about their air-fried appetizers!
We went to Costco and got $70 worth of fresh foods, so I was happy about that purchase. That takes our total up to about $35 a week average (since Ray made a small Wal-mart run in there too)–a little more than I want to spend for the $25 a week–but did I mention, we are using things up!! Yay!
Tender, amazing roasted pecans in a few minutes!
So here are some details about these two weeks of the “grocery fast”…..
1) I still have appetizers from our Christmas Decorating Night and our family Christmas Eve! I definitely over-purchased those! However, I have been learning more and more how to use my air fryer (see my first air fryer post here–and my amazing healthy croutons!). Thus, when my sons and sons-in-law stop in, I let them choose from my appetizer selection and stick them in the fryer for 10-15 minutes….wahla! Appetizer platter! This is especially fun because we often have mostly healthy leftovers that they sometimes don’t like as well. Now I always have something to throw in the fryer for them! (Not sure what I’ll do when I run out of them!)
Lightly-breaded chicken legs and stir fried veggies!
2) Another great way to use up bits and pieces of food is the amazing omelet! Eggs are inexpensive to add even into the grocery fast budget, and bits of sausage, bacon, ham, and veggies abound in my freezers, so I have made these a couple of times. I also use leftover cheese and ham for air fried hot hamaramas–think grilled cheese with ham. They were delicious and a wonderful accompaniment to all of my fresh veggies!
Working on making my Sprouted Low Carb Flour Mix work for low carb Real bread!
3) Besides using my fresh veggies for roasted veggies and stir fries, as my Jungle Jim produce got depleted, we’ve been diligent about getting bags of frozen veggies out of the freezer. They’re a little water-logged with ice crystals and definitely not the freshest, but we are determined to use them! (Frozen green beans, especially the long ones from Sam’s, are actually pretty good in this Homestyle Skillet Green Beans recipe!)
The dough….
4) I have been doing Daily Intermittent Fasting for two months now, and I am finding more success when I open my window with a low carb, nutrient-dense snack. Enter roasted pecans. I had already picked them all out of the mixed nuts that we had from Christmas, and I was really craving them (and NEEDED them! ha ha). However, roasted, salted pecans were more than twice the price of lovely, tender pecan halves from Costco, so I bought a big bag of them and learned how to make salted, roasted ones within a few minutes in the air fryer! Check out my recipe. Super easy!
The artisan bread!
5) We’ve been using up meat out of the freezer! Even drumsticks and other “less desirable” ones! Actually, these were some of the best chicken legs I have ever made. The breading (and method for breading) makes them so light–nothing like the heavy breading when i used to do oven fried thighs. I seriously loved them! AND….it forced me to finish perfecting my healthy breading mix, which has been on “the back burner” for some time now! Win-win! Watch the Donna Reish blog for this recipe in the upcoming weeks!
Steak and Potato Foil Packs. Super yummy!
6) Speaking of perfecting something, I had a lot of my Sprouted Flour Mix in the pantry, so I started experimenting (again) with making low carb artisan bread. It’s not quite ready to share, but we enjoyed the loaves that I made, and I am still working on perfecting it as I want to get it under ten net carbs per serving. So watch Donna Reish.com for that!
7) And lastly, I am still working on my steak supply! (Terrible problem, huh?) I made those amazing Steak and Potato Foil Packets that you might have seen the video of floating around FB. And they did not disappoint. Still trying to figure out how to make steak every week! 😉 Again, watch the Donna Reish blog for this yummy recipe!
Only two weeks left of the grocery fast, but one of my three refrigerators is almost empty and my deep freeze is definitely a third of the way down! Yay!
