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!

P.S. What would you do with 20 more 5 ounce sirloin steaks? I’d love some more ideas?

The post Eight Week Grocery Fast – Weeks 5 and 6 appeared first on Character Ink.

Well, I am at the three week mark in my grocery fast, and at the beginning of this week, I had only spent $35 (of the $50 I had budgeted for two weeks). (See Weeks 1 and 2 here.) I was encouraged about the dollar amount, but I was somewhat discouraged that it didn’t feel like any of our food stores were going down that quickly. That part didn’t really get any better during Weeks 3 and 4 as I went on a five day writing retreat and ate out each evening with my daughter (who was there for her master’s seminar) for my one meal a day. (Interested in OMAD–One Meal a Day??? Check out my Daily Intermittent Fasting videos, audios, slideshows, and posts here!). While I was gone writing, my husband did manage to use up veggies, broth, and tomato juice since he made himself vegetable soups every night! He didn’t use up any of the meat we had shredded and frozen the previous week, so our stores didn’t really get depleted. But…here is what we did use and do:

Holiday cookies in January? When you’re trying to empty the freezer, you bake them and take them!

1) Still trying to avoid the whole “I really want to make these bars with these ingredients” mindset,

so I took Christmas cookies to a dance, using up the dough balls I still had in the freezer. I was also careful to not throw away foods just because we were done having them for leftovers! I froze leftover mashed potatoes that I will use for Shepherd’s Pie and leftover egg casserole. Now the trick is to get into the freezer and use them!

6-acre grocery store during a grocery fast???!! What was I thinking!?

Huge reduced produce section gave me fresh produce to go with all the meats in my freezer!

I had $65 left and spent $66! Yay me!

2) At the end of my writing retreat, my daughter and I traveled home via Cincinnati, Ohio to the largest grocery store in the area

The 6-acre Jungle Jim’s. I tried to talk myself out of my grocery fast, noting that going there is a once-a-year-or-less event, but I really wanted to keep using my food stores. So….I decided to keep my list to a minimum, do some comparison shopping, look some of the foods I was after up on Amazon for future reference, and not buy anything extra pricey. As it turns out, I had $65 left for the month–and without even counting as I went, my total was $66!!! I was soooo excited! You can see my cart and grocery belt in the pics–I really cashed in on their huge reduced produce section! Ray Baby was snapping reduced green beans for hours during Sunday football the next day!

Nothing was wasted! If it didn’t get eaten, it was frozen for a later date!

3) As I mentioned, I have been trying to be super diligent about not just tossing a little of this or a little of that.

When we had seven kids at home, it felt like things just eventually got used up. Not the case with just two of us! So I cleaned out the fridge and made a great 7 Layer Salad for our grandson’s birthday party that everybody really loved–and true to not throwing out soft apples, I made Ray some apple salad.

Apple salad is a great way to use up soft apples!

Mayo-PB Apple Salad!

4) I used the veggies over the next two weeks and am happy to say that I didn’t throw any of them out–not even a soft green pepper!

Yay me! I made stir fried zucchini, peppers, onions, sprouts, and mushrooms (see steak picture). I made roasted green beans. I made salads. I made dip for fresh veggies. I just babied those produce items every day, using them to their fullest!

Parmesan green beans—my favorite snack to open my eating window each day!

7-Layer Salad is a great way to empty the fridge!

5) We had a unique problem that I knew we would have to face–we HAD to eat steak!

For five years, we had accumulated Omaha Steaks that our business received as gifts a couple of times a year. We didn’t really know how to make steaks! With seven kids on one income for over two dozen years, we never bought steaks. We used meat as more of a “condiment” in combination dishes–lasagna, chicken spaghetti, tuna casserole, enchiladas, etc. We didn’t serve that many meats as “per person” entrees (except chicken breasts…oh the chicken breasts! ha ha). So we dug in the freezer and committed ourselves to using them. We started with the most amazing Pan Fried Sirloin, which I was sooo happy with. I learned how to make steak–and make it really yummy tasting! Read all about that experience and the recipe here!

My first pan-fried steak was a huge success! Now I have to make steak every week for the rest of the grocery fast!

I ended the month on budget–with $25 a week average spent! And we ate like a queen and king! 🙂

Jason and I did a great job depleting the ice cream supplies!

P.S. What do you like to make to “use up” produce? What is your family’s favorite stir fried veggie combination?

The post Eight Week Grocery Fast – Weeks 3 and 4 appeared first on Character Ink.

We are two weeks into my grocery fast (see the intro post here), and I already have unique situations and “special” circumstances to navigate. But like I always told my kids as I was raising them to do what they had to do every single day: “Every day is special, but every day can’t be a special day!” In other words, when we look at everything that comes up as an occasion to skip our school plan, not do our cleaning, or eat sweet treats, we will not be successful.

The same is true with my grocery fast. I could easily say a week or so in that I can’t keep it because we’re having movie night with the kids; I need to spend more because some of the kids are coming for Sunday dinner; I need to take some food to my step-mom; I need to make something for our ballroom dance; and on and on….

Or I could come up with some creative options that work for my grocery fast and for the “special” circumstances.

Below are a couple of links to products I use and love. I am an affiliate for Amazon.com. If you click on the links below I will earn a small commission. Thank you for your support of this blog!

So here were my special circumstances and solutions for the first two weeks:

1) Family Movie Night: Stone Soup!

I sent the kids a text through the family thread telling them about the grocery fast (they had been telling me for years to empty my freezers!) and that we would be having “stone soup” for the movie night. They asked what they could bring and I told them we pretty much had it covered except for regular bread (they don’t like sprouted), peanut butter, and dessert.

The older kids knew what “stone soup” meant as when they were little, in honor of the story by the same name in which villagers brought foods one at a time to add to a pot of water with a stone in it—and it “magically” became a soup, we had a tub in the freezer marked Stone Soup in which leftover meats, sauces, and veggies went into after a meal (if there wasn’t enough of these things to have as leftovers or I didn’t have another plan for them). When this tub was full, we defrosted it and made “stone soup.” They knew we were having soup made out of whatever I had in the house!

The party was a great success. Actually, for some reason, everyone said it was the best chili I had ever made. I know that this is unrelated to the grocery fast, but I was happy about that! Oh, and my daughter left her half-filled peanut butter jar, so that is one less thing to add to the list this month!

2) Food to Give Away/Take to Dance

Once a week we go eat lunch or dinner on the weekends with my step-mom. My dad died in the spring, and she has no family but us. It has been hard to continue the weekly visits after my dad’s death (many, many Saturday tears upon leaving her apartment), but I am happy to invest in her as she invested in my dad for nearly forty years. We either eat in her Independent Living cafeteria, take her out, or take food in. She has extra food credit right now in the cafe, so that part was easy. When we go, we take her things she needs, take her out to shop, stay and play games, and sometimes take her food or goodies that she doesn’t make for herself or get in the cafeteria. This was easy enough as we had lots of leftover soup, cornbread, fruit salad, and dessert from our movie party! (And she said it was the best chili she had, had in a while too!)

The next day was a ballroom dance, and I am known for bringing homemade treats or appetizers, so I didn’t want to disappoint! I had a zip-lock bag of frozen peanut butter cookie dough, the aforementioned leftover peanut butter my daughter left here, some chocolate chips from when I made Christmas fudge, and leftover holiday M and M’s. Enter “Cookie Candy Bars”! These are seriously the easiest thing to make and everybody LOVES them. You just press the dough into a 9×13 baking pan and bake it. Then melt chocolate chips with peanut butter and spread over cooled bars. Then crush and sprinkle M and M’s (or other candy). (See my low carb/healthy recipe for this here or the quick, sugary version here!)

3) Leftovers, Leftovers, Leftovers!

After our Christmas on December 30th, we had sooo many leftovers. I sent a bunch home with the kids, but I still had too much food left. I knew I was doing the Grocery Fast, so I was even more conscientious than I normally am with leftovers.

To start with, we didn’t make anything new for the first week. This was tough—we were getting tired of Christmas food! But we held strong (except for making new green beans every couple days!).

I added a couple of pieces of fresh fruit to the sad-looking fruit salad and brought it back to life. Ray enjoyed this as did my step-mom. (I sometimes do this when I’m near the end of a fruit salad but the dressing is still good—though I never do this with a fruit salad containing bananas. It’s just not kind to the eaters!)

By the end of the first week, we cut into shreds (with scissors) the leftover ham, turkey, and roast beef. We bagged these and labeled them “Shredded Beef With Gravy—1 Pound Fully Cooked,” “Shredded Turkey With Broth–1/2 Pound Fully Cooked,” etc. (It’s important to note the state your freezer foods are in if you freeze them in different states all the time like I do.) Looks like we’ll have more Stone Soup soon! 🙂

I usually throw out whatever sugary foods we have after a get together (that the kids don’t take home). Thinking of my grocery fast, I actually threw out all the pies except for a piece or two for me that I had saved for my eating window and several pieces I took to my step-mom for her freezer. However, I didn’t throw the cookies and candy out, I tubbed them up, labeled them, and froze them for the future. I feel like I have enough self-control with Plexus and Daily Intermittent Fasting (IF) that they will be safe there until we have an occasion to use them. (Hopefully!)

4) We Used Some Foods Up!

We used up 3 pounds of ground beef and 3 pounds of chicken breast when we cooked them for the soup on family movie night. I was more careful than usual with the meats—only used ¾ of them in the soups and tried not to make more soup than we could use that night, give to my step-mom, send some with our soup fiend son, and eat a meal or two of it the next week. (As a matter of fact, when Ray came home from work and saw the beef chili, he said, “Is that going to be enough?” He has NEVER said that before!! And we did use it all after we sent some home with the aforementioned son and step-mom.)

But I rationed the meat and kept out ¼ of the ground beef and ¼ of the chicken for us to make another meal out of it for ourselves. I normally would have used it all and just made the soups meatier. That was a win on rationing AND using foods up!

I had eight boxes of various types of crackers! I had bought them when our son came home from his internship, a little at a time, and Ray and I don’t really eat crackers much at all and our son moved in with his brother—so there they were. I’m happy to report that we used two of them on soup night with the fam! (I put out leftover cheese spread from Christmas as well.)

For Sunday afternoon football, I was still in my fasted state, so Ray gathered up all the leftover frozen appetizers from our family Christmas Eve party and baked them all in the oven. This was a win because we often have little zipper bags of different frozen appetizers after family parties—so purposely using these rather than making nacho bar, etc., like we often would, was great! (I don’t watch football anyway, so I went to my room and read while they ate!)

And….we used some frozen veggies! Since starting Daily IF, I have become a bit of a food snob. I really like to make Ray fresh stir fried veggies or roasted veggies, and I really love my fresh green beans. I want to get to the bottom of all of these bags of frozen vegetables, so this was a start!

5) I Only Spent $35 the First Two Weeks!

I made it two weeks without much expense! Yay me! I went to Sam’s and bought apples, oranges, fresh green beans, and Romaine lettuce. I was super excited about that!

However, I had another problem to face in cutting my groceries down to an average of $25 a week—I was addicted to an expensive brand of dry shampoo! I had tried the $4 bottles (several); I had tried some of the $8 bottles, but the only brand that worked with my hair color (and that I could stand the smell of!) was Matrix Biolage Waterless Clean and Recharge Dry Shampoo ($18 a bottle!). And I used at least two bottles a month. I couldn’t use 1/3 of my grocery budget during the grocery fast on dry shampoo! (I have seriously tried so many cheaper ones—and I don’t HAVE to have a certain regular shampoo, honest!) But then I saw a thread on a FB friend’s timeline about dry shampoo and someone said she had tried many of the same ones I had tried and finally found one that didn’t leave white residue and didn’t choke you with the smell—and it was half the price of my normal one. I ordered it on Amazon and loved it! I was able to cut my dry shampoo expense in half the first month of the grocery fast! (The new, less expensive, but still wonderful one is Eva NYC Freshen Up Dry Shampoo.)

So that was my $35 for two weeks of groceries—apples, oranges, green beans, lettuce, and dry shampoo! Oh, and ice…have to have my ice every day for my water since I pretty much only drink water and Plexus Slim—and I drink a lot of water!

It’s been a great two weeks! I can’t say that I feel like my freezers, fridges, and cabinets are going down quickly—but I know they will as I stick to the plan!

P.S. How do you stop buying so many groceries and use up what you have? Any good leftover tricks?

The post My Eight Week Grocery “Fast” – Weeks 1 and 2 appeared first on Character Ink.

I am not big on “New Year’s Resolutions since 93% of resolutions are thrown out by the end of January each year. I have kept resolutions before—doing something every day, like reading aloud to my kids or doing a daily cleaning routine, etc. (I prefer to make life changes a little at a time, like monthly, as described in my Productivity Series.)

However, I decided over Christmas that my freezers and cupboards HAD to be reduced. My husband and I raised seven kids for thirty-four years, twenty-five of those years on one income. I prepped, cooked, organized, couponed, sale-shopped, and cleaned like a madwoman during those years in order to stay on budget and “get it all done.” I had one deep freeze that was collecting ingredients for my next freezer cooking day and another was filled with already-made mega cooking meals. My cupboards were the same.

We became empty-nesters eighteen months ago, and while my shopping and cooking have radically changed over the past several years as kids have “left the nest,” I still haven’t learned how to shop or prepare food for two (much less for two people who eat one meal and a snack a day through Daily Intermittent Fasting (IF)—that is just not much food compared to feeding nine people three times a day!). We are getting increasingly frustrated by our inability to grab what we want or need out the pantry, and my beautiful freezers are hopelessly stuffed. So…..grocery fast it is.

I had to narrow the parameters for what this would look like, not just because I like rules and creating systems, but also because I wanted the grocery fast to be effective. If I fasted from buying canned goods only, I could just buy more fresh veggies and still not empty my pantry any. If I fasted from buying perishables only, I could still not guarantee that I would use all of the frozen meat in my deep freeze. It needed to be significant and clear in order to be effective.

So…..here were my “rules”:

1) Cut Weekly Groceries to $25 a Week

For two months, I would cut my grocery spending down from whatever it currently was (which used to be $150 a week before IF simply because we have the kids over a lot AND I made everything low carb and from scratch with expensive ingredients, etc.). I haven’t really established my new grocery budget with IF, but I’m thinking that with 7 meals a week plus 7-14 snacks/desserts per week (per person) and having “parties” with the kids often, I should be able to settle in at $100 a week for all groceries and cleaning (I buy bare minimum cleaning supplies), and toiletries.

2) Buy Only What We Absolutely Need

I knew this would be tough because I NEED fresh green beans and bananas every week. I NEED to make fresh stir fry two nights a week. I NEED to have Romaine lettuce and Romano cheese for salads most days. Or do I?

I decided that I would focus on what we really needed in order to survive…not what I saw as “needs.” Toilet paper, deodorant, toothpaste lettuce, eggs, and apples to start with. Then if I had leftover money, I would buy fresh veggies for stir frying and my favorite salad cheese. (I have tons of frozen veggies I can stir fry and bags of shredded cheese in the freezer!)

3) Make What We Have!

Not making what we already have in the freezers and pantries is what got us into this position to begin with. Keeping the grocery dollars low each week will force me to use what we have for sure. But I also needed to make what we have as much as possible without adding too much to it. In other words, I need to make what we have without adding this veggie or that spice or this sauce to the shopping list. I actually think this will be fun! 🙂

4) Figure Out Ways to Party With the Kids for Little Money!

The kids are all really great about contributing to family parties. However, Ray and I usually make the main entrée, provide the drinks, etc. I will keep you posted on how this goes for us (our first “party” for all will be next week’s Family Movie Night!). One way I know I can make this work is to have the kids bring very specific side dishes (i.e. cornbread for the soup beans as opposed to anything savory or anything sweet, etc.).

5) Make Combination Dishes

For many years we lived on casseroles and combination dishes, using meat as more of a condiment than the main dish. This approach reduces per person meat consumption from 4 to 6 ounces each to 2 or 3 ounces each. But now we are spoiled! We love our meat and potatoes or meat and stir fries or meat and salads. However, I told Ray that I am excited to make tuna casserole and chicken spaghetti again! The point is that we have to cook and eat out of every shelf, refrigerator, and freezer in order to make a dent in our stash!

I will think of more money-saving/stock-depleting approaches as I continue over the next couple of months—and I will share them with you in posts that will be called Grocery Fast Week One and Two, etc. I hope you will join me! And if you have any suggestions for me, please write to me! I’d love more ideas!

P.S. Have you ever gone on a grocery “fast”? If so, what tips helped you get through on budget?

The post How I Planned a Grocery “Fast” for Two Months! appeared first on Character Ink.