Shopping Your Pantry {Welcome Home Link Up}

I was pretty sure we needed groceries.  But, I also knew we needed to save our pennies if we could.  I ran down to Aldi and bought milk for $2.76 a gallon, grabbed a few of their on-sale fruits and headed home thinking surely I could find enough food in our house to last a few more days.

When I had worked through Carrie Isaac’s audio series, Grocery University, the biggest thing I gleaned was the concept of shopping your pantry.  Basically, that means you look to your pantry FIRST before anything else because your real savings can often be found there.

Well, I went to my pantry and realized there was no way I was going to be able to make any sort of meal list from the jumbled mess that had never been organized since our move here, I decided to organize the shelves and ended up with this:

Um…I was scared.

I took a few deep breaths and told myself there had to be meals in there.  Here’s what I found…

red potatoes – good side dish, cubed w/ herbs and olive oil and baked at 400 for around 40 minutes.

taco soup ingredients – oh yeah, I had meant to make that a week ago..ooops!

steel cut oats – perfect for birdseed granola!

maple syrup – pancakes anyone? (and since my children watched More Than Making Maple Syrup from Moore Family Films, they absolutely LOVE being able to have maple syrup in the house – and I have a whole new appreciation for the cost of maple syrup!)

ingredients for Unprocessed Oatmeal Cookies – another great use for maple syrup!

32 bean soup – I don’t have a hamhock to throw in there, but I think it will be fine.  Wish I liked beans.  Good thing my family does.

spaghetti – just enough left to feed us a meal for lunch!

ingredients for Spanish Rice – family favorite from my father in law

onion soup – no way it would feed us on it’s own, but I have buffalo roast in the freezer that could be paired with this as either a French Dip Sandwich (I have just a few hamburger buns left) or just poured in the crock pot with the roast as a marinade.

and a contribution from my refrigerator…

fixin’s for lunch loaf – I take my quick pizza dough recipe, roll it out in a rectangle, spread on olive oil and Italian herbs, add deli meat and cheese, roll up like a jelly roll and bake!  We LOVE this!

I’ve also become a huge fan of sliced cheese and Triscuits for lunch.  It is surprisingly filling and my whole clan thinks it’s fun!  I had this on hand too.

So, needless to say, I didn’t HAVE TO go shopping.  As empty as that pantry looks, it still held treasures!

So, shop your pantry first and save!

SPEAKING OF SAVINGS!

Don’t forget all this month as a gift to my lovely readers, DrinkBands can be purchased at 10% off using code:

ramarch

Don’t miss it!
You will love these things!

Now let’s link up!