Food and Fiber Friday - January 'Eat From My Pantry' Update and February Plans

And how did January go on my 'eat from my pantry' self-challenge?

Pretty good. 

Sorta.

I had hoped I could keep my spending on groceries to under $300 for the month. Welllllll....

That didn't happen. And when I added up my grocery spending in January, my teeth dropped! Almost $700!  

Picking my teeth up, I realized a few of things about my January spending.

• I include dog food and cat food and kitty in my grocery total and I did have to purchase more cat food and litter.
• There were 2 times I ate out with Lady K during January
• The BIG spending was two trips to Costco with Texter. And we were 'sharing' items, so the bulk of my spending was for stock-ups for both Texter and myself.

But NO stock-ups in February (fingers crossed)! 

I am continuing my 'eat from my pantry' self-challenge in February.

And to really super-charge that plan, February will also be 'Air-Fryer February'. Actually, it will be Ninja Foodi February. I have it, but don't use it to it's full capacity. In fact, I hardly use it at all. 

As shown above, I did try French Toast in the air fryer last week. I was really pleased with how it turned out. 

Sunday, a 10.5 pound pork shoulder butt went into the slow cooker (wouldn't fit in the Foodi) along with a jar of Smithfield BBQ sauce. I was amazed when I took it out of the cooker how much in BBQ it made. From 10.5 pounds, it cooked down to be about 5 pounds of BBQ once I removed any fat not rendered out and the bone. So you lose about half the weigh during cooking. Plus, part of it will go to Savvy. 

And I am really proud of this...

My freezer inventory!

I had a list of stuff in the freezer on a sheet of notebook paper. But I didn't keep it up and it was really hard for me to utilize. I pulled everything out of the freezer and put the items on sticky notes. 

If the item in the freezer had a 'kit' on the pantry shelf, I made that note on it. And if there were multiples of an item, I wrote in the number I had so I could cross off use. This way, I can come in and pull a sticky note and have that meal to fix out of the freezer. With the amount of food in the freezer, I shouldn't have an issue with only buying items like milk and eggs and buns. 

My goal is to stay under $100 in groceries for February. I will not count the outing to the O'Henry Hotel for high tea with Savvy later in the month. 

Now to find more ways to use the Ninja Foodi!