Eat From Your Pantry Challenge

One of the blogs I check almost everyday is called ACouponChick. She posts deals, coupons, freebies, her shopping trips, etc.  Since I did not start couponing until this past summer, I was not aware of her site. Every January she does an "Eat From Your Pantry Challenge" for her family. She also challenges her readers to join her and it lasts for one month. Since we went home for a week in January, I did not see her post about it until we got back and I decided to give it a try.
The goal is to use through some of the stockpile in your pantry that you have accumulated through couponing. It is also a good way to save money and challenge yourself as a cook. Basically, you pick recipes, either old favs or new ones you have been wanting to try, based on what you already have in your pantry and/or freezer. Your goal is to only have to pick up one or two items for each recipe when you do your weekly shopping. I decided to go ahead and make our menu plan for the entire month of February. This may sound like a lot of work, but since I know most of what we have on hand, it was pretty easy to do. We have a dry erase monthly calendar that we put our work schedules on, so we just moved it into the kitchen and I wrote out our month's worth of meals on it as well. Every Friday I will check the next week's menu, check the recipes, and make my list of the few ingredients I need for each meal. I have cut our grocery bill down to $20 a week or less for the next month. This is including our weekly purchases of milk, OJ, eggs, etc. Here is an example of how this will work. For next week, I will go to the store this Friday.
Here is my list for four dinners and weekly uses:
-1 mango
-1 bunch of cilantro
-1 avocado
-1 cont. greek yogurt (which is free this week at Wal-mart)
-1 can black beans
-1 cont. ricotta cheese
-1 gal. whole milk
-1 gal. 1% milk
-1 gal OJ
-5lb. bag of flour

Every thing else I need we already have. For one of my meals this week I didn't have to buy anything.

Here is our menu for this week:
Monday-leftovers from wepod on Sunday night
Tuesday-Bacon, linguine, and tomato toss
Wednesday-homemade pizza
Thursday-Cheesy, chicken, and broccoli bake
Friday-leftovers
Saturday-Stir fry (this is the meal I didn't have to buy for)
Sunday-Superbowl party with our wepod and snack food to go with it!!

I'm really excited about taking on this challenge and I'm thinking about doing it again in March.