One Week Challenge - The summary.

What we would call our blog videos had we done one each day:

Day 0: This is exciting! 

Day 1: Isn’t this fun!

Day 2: Look at all the cool stuff we made!

Day 3: Wait.. What have we got left?

Day 4: Yep. We’re out of food. 

Day 5: Sick of pork (We’re effing hungry!)

Day 6: What am I supposed to do with just carrots?

Day 7: Hangry!/ Can we go to Mandarin tomorrow?

What we used from the “pantry staples”:

• A lot of flour
• Soy sauce, spices, ketchup, vegetable oil. All in small amounts 
• Sugar, baking powder, jam, vinegar.. again, not a lot
• Lemon juice, gravy sauce packet
• 4 servings of pasta
• Oatmeal (we figured you can get a box of 10 for $1.99), 6 packets
• 2 servings of white rice
• Couple teabags
• Cooking chocolate bar
• All of the free takeaway butters
• Vegetable broth (make your own free from veggie scraps - we keep a bag of scraps in the freezer and when it gets full enough you just boil it with water)
• 2 Popcorn bags (again figured 1.99 for a box) 

Some things that were free for us:

• Chicken noodle soup from grandma 
• Swiss chalet dinner and pop from grandma
• Free coffee and tea at our works
• Candy and mints at our works
• Free birthday cake
• Those little packets of butter and ketchup from restaurants 

So, what did we learn?

• Eating on a budget seems to make you eat less. Maybe this week has helped to shrink our stomachs/ portion sizes a little? Better for diets as basically no snacking
• You learn workarounds - I had one bottle of pop I made last 4 days. Makes me wonder whether I need to drink a whole one in one sitting next time
• Rice only and salad only is not filling
• We liked marinating meat, homemade bread, poor mans ice cream (smoothie in the freezer).. all new stuff that we tried
• Only one protein all week is too much. Need to break it up with at least another flavour
• We learned we can make some new things, and had some fun making a couple. When you make it yourself it seemed to taste better too
• Prepping makes all the difference. Going forward we need to grocery shop on a Friday and both prep and cook a week of meals on the weekend as we just cannot be bothered to cook through the week. Prepping and portioning the veggies and fruits made it easy to pack a healthier lunch in the morning too
• We learned we CAN only buy what we need if we grocery shop each week anyways (why buy 10lb of potatoes if you might end up throwing 1/4 bag out)
• Our $35 shop +pantry staples wasn’t enough for 42 meals. We think $50 a week would be doable though
• Eating on a budget and being hungry means you day revolves around food. Watching the clock until it’s an evceptable time for the next meal. I had moments at work where I was so hungry I couldn’t focus and went and raided the candy bowl again 
• Team effort and staying strong was important. The cravings and the temptations have been so awful at the end but together we kinda talk the other off the ledge
• We’re dreaming about cheese and pizza. We’re having terrible discussions and thoughts about blowing the remaining $ we would have spent on a fast food feast

Overall I’m happy we did the challenge, although I’m not sure James agrees. We didn’t have enough food, especially if we didn’t count the pantry staples in the beginning rules, but I’m happy we learned stuff and actually completed it without caving on the last day. We have some tips and tricks that will influence our future shops, including knowing we can basically half our previous normal grocery budget by simply stopping at two stores instead of just the high-priced Zehrs across the street. 

Let me know of any one week food challenges you’ve tried, or want us to try!

One Week Challenge - The Final Days

Friday-

Rather uneventful other than being hungry. Breakfast for me was the last of the biscuits and freebie butter packets and for James a banana and oatmeal. 

For lunch and dinner James took the rice and pasta meals, and my work day was chaos so I ended up not eating besides some mini chocoate eggs that someone had put out in the work candy jar. James tried to fill up on free coffees, but we both came home starving. 

We had some bread and a package of popcorn before bed to try and help fill us up.. not the most nutritious of meals unfortunately. We would not have been able to do this challenge without the pantry staples for sure - proves that you do need to spend like 10% of your normal food budget each week on these pantry staples, plus soup cans, veggie cans and more. 

Saturday -

This day can be summarized by “Hangry”. We had a sad breakfast of oatmeal and bread with jam, and decided to head out for a great idea... free samples at Farmboy! We were going for a drive anyway and it was enroute, so we parked and went in. I guess at 10am though they don’t think anyone wants free samples of cheese or sausage so we hugely disappointed. Poor James has never been legit angry from being hungry before! The drive for the rest of the day was wondering if restaurant gift cards counted in the challenge..

For lunch I had the ramen packet and a big cup of juice and James blended up the remaining carrots and spices with some vegetable broth for a spicy carrot soup. We decided to use vegetable broth because this is an easy freebie to make from any veggie table scraps you normally have. A bit of bread to dip in the soup and he was finally almost full. 

 

We were so hungry we decided we need to do something to take our mind off our bellies. I dragged a sick James to the grocery store to do next week’s trip and we were thrilled to find some free kielbasa, cracker and chip samples at our local butchers. We tried to shop smart and were pretty proud of all we bought to get through next week. 

For dinner we made up 2 more servings of pasta and the remaining pasta sauce. James sprinkled some crumbled bread on top. I miss cheese.coiple cups of the last juice and the remaining half of the baking chocolate and we completed the challenge!

One Week Challenge - Day 4 and 5

Wednesday -

We cut up all the remaining strawberries the night before so they were portioned and ready to go. I grabbed one and some oatmeal for breakfast and James had strawberries, yogurt and a wafer. I had some cucumber snacks and stole a lollipop at work from the communal treat bin, although to be honest I was still hungry. 

For lunch, we enjoyed another new creation.. lemon juice and spices in a baked pork chop with mashed potatoes and a packet of gravy. It was really tasty and a change from “normal” work lunches. 

Dinner for James and I was the last of the pasta and pork bits. I think we’ll be making pasta again in other weeks! We had a little tv time and polished off the chips and wafers. 

Thursday - 

We are certainly getting close to the end! Another bowl of strawberries and oatmeal for me, and James is starting to get desperate with the last of the strawberries with a pudding. 

We made more meals on Wednesday night, and tried “stir fry” of carrots, cucumbers and a pork chop with rice with soy sauce, which made 2 servings. Then also made 2 servings of pasta with some nice (not from scratch) sauce, cut up carrots and the last pork chop.

For lunch I had the last salad with vinegar and James had one of the rice concoctions. For James’ early dinner he had one of the spaghettis. 

Now remember how grandma sent me home with some free soup and applesauce? Remember how I said we would save those for next week after the challenge? Well.. we caved and had soup for dinner tonight (8pm). James and I are SO hungry today. We figured they still counted in the challenge as free food, but we’re scraping the barrel! 

Learnings:

-So. Many. Dishes. Meal prepping and making from scratch means a lot of dishes during that process, but when James and I each come home with 2-3 containers.. our poor dishwasher! (Thanks mom and dad for all the containers for Xmas!)

-We are out of everything so it’s probably easier to list what we still have.. a bit of milk, a smidge of butter, half a jar of pasta sauce, carrots, a ramen packet, all the juice (made 2 containers) and pantry staples (although we’ve killed the soy sauce and 50% of a big flour bag)

-This is seriously hard to do when surrounded by food and snacks you do have in the house. We’ve been very good with no cheating besides the soup, but with a freezer full of veggies, a fridge with lots of apples and yogurt and drawers full of snacks and chocolate.. it’s so tempting here near the end to just grab something 

- We now see bananas as treats.. and look forward to a different protein next week. 

As a final learning, don’t do a food challenge like this while also starting a new excercise regime (60 day fitness), as your hunger goes up and your available cook time goes down. Poor James. 

One Week Challenge - Day 2 and 3

Monday – back to the work week!

It was nice having everything prepared for myself in the early morning, so I packed a yogurt with strawberries and some biscuits (with the freebie butter samples you get at restaurants or Timmies). For lunch, I took a large salad with vinegar (I couldn’t finish it!) and a schnitzel (with those freebie ketchup packets). I drank water all day, although I was fighting a headache the whole time so I think I might be having the caffeine/sugar withdrawls…

James did the banana/strawberry pancakes for breakfast, some soda bread with jam and a slice of Free birthday cake at work for lunch, and enjoyed the schnitzel with wedges for dinner.

I don’t normally eat dinner, or at least only eat a small one. At the beginning of this, we made a rule about “nothing goes in our mouth unless it’s free” this week, so I snuck in a nice dinner with Grandma tonight (who never lets me pay)! From grandma’s house I also brought home big bowls of soup and applesauce (which we will save and eat next week). I’m mentioning these, because if you are struggling financially, you can always try and have a meal or two with your family for free. They may not be able to give you a loan, but they can usually help you save on a meal or two!

Tuesday –

I had a breakfast same as yesterday, and some cucumber slices for my snack. Hubby did the pancakes for breakfast and some soda bread and salad for lunch. We both get coffee and tea free at work, so have had a couple every day as well.

My lunch and his dinner today is another first for us… Homemade pasta! What an experience, but it turned out like pasta! Tastes different than the store-bought version, but I don’t need to add butter to it for taste like I normally do. With it we have an 24 hour marinated porkchop each (ketchup, spices, and soy sauce) that was then baked. My dinner will be a combination of pasta leftovers from today’s lunch (too large a portion for me) and the little bit of leftover salad from my lunch yesterday.

Tonight will also be a bit of snackage – a bowl of ketchup chips for me and some strawberries and wafers for him.

Learnings so far:

• You use a lot of flour making stuff from scratch
• We are out of yogurt and eggs already
• I need some more sugar/caffeine in my life
• We CAN make new stuff successfully!
• This is fun!

One Week Challenge - Day 0 and 1

To kick things off we got out our whiteboard and wrote out a basic plan of attack for the week. I work a normal 8-5 job, but James works 12-8, so we kinda have to do as much prep as we can on the weekends, so we tried to plan some of that in too. 

Saturday afternoon after our shop we were excited to get going (even though at 1 wasn’t going to be until Sunday)! We made strawberry & banana pancakes with a chocolate drizzle (3 servings), a soda bread loaf and a bunch of tiny biscuits... all from scratch! We were pretty happy with how our first-time creations came out!

Then Sunday was a busy cooking/prep day! We started off each with a strawberry yogurt smoothie with cut bananas and some crushed strawberry wafer cookies, tea, water, and biscuits with jam for breakfast. 

2 potatoes and spices made a nice bundle of wedges (we used our air fryer but they would have been good in the oven too). The lettuce head, cucumber and a bit of carrots made three big salads and 2 side salads with lots of carrots to spare for future challenge dinners. 

Then we were eager to have some fun.. could we make schnitzel? We used one egg, flour and spices, and crumbled up some of the soda bread. We made as many schnitzel as 1 egg would do, which ended up being 4. 2 of these would later become dinner. 

For lunch, we did some soda bread with butter as we weren’t really hungry. 

Dinner was really tasty with pork schnitzel, salad and wedges for us both, followed by a yogurt & strawberry smoothie with wafer cookie base, all having sat in the freezer for an hour. Like poor man’s ice cream, it was really tasty! Great end to our day one challenge. 

One Week Challenge - $5 a day - The shop!

Starting off our $35 a week challenge with the grocery shop(s). We spent total just under $35.

We started with a list (as you should) and with a plan to go first to a new store near us (which will become our “local butcher” and Walmart. Off we go for store #1 and their “one day sale”.

What a zoo! There were deals to be had though in the meat section, as it seemed nearly every chicken or pork had a sale sign up. We wandered the store and decided that 10 pork chops for $10 seemed like a really good deal.. and though it was a big chunk of the weekly budget, we all know James needs some meat in his meals to feel full! He was dreading a vegetarian week on this budget so we were happy to add them to the cart. Add in 2 for 1.50 cucumbers, a head of lettuce and a bag of baby carrots for .99 each and 3/$5 strawberries and we checked out.

Quick note - weigh the options. A 3 pack of romaine was on for a good price, but the head of lettuce was cheaper and we won’t have any waste.

Next stop we decided on a Freshco instead. We spent a bit of time wandering here and picked up bananas, eggs, potatoes and I used a coupon for a free bag of instant rice. The store wasn’t that nice so we decided to round off the trip with Walmart after all. We’ve since decided this Walmart is not for us as it was extremely short on actual food or most of our “no name” options. We got yogurt, snacks 1 ramen noodle pack and pasta sauce and headed home.

To round off our trip with the extra money we had left, we factored in 1 bag of milk, 1 mostly full butter brick and a frozen juice. Everything else in our house was now off limits, besides the previously mentioned “pantry staples” like flour and oatmeal and ketchup.

One Week Challenge - $5 a day Groceries

After watching a string of budget busting, live on $1 a day video blogs, hubby and I decided to try our own.. but something a little more sustainable than these $1 a day meals where the people are still hungry or only eating rice and beans and pasta. 

We started with an idea and some rules. $5 a day for both of us / $35 a week total. This does not include buying “pantry staples” which we are assuming every house likely has, with a photo below. This include flour, sugar, salt, vinegar and condiments. Pasta, rice, oatmeal and various spices. Baking powder, some sort of oil, sauce or gravy packets. And probably some tea or coffee. All of these are easy add-ons to normal grocery trips to replace and last a long time when you do buy them. Often we buy a few of something if it’s a great deal or we have a coupon, which then waits in pantry to be used later (as evident by our ketchup/relish/mustard pack not yet opened)!

Also pictures are some freebies - like jam made from your grandma or condiments/butter samples from restaurants or Timmies runs (always take extras when you see them!) 

Then, everything not to be used for this week’s challenge was separated off in fridge and cupboards. We’ve ended up with one drawer and half a fridge of what we’re “allowed” to use! 

Then.. off to grocery shop! (See next blog)

Request Coupons for Stuff You Like - batch 1

Happy Mail Day!  Every few months you can request coupons from some favourite suppliers to help with groceries (of which coupons can be harder to find than say cleaning supplies or candles), and when they come in the mail I call it my happy mail day! Today I received 4 envelopes.

Land O’Lakes - Kozy Shack - I said I adored their rice pudding through the online contact ya, but needed some help with bringing them into our monthly budget. They sent .55 coupons. They emailed to say you can request coupons twice a year. 

Johnsonville - Save $2. I emailed them and requested “any and all available coupons”. They emailed back letting me know they can send coupons every 90 days if requested. 

Walmart  - Walmart.com/coupons. Order often (I think I do twice a month). They send you a sheet that you cut up. I’ve used these coupons outside of Walmart. 

Bolthouse Forms - I emailed them through the contact us page praising their products and asking for any coupons. They’ve sent me $1 off any product. 

I think between Jan and Feb I’ve sent maybe 20 email forms out to various companies requesting coupons. Some of my “rejections” were below.

Maple Lodge Farms - please sign up for our newsletter or follow on social media for any coupons.

Becel - Response was from a “brand ambassador” saying sign up for newsletter and Facebook/Twitter for upcoming promotions.

I’ll post more blog entries as I get more happy mail days!