October Spending Challenge - Week 1

I mentioned Monday that I was joining Erica at Northwest Edible Life in her No-Spend Month of October by challenging myself to spend zero money going out to eat and as little as possible on food at the grocery store.  Kat requests the school's hot lunch a few times a month, so I'm including that spending as well.  I don't consider it to be groceries or a meal out, so it gets its own category.

This week of 10/1 to 10/5 was a success:

Restaurant spending:  $0
School lunch spending: $2.15 (1 lunch)
Grocery store spending:  $8.55 (includes sales tax)

At the store I bought:  10 pounds russet potatoes, 1 large head of lettuce, 1 small head of cabbage, and a 1-pound bag of tortilla chips.

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Just for fun, here's what we ate this past week from what was already in the freezer, fridge and pantry:


Breakfasts: 

• Shane doesn't eat breakfast during the week. 
• If I do, it's usually just toast and coffee. 
• Kat ate a scrambled egg with toast (2 days), a waffle with butter - she doesn't like syrup (1 day), toast with almond butter (1 day), and oatmeal (1 day).

Lunches: 

• Shane takes supper leftovers or other pantry items for his lunch nearly every day. 
• I ate enchiladas left over from camping (3 days), miscellaneous leftovers (1 day), and stuffed cheeseburger buns (1 day). 
• Kat ate stuffed cheeseburger buns (2 days), leftover ham and potato casserole (2 days) with yogurt, string cheese, peaches, tortilla chips and/or peanuts as side items all week.  She requested the school lunch for today:  turkey and gravy, whole grain roll, and two or more of applesauce, apple wedges, banana, corn or celery sticks.

Suppers: (I baked a half ham that has stretched all week and will make some future meals as well.) 

• Baked ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, sauteed cabbage, fermented cherry tomatoes, whole wheat rolls with butter.
• Ham-potato-onion casserole, peas, home-canned peaches, cottage cheese, fermented cherry tomatoes, whole wheat rolls with butter.
• Fried ham slices, eggs (fried or scrambled as desired), whole wheat toast with butter, cottage cheese, sliced tomato, apple-ground cherry galette.
• Potato soup with ham, cheese and broccoli (per Shane's request); fried egg sandwiches
• Tonight we will have a homemade version of a Primanti Bros. Sandwich that we saw TV once time.  Ours will have ham, cooked chicken, cheddar, French fries, slaw and tomatoes on homemade bread.  No side dishes will be needed with this sandwich!

Drinks and Snacks:
Drinks this week were water, coffee, iced tea, hot tea, hot chocolate, half of a 2-liter bottle of ginger ale left from camping, and beer.  Snacks were dry roasted peanuts, toast with apple butter, tortilla chips, string cheese, and apples.