At the beginning of May, I decided to not buy anything at the grocery store or liquor store for a month and just live off my pantry.

First, how did I do?  Well, I failed.  First – I bought carrots and celery.  I have a new fridge and it froze the carrots and celery I had, so I replaced them.

Then, closer to the end of the month, I needed eggs, limes, onions, and cream.  So I failed again.

But, this was still far less than I usually buy in a month. This was a silly challenge, but definitely led to some insights.  I definitely identified areas I need to improve:

I need more varieties of frozen and canned vegetables.  I need to keep more onions and garlic on hand.

I also need to better organize my pantry and freezer.  When I got my new fridge, I discovered that I had two open packages of frozen peas. I have solved this problem by putting a plastic tray in the freezer and putting open vegetables in that bin.

I need to do better in terms of rotating stock and making sure I use things up. I have cassava flour and maseca corn flour that needs to be used up.  That is a goal for next month.

I think this is a good exercise to make sure you are using up pantry items and I will likely do it again.

Have any you tested your pantry?  How did it go?