It is a new year - let's start thing's off with a bang by taking inventory of some of these items clogging our pantries and either use then or lose them! This will be a month long event - starting today. Here is how it works:
The First Ever Recipezaaz Budgets Stretchers Use it or Lose it Event!
Go through your home and find at least 15 items in your home that are food/beverage items that you want to use or lose by the end of this month. These can be anything edible at all and can include items for pets as well as humans.
Things to look for:
gourmet food items you got as gifts or bought as a splurge item ingredients you rarely use but picked up because the sale sucked you in items you bought because you were hungry when you went shopping and then never ate items you used once or twice for one recipe and then forgot about items you overpaid for and don't really want to eat, but have to because you spent so much on them seasonal foods you accumulated leftovers or ready meals you have stashed that are going to expire or will get freezer burn/mold if you don't hurry up and eat them soon! items you bought in bulk that you do use, but have way WAY too much of to store duplicate items you picked up because all that other stuff listed above was clogging your pantry/freezer/fridge and you bought more - sometimes you have done this several times items you bought because it sounded good online, in a magazine, on tv, or the packaging rocked.. but then you tasted a little and either you or someone else in your household didn't like it so it sat there.. and sat there items you really want to be eating more of for health reasons but you keep forgetting to eat ingredients you are afraid to use because they are foreign to you or have instructions in another languageYou get the idea!
1. Make a reply to this thread listing your 15 items - don't be afraid of the number - this amounts to approximately 3 items per week. You have a whole month to try to use up these items and you can choose anything at all that you already have in your home. The goal here is to try to use everything at least once during the month.
2. Check out everyone's lists and offer suggestions on how to use those food items in new ways - suggesting recipes or posting new recipes you have created using up the foods on your list or on anyone else's lists. Posting photos is fine too! (but not required).
3. Report back whenever you use something on your list and what you did with it. You just have to eat or use some of the ingredient for it to count. No one is asking you to wait until your entire bottle of garam masala you bought the one time you watched Aarti Party is all used up
Note: You can be creative with the food - feeding it to animals or letting your kids craft with the food or turning the food into cleaning items/beauty treatments counts too! It has to start out as food, but as long as it gets used, it counts
At the end of the month, take a look at anything that was on your list that you never touched even once. Consider donating it, passing it on to a friend or family member, or tossing it.
You can join any time you like during the month and you can opt out if you need to for any reason. Hopefully we will all help each other save some money by not wasting our already purchased food and learn some great new recipes in the process!
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. Learnt a lesson to never do that again though!
I do also have a can of evaporated milk in there for emergencies. I might actually use that tonight in some sort of creamy chicken chili with some cornbread?? I don't really buy stuff that I won't use. Although, there is a bunch of candy and junk that we got in a gift basket, but I'm not eating that either