Pantry Challenge In Review and Azure Standard Haul

I want to be in control of when I decide to go to the supermarket. I don't want to run out of things that dictate when I should go to the grocery store. Hello friends, welcome back to Acre Homestead today. I want to recap the

pantry

challenge

. I went shopping for the first time at Costco yesterday and also picked up my blue order. It's been since December 26th since I went shopping and yesterday was March 3rd, so that's over two months without personal shopping, except for two exceptions. And I'll get into that real quick here, but I want to recap what the rules were and why I decided to do this two month

pantry

challenge

with no shopping challenge that was hosted by Jessica at Three Rivers Homestead, so I printed out a list of rules for myself , that was the only thing about this pantry challenge is that everyone can make their own rules.

I want to start one thing off, if you're just here for the blue room, I'll put a timestamp in the description box so you can skip ahead to see what I bought, but first I want to go ahead and recap the rules. What I ran out of. What I learned. Will I do this again? So the rules for me were that I was going to spend zero dollars at the grocery store. store for the month of January and I did it without a problem, so he was going to give me forty dollars a month, so ten dollars a week in the month of February to go buy fresh produce and dairy products, which I more than accomplished.

Two things I bought in the month of February were a pound of coffee that was technically outside the parameters of what I set, but I wasn't going to go almost three and a half weeks without coffee, I drank decaf, but I needed regular, the only other The thing I bought for personal use during the month of February was a liter of half and half because I also ran out. I made some of my own almond milk, but I prefer half and half and so on. one week and a half I used homemade almond milk and then the last week and a half of the pantry challenge I used half and half.

The next rule was that I was going to go through my pantry and choose items that had been sitting in my pantry for too long and I needed to use them, a couple of them were coconut and almond flour and those were two things that I used a lot during this pantry challenge . I used coconut in some of those baked goods we made for Valentine's Day and then I also used almond flour. I learned how to make banana and almond flour bread as a quick bread and it was really good. I made it several times for Josh and I's breakfast.

The next rule I had. and this was the last rule: I had to try at least one new recipe. Try something you've never cooked before during this pantry challenge. It was supposed to be one new recipe a week and I think I pretty much did it. I don't exactly keep track, so let me tell you about the new recipes I cooked for the first time that I've never cooked before. The first was that banana bread with almonds and then I made tortillas for the first time. Gnocchi soup. Schnitzel. Oreos. Gold fish. And I know. It was more than I've ever made new to me recipes before, but those are the ones that were fantastic and I will definitely make again, so it was fun and took me out of my comfort zone.

It encouraged me to learn new recipes. and now we have a couple new favorite recipes that I'm definitely going to put in the rotation, so those were the rules whether it was successful or not and I think overall I did a great job. Next was why I decided to do it. Do this. I'm going to do this real quick. I decided to do this because I wanted to use up the food I saved from last year so that going into this growing season I won't have to carry a ton of last year's produce. year, the second thing is that I wanted to go through some of my dry goods.

We did a fantastic job on that. When we get to the hallway, I'll tell you the things we're almost out of. In fact, I'll tell you before. We make it to the aisle but we're going through those dry goods because I buy in bulk. I want to make sure things aren't sitting in the pantry and closets becoming obsolete. Save money. I saved a lot of money during this pantry challenge because I wasn't shopping, I wasn't making those impulse purchases and generally, I mean technically groceries for personal use that I spent, I think it was like 15 for the coffee and cream and I bought, you will see.

I bought a couple of grocery items, but they were for if I had to go cook for a party or something, it wasn't just for Josh and I's personal use it was because he was responsible for making something for a party. or I was making something for a gift like all those Valentine's Day cookies and candies we made together, but most of the products I needed for those gifts and for those baked goods were things I already had on hand. I showed them what I had. To buy those items I want to reduce food waste when I buy in bulk and when I don't go to the store to buy those prepared meals I don't use products that have a lot of packaging, now let's see what I learned from the pantry challenge because that was one of my goals and the reason I wanted to do this is because I wanted to know what Josh and I gravitate toward, like what items I should buy in bulk and what items I shouldn't buy in bulk.

It's the things I'm not looking for and what we like to eat from the garden and what I should try to grow more of. The first and most important thing I learned was that Josh and I generally have a very good relationship. pantry full for us, we could probably go another two months with meat, starch, and vegetables for every meal. It would get a little more monotonous at this point if I had to struggle for four months without going to the grocery store. I may not have exactly what I want to cook with because we would definitely have run out of cheese.

I still have three pounds of cheese in my refrigerator, but I know that if we gained another two months we would definitely have run out of cheese and vegetables. The selection of frozen, freeze-dried and canned vegetables would start to get old, so I wouldn't want to go four months without going to the supermarket, but I know we can do it and the reason why. It's important for me to know that if Josh or I couldn't work, we would have food security, just like you want to have money in the bank for insurance or you have car insurance, health insurance, life insurance, food insurance by having food in your pantry is just another way to save, it also helps you save against inflation, inflation is going up and up right now, that's one of the reasons why when I go into what I bought today I bought a little more than I would probably buy normally because Inflation I want to try to set my prices now so that a year from now I'm still using products that I paid today's prices for and not what who knows what I'll know in a year or even a month from now or two months. the prices will look like the second thing I already talked about, but I learned some new skills, I learned how to make omelettes and I learned how to fry schnitzel and those are two things that I'm very excited about and I'm definitely going to use it and implement it into my cooking routine.

In the future, every time you learn a new cooking skill or a new recipe, it will give you a little more confidence to be a little more creative and maybe try even harder in the kitchen. and to me that's invaluable so I'm excited that I was able to learn some new skills so overall I would say this pantry challenge was worth it. We use about three quarters of the produce I put out last year so It's fantastic, we still have at least a month and a half, if not two, before I can harvest even lettuce leaves or anything in the garden and probably It will be about four months, five months before we start. to harvest anything substantial in the garden, so I have enough produce in my freezer from last year's garden to get to the place where we are going to harvest our own produce again.

If you watched the garden tour, you saw that I just harvested a bunch of carrots from the garden and leeks, and that's pretty exciting, but right now there's nothing in the garden except some herbs that are starting to appear, so now that I've used most of them I think I have a good amount in my freezer and pantry to tide us over until we start growing this year's garden produce. I also learned and found the gaps in my pantry, the areas where I could do better and where I could store a little more because we ran out of some. items during this pantry challenge, so what I'm going to tell you now are the items that we ran out of and we were able to get by and you know, change and do some things to make it work, but these were the items. we ran out I ran out of sesame oil I ran out of light olive oil I have my very good olive oil that I like to use to make salad dressings but I don't really want to cook with that olive oil so we ran out of that We ran out of coconut, balsamic, and red wine vinegar We almost ran out of cane sugar I had some recipes for canned goods and sweet things that we were going to make together but I couldn't make them because I was completely out of it We ran out of sugar if we had In fact, we were completely out of powdered sugar, which I'm kind of excited about, we were out of powdered sugar because what that did was it finally forced me to learn how to make homemade powdered sugar, if you follow me.

You'll have seen on Instagram that I learned how to do that and at some point I'll show a video here on how to make homemade powdered sugar, but it couldn't be easier and that was something that got me a little excited. that I was forced to learn that because we ran out of powdered sugar we were almost out of white flour, so I cooked a lot this last month with whole wheat flour and that, honestly, was a good thing because I hadn't been grabbing all my white flour. wheat because I have the habit of taking my flour white.

I didn't want to run out of white flour, so I used a lot of whole wheat flour because I didn't want to run out of flour. white flour the next two months three months I'm really going to work on continuing to get into the habit of using that wheat flour because wheat flour doesn't have that long of a shelf life and that's one of the reasons why I'm doing this challenge. pantry because it helps me and forces me to use some of those other items that I don't usually use. We ran out of tortillas. I knew that was going to happen, so I bought a tortilla press.

I learned how to make tortillas, we ran out of tortilla chips, I'm not too worried about that, that's something I'm not going to buy in bulk or anything because then we'll eat more tortilla chips and we don't need to eat that. lots of tortilla chips, this pantry challenge I was going to try to make my own chips, but I never got around to it, so when it comes down to it we'll do it together and we're out of snacks. My husband likes snacks and he wasn't really participating. In this pantry challenge, he had the autonomy to go buy whatever he wanted.

He usually buys his own snacks anyway because I don't buy them, so he buys them for himself, but I was able to keep quite a few snacks, like homemade baked goods. and items that he was happy eating here and I think he just got out of the habit of eating those store-bought snacks and didn't actually buy them. I was a little surprised that she found my girl scout cookies that I bought to research to make our Girl Scout cookies together, but she came home with a little extra so I replenished them, so I still have those cookies because I haven't researched them yet and I need to discover the recipes to make a homemade girl. explore cookies together, but I still thought it was fun and cool, so technically this wasn't part of the pantry challenge because they were household items that we ran out of, but I personally group everything I buy at the grocery store together Costco because they all come from the same place but I wasn't thinking about these entering the pantry challenge so one thing we ran out of was dishwasher tablets and honestly that was it but it was so frustrating to run out them, so that's something I'm going to be thinking about in the future is that I don't want to run out of dishwasher tablets.

I don't want to have to go to the supermarket just to buy dishwasher tablets, so I need to make sure that I have at least two boxes of dishwasher tablets on hand at all times, so that when I open one box I buy the next one when I plan to go to the supermarket . I want to be in control of when I decide to go. I don't want to run out of things to tell me when I need to go to the grocery store, so that's one of the reasons I like to have a stocked pantry because I want to be in control of that.

I don't want the lack of something I have in my house to force me to go to a grocery store, if that makes sense, those were the only household items we ran out of. I try to keep a really good pantry with laundry detergent, toothpaste, all those types of things, hair products, shampoo, conditioner and things of that nature, so when I look at the things that I ran out of, I'm really proud of myself for being able to do this and I just ran out of those really little things, not even that. It is crucial because it couldadapt if, since I didn't have balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar, if I was going to make a salad, I could use apple cider vinegar, white wine vinegar, distilled white vinegar, I had other options for doing this pantry challenge.

It really pushed me and really confirmed that this is something that I think is really important. It's something that I'm passionate about and if I don't do these pantry challenges, how will I know where my holes are in my pantry and in my stored goods if I Will they force me not to go to the supermarket? not by choice but by force due to exceptional circumstances If you participated in any way in this pantry challenge, can you please leave what you did in the description box? what you learned what you liked what you didn't like if you didn't participate Is it something you want to participate in next year?

Because I learn a lot from you in the comments section and we can all learn from each other. It took me years to get to this point, so don't be discouraged if you can't. I spent two months without going to the supermarket. I used to go to the supermarket twice a week, almost every week, and little by little I worked to save time between trips to the supermarket and buying in bulk and buying to build up that stock. The pantry takes time because you have to buy the product, so it's certainly not something most people couldn't do.

Simply going to the grocery store and spending thousands of dollars to then have a year's supply of food took months. and months and months of slowly buying two of these two of that one extra of this to build that pantry avoid looking at my meals for the week if you want me to continue doing that let me know I had a lot of fun showing this week's meals and I can continue doing it if it's something you're interested in let me show you because I had fun doing it so I just want to know if it's something you're interested in, if you're interested in

azure

, I'll leave it. a link in the description box if you don't know what it is, it's a company that buys in bulk, mostly organic, where you don't have to pay for shipping, it's a great way to get wholesale organic food at amazing prices that you don't even I have found. amazon mostly blue can beat the prices hands down in this room.

I have things for my chickens, my garden, and my pantry, so let me get right into it. I'm going to show you the chickens and the garden stuff that I bought first, so the first thing I got was more chicken feed. You may have seen my latest tour of Azure and are wondering, Becky, why did you buy chicken feed? You just bought six bags, that's because I bought the whole grain and I didn't. I realized I didn't buy the pellets, they really prefer the pellets and the brand I normally buy through Azure was out of stock, but they had this high protein food that has little bugs in it and I thought they would really enjoy them.

This is because they have been eating something they really don't like, I decided to buy them some of these so I got quite a few bags so now I have enough chicken feed to get me through the whole year and some of you have I mentioned you bought a large amount of pelleted chicken feed and it got wet and ruined everything so this is all stored in my garage so it's more controlled in the environment it's in so there won't be any moisture I won't leave it in the chicken coop or anything like that because I don't want my big investment to go to waste so just like I have a pantry for myself I want to make sure.

My chickens have a well stocked larder because if I can't feed them then I can't get eggs from them. Another thing I bought is this organic fertilizer. I haven't really fertilized my garden in the last two years. I've only used it. some composted horse manure and this year I'm really going to try and work in a big crop so I decided to go ahead and get this thing I was looking for and it was a great price, it's £50. I did the math and bought four. of these bags and that should be enough to get me through this entire gardening season, so I went ahead and bought four bags of fertilizer.

This is also for the garden. I'm going to try growing some ginger this year. and I needed to buy this so I could grow it. It's organic ginger. I'm going to cut it into pieces and we'll plant it here very soon. We will plant it inside and that will be a fun adventure that we are going to do together, so that's what Azure has seeds for, the reason I decided to buy seeds was because they had this cabbage from the Copenhagen market. I looked at all the seed companies that I normally buy seeds from and I couldn't find them and I don't think I can remember who I see grow this cabbage every year and it does very well so I wanted to grow this cabbage so in a couple of days I'm going to plant it inside and we're going to try growing cabbage from the Copenhagen market while I was looking at the seeds I went ahead and got some beans these are some blue like bush beans and some competitor beans.

I didn't really need them, but they just found their way. in my cart, y'all know how that goes and then I went ahead and bought organic long grain brown rice that was on sale. I don't really need rice right now, but I don't have brown rice and I'm going to cook a bunch of food in the freezer this week, I only have one left in my freezer and I have to make some for myself and then my sister-in-law is going to have a baby due in about three and a half weeks and so on. I will also be making some frozen meals for him and using some rice in some of the recipes and I thought that brown rice, because it has more texture, will probably hold up better in frozen meals, so I'm not going to experiment with the foods I give him.

I give it to my sister-in-law, but I am going to experiment with the meals I prepare to use brown rice instead of white rice, I think. It's going to work better, but we'll see the things that happen in the world. I thought you know what I'm going to buy. So I went ahead and bought 100 pounds of white flour. This is my favorite brand. They used to sell it. at my local costco i could buy it 20 pounds at a time but they don't sell it anymore and honestly this is the best price to buy it in a 50 pound bag through

azure

.

The next thing I bought was some cheese, well I guess. This is not by weight, I thought they were five pound blocks, but they are definitely not the same size. These are raw medium cheddar cheese and you can make the cheese last for months and months and months in your refrigerator if you don't open it once you open it. You have to do something with it, but this is going to last us a long time. We still have about three pounds of cheese that I bought two and a half months ago in your refrigerator that are still going strong, but since I placed my order.

I went ahead and got this now. I went ahead and bought a bag of soft white wheat. These are whole wheat berries. This is a 25 pound bag. I decided to buy the whole wheat berries because I'm running a little low and I really would. I prefer to grind my own wheat when I want to use whole wheat rather than buying or using the pre-ground material. What I do is I usually grind about 20 cups of whole wheat berries and then I put them in my freezer because it will go rancid if you put it in your pantry and it starts to lose its nutrients, but if I have to grind it to order, I usually don't do it when I'm going to make a recipe because it's easier. to take the pre-ground stuff so I always always always always had fresh whole wheat flour in my freezer, but I haven't I've gotten out of the habit and I want to start doing it and I want to start.

Experimenting with sprouting my wheat, I never had time to do that before, but I think I have time to do it now. It's supposed to be much more nutritious to have sprouted flour, but buying sprouted flour is extremely expensive, especially out of my budget. Organic sprouted flour, so I thought you know what I think. I'm going to make it my goal to start sprouting my own wheat berries. I have two dehydrators so I could do a ton at a time and we will do that. together when it comes hold me accountable please if you want to know about how to sprout wheat berries one of my favorite resources for learning how to sprout your grains and seeds and things from those legumes and all that then book nourishing traditions by sally fallon . is the book you want to read, I can link it in the description box, that's how I learned all about fermentation, what kind of healthy fats you should eat, what fats you should avoid, sprouting your grains, eating traditionally, eating organ meats and all those things. those good things for us ferment if I didn't mention it, so let's get back on topic talking about fermenting when I was baking on Valentine's Day, I realized how many disgusting ingredients are in the cream that I bought, so I bought this.

It's not cheap and everything in it is organic cream, it has no thickeners, binders or preservatives and you know I make my own sour cream so I bought this to make my own sour cream and I'm going to do it. I experimented with freezing one of these and seeing how it went. I tried freezing half and half and it didn't work but I think you can freeze full cream so let's try that together and then during the pantry challenge I ran out of something else. what I forgot to mention was sour cream and cream, so I bought this probiotic cream from Nancy's as a starter to start making my own sour cream again.

I have a video on how to make sour cream if you want to see I can link it in the description box the last grain I bought in this order is a five pound bag of polenta. I've never made polenta or grits before, but I have some shrimp that I want to use and I want to try making shrimp and grits and I also want to try making polenta like fried polenta. I've had it at a restaurant before and it's actually really good as a side, you know, like chicken or something, so this is new to me, I've never made it. but I thought it would be fun, like one of those things that pushes me like a recipe that will force me to try something new, so I hope we like it.

Another recipe we tried together for the first time was making a white caper sauce with chicken and pasta and it was probably one of the best things I've ever made before, so I went ahead and bought three more containers of capers because capers are so good and I was out of red wine vinegar and I used this to pickle my onions and make salad dressings so I needed to get it and I went ahead and bought a whole gallon because I go through a lot when I pick up all my onions just a little bit of maple syrup .

I usually buy the large one. maple syrup thing, but I don't like that it takes up so much space in my refrigerator, so I spent a few extra cents on the smaller one, but it will take up less space in my refrigerator. I ran out of coconut aminos so I bought two, I ran out of sesame seed oil so this time I bought organic toasted sesame oil. I had never bought organic before, but they had it in azure and I really like this brand. This is my favorite brand of olive oil, so I thought I would buy it. this too and then just a little bit of balsamic vinegar that we ran out of.

I have two bottles. I know how to make my own almond milk. I like to have almond milk in my smoothies and I want to have this on hand because it is shelf stable. I can keep it in my pantry and if I don't feel like making my own almond milk, which I don't normally do because I usually make smoothies for breakfast, then I can have this. I have a 50 pound bag of organic cane sugar that I make myself. Homemade brown sugar so I don't have brown sugar in my house and I just learned how to make homemade powdered sugar so this is going to be great and canning season is coming up.

Canning season uses quite a bit of sugar so I bought this so I can start making all my sugar products and I'll be ready for canning season because I probably only have about two cups of sugar in my house right now and like I said, There are things in my freezer that I want to get out of my freezer and into cans, but I didn't have enough sugar to do that. This is something I'm very excited about. I'm going to try to find some elderberry plants this year to grow myself, but I want to try making elderberry tincture, elderberry syrup is very popular, but I don't want all that sugar and when you make elderberry syrup, from what I read it's which doesn't last long, it only lasts a few in your refrigerator. weeks and you make a tincture with vodka instead of sugar and it will last a long time, so if Josh and I get sick we can have elderberry tincture instead of elderberry syrup, so I have to make a little more. did my research on that, but that's why I bought a pound of whole organic elderberries so when I make this we'll do it together and then here's some soap.

This soap is made in Ashland, Oregon, which is about six hours south of me and Josh loves this. soap the last time I bought it I bought it about six months ago it lasted us a long time and I bought the aloe and this time I bought the lemon gardeners so I'm excited to try it we haven't tried this scent before but I'm sure which is great because I really like this brand. I really want to get into soap making more seriously. I made a batch and we made it together. Was atallow 100 and I am using it.

I haven't talked about it since I did it almost a year ago. I waited until about a month ago to start using it and it's not my favorite, it's a little silky and I want to find something that's a little harsher and I want something that's a blend of oils so I've been researching online but, Honestly, it's really hard to find soap making recipes online, so I need some good books. Can you tell me if you like making soap or something? Some good books? Good resources for making my own homemade soap is something I've always been interested in, I've dabbled in it, but I think I'm ready to dive in and find a recipe that we really like because I would love to make all our own soap, I know.

I am capable of making it and I know I would enjoy making it, but the most important thing is to find a recipe that is good, one that is not washable, one that is not too greasy and one that is not too light. There are so many recipes and so many different ingredients and I don't want one that has eight or nine ingredients because that's what some have a lot of, but I guess if that's the best recipe then maybe that's the one I want to make. I don't know, help me if you like making soap, give me all the options, give me all the advice because I need it.

This was the blue loot we got today and it's mostly pantry staples. From now on, I will move forward. I'm going to use blue mainly for pantry items, it's not something I'm going to buy fresh produce from anymore. The amounts are a little too big for Josh and I and I found out we can't get it. Check them quickly enough before they go bad. The onions I bought two months ago are still going strong, so they're fine, but some of the other produce I bought we just can't go through fast enough, but this is a fantastic resource if you want to start building your pantry, so I I will leave the link in the description box, but this is not the full picture of the groceries I bought after going almost two and a half months without going to the grocery store, so if you are interested in seeing my Costco

haul

and my Walmart

haul

to see how I complete the rest of the image.

Go ahead and subscribe if you're new here because that will be the next video that comes out and I. In that video I'm going to talk about all the frozen meals that we are going to cook together because there will be a lot of frozen meals that we will be making here very soon because I can't have any frozen meals in my freezers it's just not the way I like to live life because so Josh and I will go out to eat too much if I don't have the convenience of having those meals in my freezer.

If you liked this video, please like it, I really appreciate it and if you want to see me cook with a ton of this food, I have a lot of videos where we cook together. I can leave those videos here if you want. See what my garden looked like last year and I hope it looks even better this year. I'll put a video of the garden here. You can go enjoy it. I hope you are having a fantastic day. Thank you for taking the time out of your day. spend time with me and I can't wait to see you next time, bye guys.