You may remember that several weeks ago I mentioned doing the Pantry Challenge. My two friends, Rachel and Stacey, were going to give it a try during the month of January. Here is Stacey’s story.
Stacey is a very busy wife and mother of 3 young children. Although she is a stay-at-home mom, she is also the owner of Happily Everafter Me, a company that writes personalized books for children. You can see her work at http://www.happilyeverafterme.com/.
Her hubby is a meat eater, so he prefers eating meat with just about every meal. This meant that Stacey had to make a few extra trips out to the store to grab more meat.
Stacey also likes to make sure that her family gets plenty of fresh fruits and veggies. She realized during the second week that she needed more.
For the most part, she was able to do internet searches for recipes calling for items that she had on hand in her pantry. One that worked for her was making her own spaghetti sauce. Using canned tomato sauce and adding her own spices, she created her own sauce…much less expensive than purchasing ready-made sauce!
Like other moms of young children, Stacey has her kids in after-school activities like karate. She found that on karate nights, it is sometimes just easier to pick up something to eat on the way home rather than try to prepare dinner.
Stacey says, “The pantry challenge wasn’t as successful for me, but only because of everyone else! I am happy eating cereal for dinner every night or finishing off a cookie for breakfast…but the others not so much.” I think that most of us busy moms feel the same way! Cereal for dinner when it is just me is wonderful!
These two links are for some favorites her family enjoyed:
http://cookingwithmichele.com/2010/01/perfectly-pan-seared-pork-chop/ and http://allrecipes.com/recipe/sour-cream-pork-chops/detail.aspx.
The Cookbook Experiment 