What a mouthful! As we move into our fourth week of self-isolation, we can count the number of times we’ve left the house on one hand. Alana left once, to take Noke for a hike at a local trail that isn’t very heavily used. I’ve made a few trips to the grocery store to replenish our food supplies, although looking back at it, we were still living a little too luxuriously. I wouldn’t say that we were being careless, but we definitely didn’t need the groceries that I bought. While milk and yogurt certainly aren’t that much of a stretch, we think we could make it through this with less. Thus, the Corona Quarantine Kitchen Cupboard Challenge was born.
There are no set rules to this challenge. Everyone in your household should work together to agree to terms. We just had quite a back and forth conversation trying to figure out our terms, but before we go into more detail here are the goals.
- Budget appropriately through these financially rough times.
- Support local businesses to help them stay afloat.
- Use food in your pantry that is often forgotten or might go bad.
- Cook and experiment more in the kitchen to develop skills.
- Maintain some level of physical health.
- Take care of our mental wellbeing.
- Limit the spread of the virus.
Obviously, this is going to be different for everyone. We’re a family of two healthy humans that are financially in good shape. We’re not setting limits to anything related to the animals; they aren’t playing the game and will get their exact same nutrition as always. Our focus is to try and hit as many of the above goals as possible. We went back and forth between “eating out” once or twice a week. Also, we couldn’t decide whether we wanted to take one trip a week for a few groceries, or one trip every two weeks for a few more groceries. This is what we decided.
- No monetary budget for groceries or take-out dining.
- Two total take-out and/or delivery meals a week.
- One trip to the grocery every two weeks for six groceries for each of us. (Twelve total items.)
Now, for the twelve total items… that doesn’t mean twelve mandarin oranges. A bag of eight apples can count as one item, for us. However, if you want two kinds of milk, that counts as two items. The point of this is to try and get more at once to prevent going out more often.
We also debated going out tomorrow for a “staple” trip in order to replenish our supplies and start fresh, but we decided against that. We’re going right into this challenge with what we currently have. You can tell by our pictures that our pantry and freezer are relatively well stocked, but our fridge isn’t looking too good. Since we haven’t gone out for groceries since March 23rd we’re going to try and hit the two-week point, which would be next Monday, April 6th. That might be a stretch but we like a challenge. We won’t be upset if we go out sooner because Alana needs her milk for tea and it is running low already!
Here is a list of what we have a lot of right now: canned tuna, potatoes, onions, garlic, spices, canned salmon, rice, rice, rice, dry beans, canned beans, dry lentils, couscous, pasta, protein powder, protein bars, peanut butter, oats, frozen vegetables. Here is a list of what I think we’ll use our grocery allowance for: milk, eggs, yogurt, cheese, Morningstar… but who really knows? I might get so bored eating the same three meals every day that I might want a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. It is an exercise in strategy.
Let us know if your family is going to try something along these lines and what your guidelines are below! Stay hungry and fit!
(I think we’ve provided pictures of all the food we have in the house right now.)
