First Grocery Trip of the Quarantine Kitchen Challenge

Last Thursday, we announced a challenge that we were going to take part of during quarantine, where we’d push ourselves to use the food we already have at home. To summarize, we allowed ourselves two meals out (delivery or take-out a week, Monday through Sunday) and SIX grocery items for each of us, once every two weeks. Today was our first trip to the grocery in two weeks, and based on what we had at home and what we were craving, this is what we each decided to buy. 

 Alana:

1. Horizon 1% Milk
2. Gallon of Skim Milk
3. Popcorn
4. 0% Fat Greek Yogurt
5. Frozen Fruit
6. Apples

The ruling was that you could only get one item, but if two milks came together in a box, that’d be fine. As a result, Alana told me to buy the biggest items possible, especially for frozen fruit. She was also aware that a lot of this might be sold out so I would have to make the right judgement call. Why? Because, if I messed up, I couldn’t break quarantine to go back out!

Chris:

1. String Cheese

Honestly, I couldn’t really think of anything else I wanted. I’m running low on soy milk, so I was hoping to grab some more, but I also knew that Alana had an overflow list so I thought I might play it by ear and grab some of that depending on what the store looked like. 

Well, the store was a nightmare. Nearly everyone had masks. They controlled the flow of people entering the store. People were wearing all sorts of protection and still buying what seemed to be way too much food. I wanted hand soap, but they were sold out. Other than that, we were in pretty good shape with any non-food items so I decided to make it in and out with what was on the list. 

As you can see in the pictures, I got just about everything on Alana’s list, although they only had Whole Horizon Milk. The frozen fruit was also wiped out so triple berry was the only choice. (I grabbed the LAST Horizon Milk and bag of frozen berries, for the record.)

I ended up getting the following five items, on top of my string cheese: whole fat greek yogurt; Morningstar sausage patties; Ezekiel bread; eggs; Roma tomatoes. I love dairy, which is why I chose the extra yogurt and eggs. (Hopefully we get our chickens soon!) I grabbed the Morningstar and Ezekiel because it was on Alana’s back-up list and the Roma tomatoes because she had red pasta sauce on her list, but you know I’d never buy that pre-made and they were out of San Marzano tomatoes. 

I also grabbed some baking supplies for Alana’s baking school, but that doesn’t apply to this quarantine challenge, nor do the Easter chocolates she requested. Then I ran into Advance Auto Parts for a new car battery because the old one died and not having working cars during quarantine is risky.

Fun times! We’re going to keep you updated on this quarantine challenge and you’ll probably see some pretty empty cabinets by the end of it. We’re not sure where we’ll have our two meals out this week. We used our one since starting the challenge for the previous week at Cleopatra, which I believe in Lebanese, but serves all kinds of Middle Eastern food. We over-ordered to have more the following few days and I had a lot of pita! Cleopatra is my favorite place to eat on the Westbank so I want to support them. Our meal there cost $80 while all the groceries only cost $99. That just shows you how much you can save when you eat in!

Oh well; stay hungry and fit, and safe!