Pantry Challenge Shabbat

Not my pantry, but I have lots of shelves and glass jars too!

Last week, on Shabbat, our fridge called it quits. As I struggled to figure out what do with food that would quickly begin to spoil, I realized I may have allowed myself to stock up a bit more than is ideal. So I announced, "no grocery shopping next week"! And resolved to cook meals using whatever we have in the house. Some of the things I found (and had to transfer to the other freezer with difficulty) had been frozen for perhaps longer than ideal - so I'm trying really hard to use them up! We're doing well, actually - no one's starved and we've eaten a somewhat wide variety of foods this week!

So for this Shabbat, we're having whatever I find in the freezer or can make using items in the pantry and fridge...

Looks like we'll be having chicken from random other Shabbatot - there are all sorts of packages of 2 servings and 3 servings of chicken that were left, and it's time to use them up.

We have several challot and challah rolls in the freezer.

There's vegetable soup, that I'm making with whatever soup veggies are left in my fridge (onions, carrots, kishuim, celery, garlic...)

I'll cook some rice, and the sweet potatoes that are begging to be used, and a vegan cholent.

We've run out of tomatoes, but we still have cucumbers, yellow and red peppers, carrots, and kohlrabi for making a vegetable platter!

We have plenty of apples, so we'll make either apple crisp or baked apples...

And I might make a cake!

Next week we'll probably have to do some shopping again, but for now, I think we're doing well with this pantry challenge. We've eaten lentils a few days, random freezer leftovers once or twice, pasta with cheese I had stashed in the freezer, salmon that was the one thing that had defrosted before I realized what was going on with the fridge (cooked it after shabbat)... It's all good for eating, so we might as well use it up! But after Shabbat, I think we'll be very low on fresh fruits and veggies (except for carrots - we seem to have tons of carrots!), so we'll have to shop again!

So even though we had to fix the fridge this week (unexpected expense!), I'm blessed that we were able to salvage most of the food and make it work without shopping!

Shabbat Shalom - wishing everyone a restful and peaceful Shabbat!