When making a large family move to a completely different state and area, I was glad to bring with me food that would last for at least a few months. We packed our freezer and pantry full and brought it along with us. That has afforded me much less stress when it comes to making meals. With moving there are so many things that you are getting acclimated to. Do you know how long it has taken me to find the same grocery store in the SAME spot??? I am thankful for grocery store chains like Aldi’s and Walmart because I know that the food is similar and so are the prices.
My goal is to eat out of our pantry before I go and spend any money on groceries. We do buy milk and fruits /vegetables for eating fresh but the rest of our food is what we brought. That makes for one less thing that I have to do right now as we are just starting to settle into regular routines. I had to laugh because as we were unpacking items, my children were having some frozen grapes for a snack. 
Well Jentzen must of gotten creative when looking for a spoon to eat them. He decided to use a WRENCH—yes a wrench to eat his grapes with!!!
Thank goodness it appeared clean—–one of those things you do when trying to locate all of our items!!!
Our pantry has stored up many months of rice, beans, pasta, and tomato products and that is what we base our meals on. You can look at our Large Family Foods menu and view many of those meals that we make regularly.
Repetition is good, but sometimes I bore of the same foods. Once in a while I try and change things up and add some new foods to our menu.
We have never tried baked oatmeal before. Since it was super easy to just mix oatmeal and water for breakfast, why would I bother with making baked??? Well I came across a recipe online that was for a baked overnight pumpkin pie oatmeal and I thought I would give it a try. This one required soaking and seemed time consuming for me, so I had to adapt it to my own.
This was something new and different, less sugary than pumpkin muffins but gave “oatmeal” a new taste. It tastes just as it sounds like “pumpkin pie but a baked oatmeal.” We enjoyed it more the day after when we had leftovers in the refrigerator. Mix up a batch it is worth a try. Click here for recipe.
For dinner on Sunday, we tried a meal that one of my friends makes each Sunday for her family.
My husband grew up having a specific meal on a set day each week —like spaghetti every Tuesday and meatloaf every Friday, but I did not. I like to change things often, where he would like same. I compromise and have spaghetti night every Wednesday but that is about it. I think I am going to adapt Danielle’s haystacks as my “official” Sunday meal to go along with our spaghetti Wednesday meal. It is super easy and convenient. Repetition is good as you don’t need to “think” about what to eat you just make.
Her recipe is great because it is super easy, filling, you can make it for many people, plus all the prep work can be done the day before. Click here for Danielle’s Sunday haystack recipe.
Another plus about making that meal on Sunday, you can put the leftover chicken mixture with any rice you have leftover and heat it up for Monday’s lunch.
We heated this mixture up and put it on tortillas for an easy lunch.
For our dinner’s we enjoy making homemade pizza often. My little ones like our macaroni and cheese pizza while the other’s prefer the supreme. Well since we are cooking out of the pantry, I didn’t have as many items as I would have liked to put together a pizza meal, so I decided to do it differently.
I made some homemade macaroni and cheese and upside down pizza. It was nice because I did not have as much cheese as I needed to make regular pizza but this worked because the pizza was made “upside” down and that covered the missing ingredients that we usually have for our pizzas. Try this recipe out, it is different, but tastes good and works good if you are “short” on a few pizza toppings.
For dessert, we had some apples that we brought down with us from Michigan that were starting to go bad. I had Jadyn makes some apple crisp bars. They were yummy. Basically apple crisp but in a bar form.
We will make an exception to shopping as it will be Thanksgiving soon. I believe the “whole” family looks forward to eating a grand feast with a variety of dishes.
How about you? Can you help the family budget by planning your meals from your pantry?? Any favorites that are simple to make?
