Eat from the Pantry/ Freezer Challenge--The END

Well it is the end of January and the END of this challenge; and I must say that I am tickled that it is over. It has been a great challenge; I have learned a lot about myself, my children and my husband. I want to say "Thank you" to my husband for putting up with this challenge and my "Creative meals" through out this month.
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Some things that I have learned from this challenge are:
-Set realistic goals
At the beginning of this challenge I said that I was going to TRY to only spend $100 for the month and to only go shopping 3 times. Well I actually spent $176 and went to the store 5 times. Those 5 shopping trips include a FREE shopping trip that I told you about here, but I still went so I counted it. I was over my dollar amount but I am OK with that considering that we sometimes easily can spend $600 a month on groceries. That amount also includes my husband sweet tooth stops---and there was more than one stop. But that is OK!
-My children are good cooks
To make this fun for our children, they got to cook one meal a week. My oldest one did most of the cooking and the others helped out. A couple of nights my husband had to go to a working dinner, so I thought perfect night for the kids to cook. One night we had mashed potatoes and Mac and cheese; another night we had Ramen Noodle soup. I wished that I had taken a picture the night that they had prepared the mashed potatoes and mac and cheese, because when I walked over to the table their plates were filled with only those two foods---I didn't say anything, I just grinned!

Some dishes that we ate a bunch of are: Baked Ziti, Tater Tot Casserole, Soup, Baked chicken with veggie packets, Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes (I had 40 pound of potatoes when we began this challenge---One of the local store had them on sale Buy one 10 pound bag get one for free so I bought four (40 pounds worth)).
We had a few meatless dinners---need to practice that more often!
One dessert that my children LOVE is chocolate gravy over bananas. It is so easy to make. Peach Cobbler is another favorite that I made a couple of times this month.

All in all it was an experience! We have never done a whole month and usually when we ran out of things we would just go to the store to buy it. I would love to know how you did this month so please leave a comment.
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I am ending our challenge in our home TODAY, because Baking Day starts tomorrow! I need to go to the store and get things to bake. I will blog more about the Baking days a little later on today...so stay tuned!