Day 7, Final Day of Shopping at Home: Reflections on the Experiment

I cheated.  Well, sort of.  My son had the day off from school and we took the opportunity to visit our local pumpkin patch and apple orchard.  We found gorgeous pumpkins, and just couldn’t resist the pull to pick our own luscious apples right from the tree.  You can’t get more local than that, right?  And then, you have to round out the experience with the apple doughnuts and the apple cider, right?  So…technically, we bought food to bring home, but I still wouldn’t count it as grocery shopping.  I’m still pulling from my stores for dinner.  I’m on the last of my eggs and milk.

I’m calling the week’s experiment a success.

Dinner was simple.  I thawed bratwursts from Triple S and set them to boil.  This time I looked no further than my countertop for inspiration, where a big bowl of sweet potatoes has been staring me in the face for a couple of weeks.  I used my favorite recipe to make sweet potato oven fries, a recipe passed on to me from a neighbor.  I thoroughly cleaned two pounds of the organic jewel sweet potatoes from the Co-op, trimmed the ends and bad spots, and cut them into cottage-fry-sized pieces with the skin still on (I would only do this with organic sweet potatoes, by the way).  I tossed them in a blend of olive oil, equal parts salt and brown sugar, chili powder, cumin, and a pinch of cayenne, and spread them out on two baking sheets to roast at 425 degrees for half an hour, turning them over halfway through.  I stuck the boiled bratwurst in the oven to brown for the last ten minutes.

We didn’t have a green vegetable, but since we had beautiful, fresh apples for dessert, I figured that was OK.  And Friday evenings are like that sometimes; often those dinners are the three of us grabbing and reheating our favorite leftovers from the past week, so actually cooking something was an achievement.

So, now that the Shopping at Home experiment is over, what next?  What have I learned?

1.           My food hoarding is over the top; I could—and I just might—cook for another whole week without shopping.  I won’t be blogging about it daily, but I’ll keep you updated on my progress!

2.          I didn’t even have to be that creative to use up my stores; my son said, “I can’t even tell you’re not shopping.  It’s just the same as when you shop!  Well, except for that fried rice.  That was really good!”

3.          I will need to use more frozen goods in the near future.  I haven’t really made a dent in any of my freezers.  I tend to buy frozen fruits or vegetables, or freeze them myself, then completely forget about them.  Freezer organization is key.  So is weekly meal planning, starting with the ingredients already in my inventory.

Meanwhile, I’m off to the farmer’s market.  

I’m only buying a few things, I promise….