So I heard a great idea from my sister Carrie about doing an experiment and living impromptu on your food storage for 6 weeks. No last minute stops at the grocery, just START. So I offered the challenge at the Bare Necessities of Motherhood site. Well, despite the lack of enthusiasm, I decided to try the six week challenge for myself. I am currently on week four of the official challenge, though really, I hadn’t been to the store for a week or two before that.

I just thought I’d share what I’ve learned so far:

You can make cake, cookies, brownies, pancakes, breakfast cake, and scones without eggs.

Snack foods are important.

Cleaning supplies are also important.

You can never store too many spices.

I love my deep freezer– it is like an endless resource of "fresh" vegetables.

Potatoes are my friend, and carrots, too.

I am grateful for Macaroni & Cheese and Ramen Noodles.

I really like baking bread. Just not every day.

Canned tomatoes make all kinds of things possible.

We eat a lot of sugar and refined flour in this country.

Soy milk from scratch rocks.

To elaborate: We don’t eat cold cereal, so I’m pretty used to having something else for breakfasts anyway, so at least that was not an adjustment I had to make. Some things we’ve eaten over the past 4 weeks: Spaghetti and Meatballs with homemade sauce, scones, burritos with homemade flour tortillas, curry and rice (varying types), fried potatoes, Indian Fry Bread, garbanzo picadillo and homemade masa tortillas, soup and crusty homemade bread, "Snobby Joes" (sloppy joes made out of lentils), french fries, stir fry (varying types), some fancy cornmeal-coated tofu thing, and various boxed meals for lunches. I can’t say how that church dehydrated soup tastes because we’re not that desperate yet. Though, I have realized I don’t even like the fancy Bear Creek Soups, so I’m not optimistic about that. I’d rather just take several different kinds of canned veggies, some dry cooked beans, and make my own soup. Conan says we should do this more often! We’ll see what he’s saying in two more weeks… we’ve run out of pretty much all fresh produce except carrots, beets, and potatoes (thank goodness for long keepers!) and we’re totally out of snack foods except popcorn. I guess crackers will have to be next on my list of things to learn how to make!