In my kitchen I had a freezer full of chicken, meat and fish, and in my pantry had a big box of dried milk and instant breakfast, Slimfasts, dried and canned beans of many kinds and ages, canned and frozen vegetables and fruit, cans and half cans of coffee–caff and decaff, ground and whole bean, all kinds of tea, all sorts of couscous, many dribs and drabs of rice (a handful of one kind, a handful of another), kasha, cracked wheat. Jello, cocoa, canned fish (tuna, sardines), olives, tomatoes, sauerkraut, pumpkin–you get the picture. I stuck with my plan and made some very creative and quite good meals. I realized that I had occasionally bought a large piece of meat or chicken that was on sale, for example, and frozen it with the intent of serving it for company. But of course, when that company came I always bought something fresh. So in April I defrosted a couple of chickens, cooked them, cut them up and sometimes refroze part of them for later. Ditto for a large pork roast. The only really bad part was when I ran out of coffee on Saturday, April 24. So I drank tea for a week, just as several billion people on our planet do every day. And didn’t buy any new wine–drank several bottles of not-so-great gifts (actually, some of those found their way down the drain rather than my throat, but that’s okay–why should I be making room for something that isn’t good?).

My freezer, refrigerator and pantry are now clean, I’m very cautious about what I buy now, and my experiment cost me about $40 for the month. I’ve vowed that I’m only going to buy stuff that I actually like to eat, and in small enough quantities that I will be able to finish all of them (e.g., canned and frozen goods) before the expiration date. I don’t want to throw away any more food because it’s out of date, just because it was on sale and it seemed like a safety item. I live in downtown Chicago with several grocery stores within a few minutes’ walk. I’ve realized it’s simply irresponsible to buy as though I had a family of 10 and lived miles from town. But I may slip, and so I might need to do another month (or week) of no purchasing next year. It was a fascinating, useful, cost-saving experiment with lots of possible variations–I strongly recommend it.

Good for you for participating, but honestly, I have no idea how you can manage that with a family of 5!!

Looking forward to hearing all about it in the coming days =)