Eat from the Pantry Update

I'm happy to say that I'm clearing some things out of my freezer thanks to this challenge, but I'm not happy to say I'm going to have to up the budget a bit - there is no way we are going to make it this month on $100. This is due to three things I didn't account for:

1. One of our dogs has been sick for about 6 months. Her blood work finally came back normal last week but she is still having problems maintaining weight. In order to help her, we are to soften her food with whole milk. Between the kids and the dog, we went through 3 gallons of milk last week (and that doesn't count my soy milk). At $3 a gallon, that adds up quickly.

2. Our baby is having problems gaining weight also and we were told at his 6 month appointment to feed him as much as he would eat - starting with a min. of 3 jars of food a day (he was already eating 2 at this point). My goal the entire time with feeding was to grind up what we eat and let him have that for each meal. Think again. He loves baby food but he only loves it from a jar. I did a mix of jar and homemade food with our first but this one will only eat the jar kind. It adds up quickly but I will do anything to help this one maintain his weight.

3. My husband would decide out of the blue on the coldest day of the year that he suddenly needed to go to the store. He came home with about $10 of junk. That isn't a lot but when you are trying to only spend $100 for the month, that is 10% of the budget.

I'm still working on using up what is in our freezer and finding ways to utilize the random items I find in our pantry so the challenge is helpful. It is also helpful in that I still plan on spending less overall this month than normal so that extra can be moved to next month's budget as some of these expenses will not be going away for awhile.

How are all of you doing? Stay tuned this week as I plan to post some of the recipes I've been using with to help me with cleaning out the freezer and pantry.