Are you ready for another Quarantine Food Storage Challenge update?! Our family is challenging ourselves to stay out of the grocery store for as long as possible, which means we’re eating from our pantry and long-term food storage.
Not only will this keep us and others safe, but it will give us a chance to test our long-term storage and figure out what things we want to add to our food storage inventory.
In this update, I’ll share what we ate this week, including trying something totally new, some things I ordered, and our garden expansion.
As usual, you can either watch the video or keep reading below!
What We Ate
Breakfast:
Oatmeal, cream of wheat, cold cereal, fried eggs, pancakes, scrambled eggs
Lunch:
PBJ/PBH sandwiches, egg salad sandwiches, oranges, apple slices, leftover pizza
Dinner:
Baked Potatoes: We finished off the last of our potatoes. We had them with butter, sour cream, and green beans.
Hawaiian Haystacks: I used some shredded turkey from the freezer to put in the homemade sauce. We had pineapple, peas, raisins, and crunchies (chow mein noodles). It wasn’t the same without cheese and tomatoes, but it was still good. Normally the kids complain a little about brown rice (instead of white rice), but not one of them mentioned it!
Pizza: Everyone loves homemade pizza around here because we each make our own. Our pizzas were very light on cheese since we heavily rationed it a few weeks ago (there’s cheese in the freezer but we’re stretching it). We had pepperoni and pineapple though.
Macaroni and Cheese: Mike made cheese sauce with powdered milk and the cheese powder from our food storage. Our 5-year-old is a big fan. For the rest of us, it’s not our favorite, but it’s palatable.
Taco Soup: With pinto beans cooked in the slow cooker, I added onions and taco seasoning to make a pretty boring taco soup. The highlight was that I got out a bag of tortilla chips to eat with it along with some sour cream.
Split Pea Soup: keep reading below for the details…
Desserts:
I made homemade brownies twice – once with peanut butter frosting and once with chocolate frosting. I have to share the recipe with you soon because they are so good!
We made blueberry frozen yogurt with homemade yogurt and some blueberries from the freezer (like this “recipe” except substituting raspberries for blueberries). We paired it with unfrosted brownies for a family night treat.
Trying New Things: Split Peas
Among the buckets of food storage we have in the garage (shown in this video) there was one with 45 pounds of split peas. I have never cooked with split peas before. Frankly they don’t sound very appetizing to me at all (don’t tell my kids).
We decided to invite Mike’s parents to have dinner with us when they loaned us their garden tiller. They are essentially the only people we have interacted with in the past six weeks (and they’ve been staying home too).
And I made… split pea soup. 
In addition to the split peas from our long-term food storage, I was using dehydrated potatoes and carrots from our food storage. I diced up one of the sausages from the freezer and added it too.
Most people probably wouldn’t make a new food storage meal for company, but my in-laws were gracious guinea pigs.
Mike’s mom is a pro at cooking from her food storage and brought sweet potatoes (from last year’s garden harvest) and cornbread (made from wheat and corn she ground in her wheat grinder).
And the soup was a hit among those who tried it (the younger kids didn’t and I didn’t fight them on it).
Ordering a Few Things
I had to order a few non-food things online from Walmart this week for our family this week. They have free shipping for orders over $35, so I added in some food items that we will likely need in the near future. I keep a mental list of the food things that we will likely need to replenish first, so I compared prices and looked around to see if any of them had reasonable prices that I was willing to pay.
Here’s what I bought:
Salt– We are running dangerously low on salt considering all of the baking we’re doing. In-store a 24 oz container of salt costs about $.50 at any store. I paid $3.50 for a 2-pack. That’s heavily marked up over the in-store price, but it’s just a couple of dollars and it kept me out of the store.
Jam– I’ve told you that we eat a lot of PBJ sandwiches around here and I’m not kidding. I found a decent price on a 2-pack of Welch’s natural jam that would ship.
Peanut Butter– I didn’t get much, just a 3-pack of 16oz jars of honey peanut butter.
Starburst– Our 2-year-old and 5-year-old have trouble staying in their beds at bedtime, but they are sometimes motivated by “earning a Starburst” in the morning if they don’t come out of their rooms after they’re supposed to be in bed.
Adding those things to the non-food items I needed to get brought my total up to $35 for free shipping.
Garden Expansion?
Last week I told you that we were going to try to plant as much as we could using one raised bed that we threw together last year and some space we have in our back patio.
Most of our property is really rocky, but we found a spot that we think will be good for our melons and viney things. We even started planting there.
We are considering using our stimulus check to build the garden that we want. We haven’t wanted to invest the money into terracing a hillside, building raised beds, buying dirt, and setting up irrigation and fencing, since it will take away from our current financial goal of paying off the house.
We haven’t decided for sure, but we’re running the numbers and trying to decide. Right now we’re waiting for a quote on what a bulldozer and operator would cost to do the terracing. If we go ahead with it, I’ll share the details in posts and videos.
Quarantine Food Storage Challenge
Well that’s all I’ve got for this update! For more on our Quarantine Food Storage Challenge, check out these posts:
Challenge INTRO: Find out what food we’re starting with and WHY we’ve decided to take on this challenge
UPDATE 1: Lots of the meals we’ve been eating so far, as well as some of the struggles we’ve had and how we’re facing them
UPDATE 2: How we’re planning our meals, what we’re having for snacks, and a few things we’re doing to ensure that we’ll be able to stretch our food storage challenge even longer
How is quarantine eating going in YOUR family?!
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