The Great Clean Out the Fridge Challenge (or, How I Saved Money on My Summer Vacation)

I love going out to eat. I love finding extravagant recipes and running out to the store to buy the ingredients when I have plenty of things lurking in the depths of my freezer waiting for the day when someone finally decides to cook them (I'm looking at you, giant turkey.) I love that I am completely broke and absolutely cannot afford to do either of those things for a while, because above all, I love a good challenge, especially when it comes to food.

The idea is simple: Make all meals for AT LEAST two weeks using only the ingredients that I already have on hand. No grocery shopping, no randomly picking up snacks at the store, no eating out... NO SPENDING MONEY ON FOOD. Out of milk? Rough. Out of chicken? Tough. Out of produce? Look in the garden.

No, I am not going on one last huge grocery spending spree to stock my kitchen. In fact, we haven't had one of those in this house in quite a while... which, combined with sheer lack of motivation, has lead to an abundance of eating out, picking up quick to prepare things, and impulse buying.

This is not going to be weeks of eating tomato sauce out of a can with a spoon. This is about creativity, utilizing what I have on hand in interesting ways... Though I'm not going to completely write off the occasional eating food out the can thing quite yet, we all have our moments of weakness and laziness.


Rules/Exceptions

1) No buying food. Simple.
2) Items donated by friends and family are fair game. It's the time of year when a lot of people in my family have an abundance of produce that they are itching to give away, and who am I, in my financial state, to turn them down?
3) Weekends don't count. Sorry, but I don't generally spend weekends at my house.

What do you get out of this? Maybe you'll get to watch me eat ramen and naked pasta for a few weeks, or maybe you'll get some ideas on what to do with that odd can of beans in the back of the cupboard or that corned beef at the bottom of your freezer. If I were you, I'd stay glued to my screen to find out what happens.