The First Challenge of a Brand New Year

Between the opening of The Sealed Pot and the end of the year we managed to neatly round up our savings from £386.96 to £400.  This we have decided will be used for any Challenges that we do during the coming year.

Hopefully this first one will not cost us much money at all as we have decided to ...

 'Eat the Stores'

To use up as much of the food that we already have in store as we can before we go shopping for any more.

As you can see from all these photos, we have a lot in store after the Christmas celebrations.  

I shopped more than I normally would have done, as we had a family day planned with both my sons coming round.  One with his girlfriend and the other for an overnight stay.  Now usually they would have eaten me out of house and home, but one is in love and the other is nursing a broken heart so I think appetites were affected and neither ate anywhere near as much as they normally would have.

We therefore have lots of food to get through!!

Jars of nuts, seeds etc

Baking supplies, crackers, lots of tea and coffee.

Lots of uneaten Christmas goodies, as well as oils and vinegars.

Out on the worktop I have rice waiting to go into my just washed large storage jar and some more nuts.  And there are eggs, we always have enough eggs to keep us happy.

On the shelves there are the jars of dried foods ... it's the rice jar that's missing from the top shelf at the moment.

The spice cupboard ... along with a multipack of my little dunking biscuits.  I doubt this cupboard will get any clearer as I use a lot of spices, but I do have a few new packets waiting to be decanted. 

Lastly there are the seasonings for cooking on the other shelf by the Aga ... another area that will most likely stay the same.

So we have lots in store.

 The first foods we are working our way through are those in the fridge as obviously these have the shortest lifespan.  Some are being eaten and some are being prepped to go into the freezer ... which as you can see above is already full.  Thank goodness for the large chest freezer in the workshop, which although pretty full already does still have some room for more things to be added.  I will get a photo of this when I can get in there ... it's a bit inaccessible at the moment.

My first job this week is to go through the cupboards one by one, emptying them, cleaning them out and then as I put things back checking exactly what we have.  Making things more logical by putting like with like and weeding out anything we will never eat.  For instance gifted Christmas puddings went to the local Foodbank before Christmas,  anything else that we wouldn't eat will go there once sorted.


🥘