The All You Grocery Challenge has officially ended! The last two days of meals weren’t very noteworthy, because Jai and I both came down with colds, so we didn’t eat a lot because of that; getting sick really kills my appetite. I bought two boxes of crackers on Friday night – crackers are my go-to food when I’m sick – so we pretty much just ate those and leftovers from that big batch of chicken casserole that I made.
Unfortunately, I messed up the chicken soup that I was trying to make, so I ended up having to toss it!

The two boxes of crackers that I bought cost $3.98, which brings my final total for Week 4 to $21.63. Our allotment for the Grocery Challenge was $25 per person per week, a total of $50 maximum for our two-person household.

Week 3 total: $23.00
Week 2 total: $48.34
Week 1 total: $39.20

Grand total spent on food during the 4-week grocery challenge: $132.17. In addition to feeding both of us, we had guests over for meals several times during the challenge.

Here’s our menu for Day 25 of the All You Grocery Challenge:

For breakfast, we toasted the leftover Blueberry muffins from Day 24. For lunch, I took the remaining cooked chicken in the fridge and whipped up a casserole, served with homemade bread and iced tea:

We had company, so this served 3 with generous leftovers. I actually made 3 casseroles, because I had so many ingredients! The casserole consisted of two boxes of cooked spaghetti, chopped chicken from about 3 and half breasts, a little flaxseed, and seasonings. I scooped it into casserole dishes, topped with shredded cheese, and prepared two cups of Shirley J Universal Sauce, which I poured on top. I added a little more seasoning, and baked at 350 degrees until it looked ready.

Since we had so much casserole, we ended up eating it again for dinner. I know that’s redundant, but we didn’t mind. I was too tired at the end of the day to care!

I put one casserole dish inside a ziploc bag and froze it – I can’t find a definitive answer on how well cooked spaghetti in a creamy sauce freezes, so this will be my experiment so that I can find out. Should be interesting!! The remaining casserole and a half went into the fridge for future meals this week.

When I was cutting the meat off the chicken breasts, I saved the bones, skins, and other little leftover pieces, and put them back in the stockpot to make soup. I added cold water, leftover celery and carrot sticks from Tuesday’s lunch, seasonings, and let it simmer all day. I took it off the heat before I went to bed, and put it back on the stove this morning to simmer again. My plan is to strain out the bones and serve it as a nice chicken soup for dinner – I’ll keep you posted on how it turns out!

We’re in the last stretch of the All You Grocery Challenge – here’s our menu for Monday & Tuesday:

Day 23:

We had company at lunchtime, so I set out a sandwich station of homemade bread, deli ham, shredded cheese, lettuce, salad, juice and shortbread cookies.

We had one steak left over, so I chopped it up for dinner and made steak quesadillas flavored with chipotle seasoning salt and leftover taco sauce packets from Taco Bell! We also had a little bit of potato salad left, so we had that as well as some green salad for the side dish.

Day 24:

I made blueberry muffins for breakfast, using this recipe.

We had company, so for lunch I set out another sandwich station of homemade bread, deli ham, lettuce, shredded cheese, deviled eggs, veggies with Blue Cheese dressing for dip, iced tea, shortbread cookies & muffins.

For dinner, I chopped up some of the clearance chicken that I had bought & boiled the night before and made chicken enchiladas. Last year, I won a package of Shirley J Universal Sauce from Desperately Seeking Deals, and the recipe that I used was adapted from the recipe leaflet that came with the sauce. I took three tortillas and filled them with the cooked, chopped chicken, a little cheese, more sauce packets from Taco Bell, and Chipotle seasoning salt, wrapped them up, and placed them in a pan. I prepared 1 cup of the Shirley J sauce, covered the tortillas with it, and topped with a bit of cheese and more taco sauce. I was concerned that the recipe wouldn’t have enough cheese – the recipe called for 4 cups, and I had maybe 1 cup of cheese left at the most. However, the sauce was so creamy that it made up for it – Jai actually thought that I must have put a lot of different cheeses in it. The enchiladas were very nice!

And by the way, in case you’re wondering why I have so many Taco Bell sauce packets: No, I do not raid all of their condiments! It’s just that we’ve paid a few visits through Taco Bell’s drive-thru in recent history (ahem) when our schedules were nutty, and every time they would stuff our bags with about 20 packets of sauce. So, I saved the leftover packets and put them in a ziploc bag in the fridge. Waste not, want not!