Here’s our menu for Day 3 of the All You Grocery Challenge:

Breakfast: Raisin bran with flaxseed sprinkled on top:

Lunch: I scooped the leftover egg salad from Monday onto red leaf lettuce, and topped it with a little more flaxseed for a nice salad served with orange slices. (I was reviewing the flaxseed for Contest Corner!)

Dinner: I marinated 8 steaks that I bought earlier that day, using the ample supply of Weber grill mix in my stockpile, and made mashed potatoes to go with it – I chose to leave the skins on the potatoes, because the skins are nutritious and peeling the potatoes is also the most time consuming part of making homemade mash.

Jai wasn’t home when dinner was ready – our schedules always vary! – but I put aside a big steak and mashed potatoes that he ate when got home. We also had vanilla pudding for dessert.
I cooked way more steaks than we needed for this meal, because I wanted to freeze a few for dinners later on, as well as have leftovers for lunch today:

Yesterday was day 2 of the All You Grocery challenge – so here’s our Monday menu:

Breakfast: Raisin bran from the pantry

Lunch: We had egg salad wraps, which I made with 8 hardboiled eggs, relish, mustard, seasonings, and three tablespoons of whole golden flaxseed, spooned onto tortillas. The flaxseed is a product sample that I received for review on Contest Corner – I’m also giving some away if you want to head over and enter!

Also, I rediscovered a forgotten pudding stash! I have a cupboard high above the sink that I don’t look in often, and I totally forgot that I had all these boxes of pudding and jello in there. How I could forget about chocolate pudding, I’m not sure, but I made up for lost time by mixing some up after dinner!

You may recall that I participated in the All You Grocery Challenge around this time last year. Well, it’s back for 2010, and I am participating once again! So what is this challenge all about? It’s a contest sponsored by All You magazine, challenging entrants to spend no more than $25 per person per week on groceries for a four-week period – click here for more details. Last year, I documented what we ate during each day of the challenge – sort of like a daily Coupon Funded Menu Corner! – and I intend to do the same this time.

So let’s start off by having a quick look through what’s in my pantry. I’ve been making a concentrated effort to use up what I have and clear out the pantry before my stockpile staples go bad, so I spent most of last month eating from the stockpile and emptying the cupboards. I hope to spend some of my grocery challenge budget fleshing out my stockpile with some good deals again!

I also have my budding little container garden, which I hope will be able to contribute to some of our meals!

The challenge began yesterday, so here is Sunday’s menu:

Breakfast: I didn’t eat breakfast because I was catching up on some much-needed sleep!
Lunch: Since I woke up late, I wanted something quick and easy – so we had a simple lunch of pasta with butter and garlic salt.

Dinner:

I used the last of my .99 cent chicken thighs for dinner. I prepared the chicken by drizzling it in olive oil and wine, and then added a stock cube dissolved in 2 cups of water. I chopped two potatoes and added them along with the last of my free organic celery and carrots, then seasoned the dish with chopped garlic, Spike all-purpose seasoning, and garlic salt (yes, I love garlic!). I had one ear of corn left, so I chopped it in half and added it to the pan as well, then covered the pan with foil and slow cooked it for about two hours, until the chicken was tender and falling off the bone.

Are any of you participating in the challenge? I’d love to hear all about it!