It's the first check-in for the 100 Days Challenge. Rather than do weekly check-ins, I'm breaking the challenge into 10 day segments. We're 10% of the way there already.
For those already signed up for the 100 Days, how is your challenge going? Are you meeting your goal of doing whatever you chose every day?
New people can still sign up. You can choose to do a 90 Day Challenge through the end of the year or you can stretch it out to a 100 Day Challenge by going into 2010. How you choose to challenge yourself is up to you. The point is to choose one thing you will do every day. Finish the year out strong!
For an idea of what kind of challenges the current participants chose, you can check the sidebar list under the 100 Days logo. These folks chose a wide range of ways to challenge themselves. Some challenges center around food: spending no money on food, buying no food for home except fruit, eating from what is at home (in the freezer, Mason jars, storage bins, gallon jars, garden), eating sweets only one day per week, or using up all produce & leftovers. Several people chose to make sure they exercise every day. Others set themselves challenges such as bringing home no new plastic, surviving this semester, or unpacking/uncluttering/organizing one area (box, shelf, drawer, etc.) every day.
My challenge is to spend no money on food for myself through the end of the year. My CSA share, paid for through volunteer labor, provides my fresh produce each week. I dug into the freezer this first 10 days for some frozen produce including roasted tomato puree, basil, green peas, and mango chunks. I supplemented with preserved produce from previous CSA shares, such as guero escabeche (pickled hot peppers) and pickled onions. I salvaged some bananas again, keeping a couple of bunches, and then hauling the rest to the local food bank.
Surprisingly, I was able to score a free restaurant meal. A local vegetarian restaurant hosted a "Feed the World" dinner where the buffet meal was free. I enjoyed their tossed salad with dressing, rice and curried vegetables, bread, and halvah. I've planted the seed with my weight-loss group that I'd be willing to barter food I've canned for someone to buy me dinner when they go out weekly. I'm not sure they realized I was serious.
I was also given some food the day after starting the challenge. I'm helping an elderly lady pack up her house for a move and she cleaned out her cupboards. Some of the food wasn't vegan so I passed that along to the food bank when I donated the bananas. Unfortunately, when I was at the food bank, I slipped and bought a can of tomatoes. I wasn't thinking, and I had just used up the last of my frozen tomato puree. This was, however, my only food expenditure for 10 days. $1.25 is remarkably low for the food budget!
How did you do with your challenge? Leave a report in the comments or a link to one on your blog. If you want to join in, just leave a comment here with how you choose to challenge yourself.
12 comments:
I've cleaned up 9 "flat surfaces" and the like in the past 9 days although not one a day and that's with a three day vacation in the middle. So the challenge is working. I stay feel a real mental barrier to doing this everytime I start picking up (I'd rather read/cook/watch a movie, etc.) but then sort of end up on a roll.
Plus it has inspired my partner to assist, mostly while I'm at work so that sometimes involves him doing slightly unproductive things like unpacking the freecycle box but it truly is the thought that counts here). I haven't counted my partner's efforts in my count.
The difference is really noticeable in the living room and the dining room is slowly improving.
A really good challenge, Chile.
I love reading your blog. I'm not participating in the challenge - it does not work for my life right now. However, as my region enters the fall season and the garden / farmers market is slowing down, my goal over the winter is to try more recipes that use pantry staples.
I have a good selection of recipes already, but really need some new ones in my database. Plus I've seen a bunch of neat ones on the Internet, but haven't tried between the summer bounty, harvesting, and my work schedule.
sorry - hit the wrong button and posted before I previewed.
Anyhow the last sentence should have been that with everything else going on, cooking from the pantry has not been a high priority the last few months.
I've been doing my "side-straddle hops" and "push-ups" every day ... so far. I'm not making progress, but I am staying the course. So, I feel good about the challenge.
But I started late, and it's only been a couple of days for me. It's too early to determine if this will be something I can stick with :).
Thanks for the challenge. As SusanB said - it's a good one ;).
Everything is GREAT so far. I have only bought fruit and have relied on other means for the rest of my food...
I'm harvesting sweet potatoes, onions, and green peppers from the garden in large quantities...
I am bartering wheat flour for homemade bread, so I'm well stocked there. I also bartered a loaf of bread for a ton of peppers, zucchini and eggplant last week. It was a ton of food that will spill over into next week.
There was a pot luck dinner at my house last night and many of the leftovers were left for me - chips and two different kinds of dip and tons of fruit. The best part is that the food was all vegan. Yeah!
Everything else has come from my stock in the pantry - brown rice and home-canned items like soup, corn, and pasta sauce.
I did have one large purchase - a large tin of olive oil. But I had ordered it months ago and technically, olives are a fruit so I'm going to let that 1 purchase per year slide on a technicality :)
I did pretty well this week. Chile checked in at my blog and commented herself that I seemed to be doing okay. :)
I used up the last of a package of brown rice, last of a chunk of cheddar cheese, last of some grits, and some leftover veggies in a meat dish. I froze the cheese/grits/egg/green chiles dish since it actually makes quite a lot of servings.
And I did all this in my solar ovens this week, too.
Now my fridge is very empty, and since it's the first of the month it's time to go to one of my two usual stores.
AND Happy News from the Desert!
Our temps are now below 100 degrees, at least for the next 10 days!
On october 1st in the morning in my house it was 70 degrees from the weather alone. Ac didn't run all night and it was very quiet the previous night because my neighbors' ACs weren't runningn either.
It was cool inside! Not just an absence of warmth but actual coolth! :) :) :) :) :) :)
Peace to all,
shamba
Of course as soon I sign up to commit to something everything goes to hell. I had business meetings that included unexpected lunches and I was caught without my container to take home left overs. So I wound up with styrofoam containers. I wonder if I should have just had the food wasted instead of getting the container to go.
Then there was a night out to get ice cream which resulted in plastic spoons.
For a dinner party I felt too lazy to grind up bread so I got a plastic bag of bread crumbs for a dish.
Other than that, I've been mindful. A lot of the plastic that enters our place is second hand (plastic bags seen on the trail or on the road) so I don't count them.
I think this year our greatest challenge will be to get to Christmas without going broke! Neither of us have good jobs at present and so being frugal is a bit extreme round here anyhow. I'm crossing my fingers that the tourists will be more willing to spend this year (though I'm not holding my breath) as I have the shop looking really good.
viv in nz
I retired last week! And got taken to lunch a lot, and had a party with 100 people (which I'd hoped we could skip but it was explained it's for them, not me) so am behind on challenges -- no, wait! it was all free! To me, anyhoo.
This is the easiest time of the year to eat free for 100 days, I think. The shelves are groaning with home canned, winter squash, potatoes, and dried this or that. But Beloved has been the grocery store person for years, and it's been hard to get her meal planning moved over to the garden stuff. Now I'm the meal planner, and I'm putting out what I think are scrumptious dinners -- and we're having a bit of a struggle over them. My palate has been trained, over the last two years, to run this challenge without popping a sweat. Hers hasn't! I might not be a good enough cook to pull this off!
Suggestions?????
SusanB - great! It's also wonderful to hear your partner is pitching in. I seriously thought about adopting your challenge when you selected it because my house really needs it. Maybe next time...
Dogear6 - thanks. Because year-round gardening is possible here, there's never a really good time to rely strictly on the pantry and eat it down. I think that's why I ended up needing to make myself consciously work on it.
I'm having to look into new recipes, too, in order to work with only what I have. And with new things from the garden - like bitter melon!
Wendy - good job! I, on the other hand, have not done my core workout (challenge for my other blog) for 5 days. Kudos to you for sticking with it. You'll see results soon, I'm sure.
Heather - you're making me drool! I love the bartering at the farmers market. The potluck gig sounds like a good deal too.
Shamba - isn't it amazing how many odds and ends build up in the refrigerator and pantry? Always enough for another meal. The cooler temps are wonderful!
Beany - sorry to hear that things got so crazy. Sometimes life does that and you just have to make the best choice you can for that moment. I'm sure it's far better than the past plus you're cleaning up other people's plastic to boot.
Viv - that's a tough challenge for a bunch of people! Good luck with the shop.
Risa - congratulations on your retirement! It sounds like your pantry could indeed support you.
The only suggestion I can offer is to remember that this is your challenge. Your Beloved did not log in here and sign up for it. If she chooses to participate with you and eat what you make, that's wonderful. If not, it really is her choice.
So, if she feels the need to go shopping for herself, let her. Those foods will be off-limits to you. That's how my sweetie and I are handling it. I have spent some money on things for him but do not count it as I don't consume them. I do, however, want to stay happily married. ;-)
>happily married
Yes, please!
I've already flunked the separate-but-equal test: even though I baked some nice spelt/oatmeal/buckwheat loaves, some cinnamon bread came into the house somehow and I jumped at it like there was no tomorrow ... eeek.
OTOH, we're putting down the summer garden (even though there has been no frost) and I've let the poultry in to help me with that. They are finding me lots of potatoes that I've missed -- and EVERYBODY likes new potatoes [grin].
Risa - "jumped on it like there was no tomorrow" - thanks for the laugh. I'd eat those new potatoes!
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