Grocery Game: Shop Your Pantry

At Cheap and Cheerful, the goal is to spend $100 a week or less on groceries. One easy exercise to increase your grocery savings is to create an entire week's menu based on what you already have in your pantry. As you shop your pantry, your grocery bill goes down as you put to use items you've still got at home from others weeks when you still spent $100 or less at the store. This week, I cut $48 off my usual weekly total. Here's what I already had on hand:

unopened ball of mozzarella cheese

cans of tomato sauce and tomato paste

garlic and other spices

fresh basil and tomatoes from the garden

flour, salt, and yeast

frozen grean beans

refried beans

linguine

frozen chicken breasts

BBQ sauce

turkey sausages

hot dog buns

So, I purchased pepperoni, tortillas, cheddar cheese, corn-on-the-cob, apples, bananas, and watermelon. We'll have the following dinners this week: homemade pizzas with various toppings, linguine with pesto and grape tomatoes, grilled sausages, and burritos. We've got some frozen veggies in the freezer to use up and we will also have fruit with our meals. I even stocked up on ziploc bags, Cascade, and got a cake mix and icing for a little celebration on Friday. And I spent only $52 dollars this week at the store! Cha-ching!

Cheap and Cheerful wants to know: Tell us about some meals that you have created as you shopped your pantry!