A No-Shop Follow-Up

No Food Shop November is over.  It went so well.  We hardly noticed, frankly--I mean other than I've never had so many invitations to go out for dinner.  I politely declined until December.  I am SO going to eat Thai this month.  Maybe a couple times!  Seriously.  I get asked out to dinner almost never.  I had three requests for a Thai date during November.  What the heck!?  Aside from that though, it was pretty much a normal month.  In the end we did allow ourselves a beer or two when we went downtown for concerts.  If we were purists we would have done without, but....we're not.  We enjoyed the heck out of those local beers, too.  We also bought one bottle of balsamic vinegar for canning purposes, which justified its purchase, I guess, in our minds.  The only thing I missed, food-wise, was nooch, which we ran out of before the middle of the month.  Then my friend, Kris, delivered a little pouch to me one day.  What a nice gift!  My friends are so good to me and supportive of my (sometimes) quirky little endeavors.

So, after a month of not shopping we wrote out the shopping list that had accumulated on the whiteboard.

It read:
tofu
peanut butter
rice wrappers
canola oil
nooch
cornmeal
milk
tortilla chips
toasted sesame oil
ketchup
ginger

Not too shabby, I think.  Also, its obvious to me how much we like Asian flavors.  While peanut butter made the list we do still have almond butter.  Matt just doesn't like it as well.  We also still have one carton of coconut milk, but, in my opinion, part of the beauty of non-dairy milk is how shelf-stable it is.  I like to have a case around and one lonely cartoon is too close to out of milk for my liking.  We still have that 17 pound cabbage in the fridge and plan to turn it--along with the rice wrappers, ginger, and sesame oil--into "egg"rolls to stash in the freezer for a rainy day.

We're going to stock up on these things and then keep the challenge going through December--with a going-out-to-dinner-with-friends-if-they-ask caveat.  Its amazing how much time and money we've saved by not going shopping--which sounds so obvious its dumb, but....there it is.

All photos of Trumpeter Swans--juveniles and adults-- at Yellowstone National Park.  10/3/2015