Eat Down: 18 Days So Far!

This morning I decided to count on the calendar how many days our eat down had been, and I was astonished to count 18 days! It's been a great 18 days. Last night, my husband and I were saying how great of an eat down this has been. We've saved money, and time and we've been eating a lot of seasonal veggies.

Some points that have certainly helped our cause-- our own chicken eggs (we are getting almost 11 eggs per day now), and our garden. Lots of tomatoes have kept me in tomato sandwiches, tomato salads, and some great pasta dishes!

Some updates....we ran out of creamer last week, and I thought that was going to be the end of the eat down. BUT, instead, I tried making my own creamer out of coconut milk. For the record, it wasn't creamy enough for my taste. So when I went to my mom's house, I begged her out of her own creamer. Hahah. So we've been mixing that my homemade coconut creamer and that's been getting us by.

Today we may be hitting critical mass as we are down to two pieces of bread left and plan on hitting the beach tomorrow. I have no clue how we'll make sandwiches without bread! I had looked up some sandwich bread recipes and that looked promising until I tried to locate my bread pans, and couldn't find ANY of them. How does that even happen? Not sure how this will play out.

As for our list of dinners I made: we've improved a little. I made some changes, and I tried to keep up by writing them down and continuing to check them off. I think tonight I'm going to make the fried cod, but without the okra because we ate that two nights ago with venison steaks. OH! And speaking of venison steaks, I threw together a terrific marinade recipe that is so simple:

Mix together in a bowl: 
two tablespoons spicy brown mustard
1 teaspoon mayo
two garlic cloves, minced
two tablespoons brown sugar
two tablespoons olive oil
a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce

Pour the whole thing over your meat until you are ready to grill or fry. You will not be sorry. It's amazing, and we were exclaiming "YUM" the whole time we were eating!

Pickling assorted cherry tomatoes!

It's pretty likely that by tomorrow or Monday, we will be hitting the grocery and the eat down will have officially ended. But what about this list I've been keeping of our meals? Well, I will save it and reference it to make different meals for the next cycle. Then I can look back on it for inspiration in a couple of rotations. It helps me from falling into a rut with our dinners. I'm looking forward to "eating down" again this month, and keeping this going.

I feel that the whole experience has gotten me back to basics, and honestly helped me clear my mind. As a busy mom who works from home and cooks nearly all our meals, I feel that our eat down engaged my husband more with cooking and meal planning. That has been really nice. My hubby and I even pickled some veggies together last week and that lead to us sitting around the kitchen island and just catching up with one another. It's also forced me to get creative in the kitchen like I've done in the past, and that's just been great for my soul (more on this in a future blog post.)

All in all, the great eat down of 2017 has been a tremendous gift. Not obvious, but perfect. What has been an unexpected gift in your life lately?