12 Day Challenge: RESULTS

Mmmm Pizza...

Saturday: For breakfast we all had some scrambled eggs and I had some roasted vegetables from Friday. The hangover got the best of us, and we ordered pizza for lunch. I know, pizza is not paleo, but it is delicious :) If you haven't tried Pizza Haus in Illesheim yet, they have a great pizza for a really reasonable price, plus they deliver! Its dangerous. During the day, I shredded up what was left of the whole chicken, and I made a Paleo version of my mom's cold chicken curry salad. My plan was for Cody and I to have this chicken salad for dinner, but Cody said that he wasn't in the mood for chicken salad OR the leftover pizza, so we ended up going out to Majarajas for dinner. I looove me some Indian food, and since I had ruined yet another day of dieting already, I went ahead and enjoyed my naan, palek paneer, rice, and chai tea. I do have a pretty good excuse for why my self-restraint is faltering when it comes to sweet and greasy food, and it has to do with that special time of the month... anyway, I am feeling very lenient about my diet, but I will get it under control in the next couple days, I am sure! Before bed, I went ahead and threw the ingredients for homemade chicken stock into the crock pot, (Overnight Crockpot Chicken Stock) and this morning I was able to put away 8 cups of homemade stock in the freezer :)

Mmmmm.... Palak Paneer.....

Sunday: We went to the grocery after Crossfit, but not for any food that we consumed today. I had a few spoonfuls of chicken salad for breakfast and Cody had an apple. He bought himself a sandwich at the commissary, and I did end up eating a Larbar on the way home to tide me over. I still have a ton of leftover Tuna&Egg Salad left, and I had a huge bowl of it for lunch. For dinner, Cody had a chicken salad sandwich and some leftover pizza, while I had some roasted vegetables and some chicken salad over lettuce. I have some Paleo muffins in the oven for the next few days- these will be my first Paleo "treat," so I'm really curious to see how they turn out! (Apple Cinnamon Paleo Muffin Recipe)

RESULTS: I'm going to be honest, I don't know if this challenge ended in success or failure. We did stay under $100 in groceries, but we ended up spending extra money eating out, and that was not the plan. On the other hand, I believe there was enough food in the house to cover us for the whole time if we would have stayed in... even if there wasn't, I had figured out that I could buy a 1/2 pound of ground beef from Kauflands and make a burger for each of us, and still stay under the $100 limit.

I think the main lesson here is that it is totally possible to save money on our groceries each month--like a lot of money. It just takes some planning ahead and the willingness on both of our parts to eat our leftovers. Now that I know we could eat for almost two weeks on just about $100, it was really aggravating to leave the grocery having spent over $100 on food that will most likely only last us a week.
I did miss entertaining our friends for meals during these past 12 days, and that is the area I will be fine spending extra money on in the future.

The side lesson to this challenge is that it is more than possible to eat Paleo on a limited budget. After leaving the grocery today, I even talked to Cody about how much money we would save if him and I were both eating completely Paleo. To only visit the produce section of the commissary, and the butcher of Kauflands, is a lot cheaper than going up and down all the aisles and buying a bunch of processed food, as well. There are the occasional extra ingredients needed for some Paleo recipes (canned goods, specialty flours, etc.) but all in all, I would be willing to bet that a family eating entirely Paleo would spend less than a family that doesn't. The one consideration is that it does take more planning and more prep-time to eat this way on a budget, and not everybody has that time to spend.

What do you think? 12 Day Challenge: Success or Failure???