Challenge Complete!!!!

We completed the challenge with success and ease which we did not expect.

The challenge ended two days ago, and we realized, nothing has changed.

Sure, I bought a 2 dollar hunk of delicious cheese which I had been craving and our room mate cooked us cinnimon rolls to celebrate, but other than that, our diet has not and will not likely change too much.

In fact, considering how much money we saved not buying any food or drink for 30 days, we want to stick with a frugal budget whilst allowing for some flexibility - spices, olive oil, the occasional milk, etc.  So, we are going to make a 5 dollar weekly food budget, and continue dumpstering with equal vigor.

Lessons learned?

• We need to invest in a dyhyrator to make the most of the occasional fruit bounty.
• Jam making is awesome, and I have eaten more, and probably healthier jam than ever before in my life (possibly summed)
• Dumpstering sparks creativity - I have eaten some things I would never have eaten had I not found it in the dumpster 
• For example my new love of dates.  It takes a dumpster to start liking dates, I am telling you.
• I made mashed potatoes and gravy for the first time in years (ever?)
• So many different pasta sauces.
• Vegetable pie with potato crust.
• There is so much food, and each haul can provide so much, we did not go as much as we expected to - we went probably 2-3 times a week on average.  And we still have a boatload of noodles, canned food, jam, frozen bread, etc. to last us a while anyway.

We did not update nearly as much as we thought we could, accept our appologies.

We like to go to bed early, and unfortunately you have to dumpster late, this meant a lot of dumpstering followed immediately by sleep.

Not to mention, the hauls started looking comperably massive, yet similiar.

Highlights:

Also, if you wait for it. It will come.  I craved coffee for the first weeks, then we found it.  Same with tea, then we found it in complete excess. Over 15 boxes of Good Earth tea. Which we had to de-bag because something clearly spilled on the boxes, but the inside was still perfect....

We hosted couchsurfers that made us food using our dumpster pantry.  This is what they came up with. It is a vegetable pie with carrots, potatoes, onions, topped with crackers, and using a potato/oatmeal pie crust.

Pretty awesome.

The challenge was an amazing success. We will now move over to a 5 dollar weekly food budget, and possibly keep posting if there is anything too spectacular not to.