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No filet mignon for this celebration dinner.
To mark the end of a tough challenge, Jennifer and Eric Peters of Bellevue had a boxed meal with a can of tuna fish.
And it couldn't have been more appropriate.
The couple recently made a pact to eat only what they had in their kitchen cabinets, freezer and refrigerator.
They established rules: No trips to the grocery store except for perishables and items to fill out recipes. To pay for those trips, they had to sell unused household goods. Each had to approve sales and purchases. No more first-run movies. Virtually no restaurant meals.
They chipped away at their food supply for four months. Finally, they were down to this: Tuna Helper.
As they sat down to that meal near the end of the challenge, neither was enthusiastic about the menu. But they were thrilled about the results of the project — and the days to come.
They reduced expenses by about $600 a month, eliminated about half of their credit card debt, ate more healthful meals and lost weight.
They essentially changed their lifestyle forever, said Jennifer, 28, a marketing specialist. “We don't feel like we've missed anything,” she said. “We've grown accustomed to eating vegetables and lighter meals. We're planning to take what we've learned and keep it part of our lives.”
It began in early May when Eric, 31, a physician specializing in internal medicine, got hot about the interest rates on their credit cards.
The Peterses had charged bamboo flooring for their living room and a visit to see Jennifer's sister in Hawaii. They were making significant payments, but the credit card company notified them that their interest rate was going from 11 percent to 13 percent.
Forget that! Eric wanted to pay off the debt. As he ruminated about a remedy, he noticed the full kitchen cabinets.
“Why do we have all this food? We never eat it,” Jennifer recalled him saying.
He was right, she said. They dined out two to three times a week and relied on processed food at home. If one of them worked late or if the meat she planned to serve was still frozen or if she was just too tired to cook, they called for pizza or went to a restaurant.
Because they ate out frequently but still bought plenty of groceries — including some items in bulk to economize — they had amassed an impressive pantry: several boxes of lasagne noodles, creamed soups, canned ravioli, a box with 30 or more packets of microwave popcorn, a two-pound bag of frozen mixed vegetables, four or five one-pound packages of frozen ground beef, 18 frozen filets of tilapia, a two-pound bag of meatballs, a box of Velveeta, several packages of dried onion soup mix and a family-size bottle of lemon juice.
Then there were the items Jennifer's sister dropped off before she moved: Hamburger Helper Stroganoff; Tuna Helper; cans of chicken broth, beef broth, cream of potato soup, cream of celery soup.
If they ate up all that excess, Eric reasoned, they'd have more money to pay off their debt.
It might not be easy, though. In four years of marriage, they had never had a food budget and, they conceded, weren't experts at saving money. Neither was a particularly inspired cook.
“I was skeptical at first,” Jennifer said. “I didn't think it would last too long.”
To start, she took a food inventory, grouping items for familiar meals and writing down missing ingredients, such as mozzarella for lasagna. Then she made a list of items that didn't translate into meals she knew how to cook.
She asked co-workers for recipes and tips, and paid more attention to packaging.
They had triumphs, such as the day Jennifer figured out what to do with cream of potato soup and a can of chicken. It was right there on the soup label: a recipe for chicken pot pie calling for canned chicken and the mixed veggies she had in her freezer. Eric approved the purchase of biscuit mix for the crust.
“We had a meal I didn't even realize I had,” she said. “Because I was forced to eat it, I had to find a way to make it work. It was one of those picture-perfect moments. I e-mailed all my friends: ‘You'll never believe I was able to make the cream of potato soup work.'”
They had trials. One week — it seemed longer — they thawed a family-size package of tilapia and had fish tacos, fish on rice and fish on bread.
They had a really bad meal: the Stroganoff.
Early on, Jennifer missed chocolate, ice cream and 100-calorie packs of cookies. Eric would stop at the kitchen cabinets out of habit for chips and pretzels that weren't there. But that happened less often as time passed and they lost weight: 15 pounds for Jennifer and seven for Eric.
Until the experiment, they had entertained a few times a month, and they missed that, too. But they didn't feel it was fair to foist the challenge on guests.
Selling things, on the other hand, was a little easier. They had a garage sale to hawk their knickknacks and old furniture. Eric sold two old guitars. It was hard, he said, but he couldn't justify keeping them. Jennifer parted with a bike. They jointly sold a video camera.
“Once we sold one thing, I would go searching for another thing to sell — and get approval,” Eric said.
The couple extended that spirit of cooperation to the kitchen.
Before, Jennifer said, she got annoyed when Eric would ask her what was for dinner.
“Now this was our little project. We could decide together what we would eat,” she said. “He took part in the cooking. We tried to make it fun, like a puzzle, a game or a challenge. We never planned meals before. Keeping track was a big behavior change on my part. I really had to stay on top of it.”
One of Eric's roles was enforcer.
“There were times when I wanted to give up,” Jennifer said. “I wanted to get something fun: ice cream or Oreos. No way would Eric approve Oreos. Anything we wanted to purchase, we had to vote on it. He was the drill sergeant.”
As Labor Day weekend approached, the Peterses had used all their sugar, ketchup, pasta, rice and almost any pantry staple you can think of. Cupboards were bare, save for four cans of broth, a can of evaporated milk, a tin of tomato paste and a few packets of dry onion soup mix and 98 percent fat-free microwave popcorn.
They'd done it. Friends and relatives had given them home-grown produce, and they redeemed a birthday gift card for groceries, but they hadn't spent any regular income on food for four months.
Jennifer's mother, Teresa Goedeken of Bellevue, was impressed.
“I thought it was amazing what they saved,” she said. “I think they had fun doing it, to see if they could do it. I'm really proud of them.”
They made their first major grocery run since early May on the Saturday before Labor Day. They spent about $50 on the bare necessities to stretch the remaining biscuit mix for another chicken pot pie; lunchmeat and cheese; bread for sandwiches, French toast and bread pudding; and potatoes and sausages for a skillet dinner seasoned with one of their packets of onion soup. They skipped the ketchup on their shopping list because it wasn't necessary for the week's menus.
They didn't go crazy buying the junk food they had learned they could live without. They won't return to their old ways, they say.
In fact, Jennifer said, they have inspired friends and co-workers to clean out cabinets, sell excess items and stick to budgets.
“It ended up being fun — it really did,” she said. “It really didn't come from any big innovation. But before, we didn't think about it. We didn't have a budget. By putting a few strategies in place, we saved a ton of money.”
Contact the writer:
444-1052, jane.palmer@owh.com
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