Challenge...(for myself!!!)

As most of you know, we are living in limbo.  We sold our house immediately after returning with our youngest treasure from Taiwan (hence, making the last 6 months almost a complete blur to me!).  We are now crammed living in an "apartment" above my parents 3-car garage.  My parents have a beautiful house, and their garage is no exception!  We do feel very blessed to be able to live here while we wait for Lance's retirement date (April 30th!) from the Air Force.  We thought this would be the best option for all of us since we had just brought Abi home, we wanted my family to be able to spend some time with her.

On to my "challenge"... we are moving across country in about 7 weeks.  Evidently, I have a food hoarding issue!  (Actually, I think I was just born in the wrong time period.  I love the knowledge that I have food stocked up to feed my family no matter what may happen.) I have enough food stored up to probably feed the entire Air Force!  (well... maybe not!)  I have been working at clearing out my freezer(s), but it dawned on me that I have a lot of food that isn't in my freezers! 

Just one of my very full cupboards that I need to empty!

So, my challenge is going to be this:  I am going to try my hardest to NOT buy any food for the next month with the exception of fresh fruits/veggies and milk.  I know I can do this, I am just going to have to be more creative (I haven't been extremely creative the last 6 months or so in the food department!).  One of my favorite things to do is read cookbooks (yep!  You read that right!!).  So I guess it's time to pull out some cookbooks I haven't read for a while and try some new (and old!) recipes! 

No, this is NOT all of my cookbooks!  I have a couple of boxes of cookbooks in storage!

I also love the website allrecipes.com , and recently realized that at the top of the page is a search button.  But the cool thing is, you can search ingredients!  It will give you a list of recipes that include the ingredients you have on-hand!  Pretty neat! 

Do you have any websites that you recommend for using things up?  Please share!  I would love to look them over!

Here's to creative cooking!!