I survived the eat from the pantry challenge

Making a meal from your reserves. It's not as difficult as you'd think.

Despite snowstorms, work, fussy children and going on two weeks of being sick, our family lived through our eating from the pantry (and freezer) challenge and lived to tell about it.

Even better, we added a few dishes to our repertoire.

We cracked open a breadmaking book, borrowed a month ago from a friend, and let the aroma of freshly baked bread fill our home. Our kids asked for it to snack on at breakfast, between meals, even after dinner.

We cleaned out the random items in our freezer, those half-used bags of beans, the boneless chicken breasts overzealously bought on sale.

I dusted off old cookbooks and cooking magazines, bookmarking ideas for winter soups and fruity desserts. We're even having corn on the cob this week, harvested at the peak of Indiana summers.

Too many winters have been spent saving the previous summer's harvest for a special dish, only to hurridly clean out frozen, frost-covered produce the following June. So this was a nice reprise.

And the fact we hardly touched a grocery store for a month didn't hurt either.

How did you do? Did you finish your month's pantry challenge? Did you find new dishes to enjoy? Have a cooking disaster to share? Would you do it again?