Frugal Meal #2: Pantry Vegetarian Chili

Tweet

was pretty proud of a couple things from this recipe. I call it "pantry chili", I just went through my pantry and some of my leftover produce that was about to go to waste and threw something together. I am going to try to do this more often! My successes were- I had 2 zucchini which were probably going to rot soon - so I chopped them up and froze them. I have been really trying to be ZERO-WASTE with produce. It's one of the biggest ways people waste food...Overbuying and under-using produce! Here's what I threw together: Vegetable Broth Pinto, Black, and Chili Beans (canned) Diced Tomatoes (canned) Carrots & Celery (leftover from another recipe) Red Pepper & Zucchini (leftover from another recipe/salad meal preps) Minced garlic, cumin, chili pepper, cayenne pepper What I had to buy: Light Sour Cream $2.00 Shredded cheese for topping $2.50 Foccacia Bread from Target $3 Now, technically I bought all the ingredients listed, but I only spent $7.50 all at once on this specific meal.. Instead of going exactly by a recipe, I picked a few items out of my pantry and went with it. Also, I did not go out of my way to buy anything that in the past I probably would have thought I "needed" - such as an onion. (Never made chili without an onion before!) But it was still delicious and probably made at least 10 servings. I will continue to document here and there my frugal meal planning. I am still in the learning process, so if you have any good frugal meal planning tips or tricks, do tell!