So, we’re about to move across the country again. In fact, our stuff has already been loaded up in a box and is being prepared to ship across the country to our new location. Obviously when you are moving vast distances, you want to eat most of your food before your moving date. I hate waste, and I have no interest in throwing away all our food. I would hate to waste both the money and the food.

This is the 4th time my wife and I have done this and it’s getting easier each time. We know when we have to stop buying regular amounts of groceries, which is roughly 4-6 weeks from moving day. From then on, we eat regularly until we run out of certain items and evaluate whether or not we need to purchase more. Usually the answer is no, with the exception of things like milk or fresh produce. When we are within 2 weeks of moving, we typically don’t buy anything at all unless we are desperate.

For instance, this time we knew it would be impossible to get through our final couple weeks with the amount of fruit we had left, so I made a quick trip to Costco for a couple bags of frozen fruit, and a bag of spinach so we could have some salad with our meals, since our vegetables were almost about to run out, and sometimes I ended up just having a bunch of frozen mango to keep me going.

Meals sometimes end up being rather random, and sometimes, as in the case of last year, we somehow ended up with a massive bag of frozen peas that we kept eating every single day until they were gone. Doesn’t matter what meal we ate, we had to have peas. Peas for one, peas for all. I feel like we could have served peas to the entire neighbourhood. We thought we would never see the end of the peas, and each time since then, we have carefully evaluated what we have left. Trust me, nobody wants a repeat of the pea incident!

As you can tell by the main photo, on one day, a particularly heavy packing day, we ate very light all day, and Andrea went out for one last dinner with friends from school and left me to find my own dinner. I decided to make a trip to an incredible local frozen yogurt shop for dinner, and damn was it delicious. I love knowing that I can easily treat myself to special meals like this once in awhile and still maintain a healthy overall diet and weight loss. Side note: it becomes so much easier to maintain a calorie budget for things like this when you don’t really have any food in the house at all!

I also strongly recommend having a collection of granola bars in the house when packing, as they really come in handy as the rest of the food whittles down. Having a bag of baby carrots or something similar works wonders as well, as they are something that lasts a long time and are quite filling as a snack.

One of my final breakfasts was this very attractive oatmeal in a measuring cup with a picnic spoon because the bowls and dishes had already been packed.

Some of our meals this week have been quite creative, but I really enjoy the challenge of coming up with good meals with limited supplies. I find that I am getting quite good at it with all these moves as well!

The meals I have been logging in my app this week have definitely been very strange and random, but somehow I’m surviving!

The one thing I recommend that I am sure you can guess by all this, is to meal plan. I love doing it in general, but it becomes absolutely critical when you are about to move. Make sure you know what you have, and plan to use it up perfectly. Whether it’s long or short, nobody has any interest in carrying a dozen boxes of food!