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I like to think I’ve got a cast-iron stomach and I’m not one to waste food, especially food I’ve paid good money for. In these tough economic times, one is compelled to not let anything go to waste, therefore Kim O’Donnel’s Eating Down the Fridge Challenge seemed like it would be a breeze.

To recap, the challenge, which ran last week on Kim’s A Mighty Apetite, was “[a] week-long kitchen challenge of abstaining from food shopping, and using up what’s in the fridge, freezer and kitchen cabinets.” Okay, I can do that, or rather I already adhere to this practice on some level. Leftovers are taken to work for lunch and I make a concerted effort to use what’s in the fridge and buy only what I need. Being a smidge cavalier with food safety, I’ve even been known to scrape mold from cheese, much to the disgust of my partner.

“You can’t eat that, it’s gone bad!” she scolded.

“Cheese is already bad! It’s spoiled milk!”

But I digress.

On the first day of the challenge, I took stock of my fridge, making note of its contents from slow-to-perish foods like cabbage and potatoes to items with sell-by dates such as heavy cream, as well as fresh herbs and vegetables for cooking. I seemed well-stocked enough between dried penne pasta in the pantry and meats in the freezer. And that night I pan-fried flour-coated chicken breasts and served them with sautéed shredded red cabbage and mashed potatoes made with some leftover cream.

However as the week went on, it wasn’t my ability to eat down the fridge that was being challenged, but rather my shopping habits as an urban resident. Living in a large city without a car, you learn to make frequent trips to grocery stores, which ensures that food doesn’t have as much of a chance to go bad. Even though I had full intention of playing by the rules, I quickly discovered that I had a regrettable inability to do so. I walked to the store to pick up tortillas one night and then another I found myself making an emergency Brussels sprout purchase.

Although I bent the rules, my heart was still in trying to reduce waste and I realized I was already doing so by keeping a well stocked fridge of foods that keep long, saving my shopping for strategic purchases that I could pick up on the way home from work and ensuring resourcefulness in uncertain economic times.