The Great Pantry Cleanup

I had a strange dream a few nights ago. K and I were getting married and among the guests was the Donald Trump and his comb-over. We were in a swanky wedding venue, totally out of our league and budget. I kept telling K: “Don’t worry. This is a once in a lifetime thing, so it’s OK for us to spend this much money.” And as soon as I uttered those words, Donald Trump peered over at us from the other side of the room with a very disapproving look. Then I woke up. Now what could this dream about? I think it's a mash-up of my weekly immersion in The Celebrity Apprentice with anxiety from my annual Twirley family budget review.

This past weekend as I was going through our budget, I realized that our supermarket expenses are higher than they should be. This prompted me to go straight to our pantry and inventory what we have. Crap--what a hot mess it was--boxes, cans and bags spewed everywhere.  I love to cook and try out different recipes - it's a lot of fun for me. Unfortunately, this also means I often have stuff left over from long-forgotten kitchen experiments and multiple versions of the same thing. So, I decided to put the following three-step action plan into, uh, action:

1. Throw out anything that’s older than EB, moldy or moving;
2. Try to use up what we already have so that we can cut back on grocery bill; 
3. Bulk up on any missing staples so that we can whip up a meal in a flash.

I painstakingly took out all of the food in our pantry, and here’s an abridged version of what I found.

• Four boxes of stale, expired cereal (including EB's former fav to masticate and K's fav to look at, "Kroger Alien Cereal") and 3 boxes of funky crackers. All went into the trash - see Exhibit A below.

Exhibit A

• Three unopened bags of marshmallows: big marshmallows, little marshmallows, pink marshmallows and white marshmallows. I put them all in a container that’s clearly marked “Marshmallows.”
• 14 boxes of Jello/instant pudding mix
• One package of spicy udon that I got when I lived in NYC in 2001. It has followed us for ten years now, through our moves from NYC to Atlanta, back to NYC, to Little Rock, to Raleigh, and then, finally, back to Little Rock. I didn’t have the heart to throw this one out -- it’s practically part of the family. And anyway, since it’s in the Ramen noodle family, this stuff will probably survive another few decades. And should I ever survive the apocalypse, I can use this as emergency food. See Exhibit B.

Exhibit B - Our family friend

And to minimize the chances of things just getting thrown haphazardly in the pantry, we’ve started the labeling system where each slot in the pantry is clearly labeled.

I’m happy to report that this process has already begun to pay off. I found a can of chickpeas as I was cleaning out the pantry and proceeded on making a delicious chickpea salad as a part of our dinner. Here’s hoping for a pared down grocery bill in the rest of 2011. In the meantime, if anyone needs marshmallows, Jello or pudding mix, drop me a line.