The Pantry Project

Spurred by budgetary considerations and the fact that we have a bulging pantry and freezer that seem to have been spontaneously reproducing over the last 3 years or so, we've embarked on a family project.

The goal is to eat out of our pantry and freezer for at least two months without purchasing anything other than the most necessary perishables (milk, eggs, etc.). We have allowed ourselves to replace absolute basics like salt and baking powder--under the strict condition that we have truly used it up and there is nothing we can substitute.

Our pantry is filled with all kinds of ordinary to exotic foods--mostly purchased by me in a moment of boredom, vulnerability, or forgetfulness. "It was on sale . . . it looked like a fun thing to try . . . I forgot we already had some and that my family doesn't like that item anyway."

Here on one shelf are the four different kinds of powered onion soup that I bought "on sale", thinking it would be useful in making soups and sauces. I'd never used powdered soup mix before in anything. I had nothing specific in mind to use it for, and we quickly discovered that it was something we neither liked nor had a use for.

Right next to that are all the cans of soup and dried soup mixes which are supposed to be a backup if I forget or run out of time to fix something more interesting for dinner. It would be a great plan if I actually thought to look in the pantry when panicking about dinner, rather than pulling some heat-and-eat item out of the freezer. It would be even better if anyone in the family besides me liked soup.

My DH and kids do, however, like ramen-style noodles--so we have several family-sized boxes of ramen and those noodle-in-a-cup meals. Only I don't feed them to my family because they're not much more than preservatives and empty carbohydrates packed into a container with more salt than I eat in a week.

To the left of the soup shelf are the cans of specialty vegetables and fruits like cherries, plums and other "pie-making" fruit we would enjoy eating but have never used because they were "for a special occasion" or for baking a pie. It's been at least 5 years since I've baked a pie, but I always think I'll get around to it soon.

Just above that are about 20 bottles of barbecue sauce and other sauces purchased by DH because they were on sale. DH likes sauces. Recently when we went to a tourist town for the weekend, we went to a store that had all kinds of unique jams, jellies and sauces. We decided to buy two of them as "souvenirs" and we each picked out one. I picked gooseberry jam because I haven't seen a gooseberry since I was a child, you can't buy it at any of our local stores, and it reminded me of the song "Gooseberry Goose." DH picked a jar of tartar sauce, because he likes tartar sauce. I must admit it was good tartar sauce as tartar sauce goes. But I couldn't figure out why he would choose that instead of something more interesting like quince jelly or apricot-jalapeno chutney--you know, something WinCo doesn't carry at a quarter of the price.

Over on the other side of the pantry, a whole shelf is filled with grains and legumes--lentils, split peas, and every kind of bean (kidney to navy to garbanzo) right next to bags filled with every imaginable kind of whole-grain flour. I bought the flour when we got a bread machine as a wedding gift, I think. The problem is that you actually have to plan ahead 3 hours or so to have a hot loaf of bread ready for a given meal, and it really only tastes good for a day or so after you bake it. Planning more than 5 minutes ahead is a skill I'm still attempting to master. I actually do use several kinds of the whole-grain flour in other baking, but I keep replacing the whole wheat, spelt and barley flour while the rye, buckwheat and rice flour goes unused. The legumes I can't really explain, other than that I grew up eating (and enjoying) things like lentil & brown rice casserole and split pea soup. I enjoy all kinds of legumes in various soups and other dishes. My own family chokes them down at best. But they're cheap and "healthy," so I always have a pantry full of them.

Then, of course, I have the three large bags of poppy-seeds--each purchased because I have great memories of my grandma's Moravian poppyseed cookies (even though I haven't a clue what those cookies are called or where to get the recipe). I kept forgetting I already had poppyseeds in the pantry. I've tried making poppyseed muffins and pancakes, but my two preschoolers detest ANYTHING with seeds in it (oh the horror!) and short of force-feeding them I am left to let anything with poppyseeds in it go to waste or devour the whole batch myself.

If you dig into the corners, you'll find 5 cans of coconut milk and 3 bags of shredded coconut--purchased before I realized I was the only person in my family who liked coconut.

Then there are the various containers of "alternate grains" like kasha, pilaf and pearl barley which I thought would be great substitutes for white rice, but which my family thought were too chewy, too grainy or whatever. Along with the bags of whole-bean coffee which we haven't been able to use since we didn't have a grinder, there are a number of items that we would eat except that after purchasing them we realized they had an ingredient someone in the family is allergic to.

There are a lot of things in our pantry that I think my family would enjoy--if I only took the time to figure out what they are and what to do with them. For instance, there are the 6 different kinds of noodles, made of everything from rice to bean threads, purchased because my kids absolutely adore noodles but I can't bear to feed them a steady diet of bleached white flour. If noodles are on the menu, forget trying to get them to eat anything else on the table. They'll go hungry rather than eat the other items in the meal even though they're told they can't have more noodles until they eat some peas. They won't eat any kind of sauce I pour over the noodles, no matter how hard I try, and won't touch a casserole or salad made with them. They want noodles a la carte. Now they're finally getting to the point where they'll at least dip their noodles in the sauce occasionally.

As for the freezer, there are some good things in there--frozen vegetables, mostly. But when it comes to meat there's not much selection. My grandparents butchered some cattle a month or two ago, and since nobody else wanted them we were gifted with a large quantity of beef tongue, heart, and what seemed like 20 lbs. of liver. Now, heart and tongue, if cooked right, are two of my favorite foods and which my DH (dear husband) and kids don't mind too much, especially in a sandwich--but liver is something I like only in moderation.

I haven't found a way to cook liver yet so that all three of my other family members will eat more than the obligatory one bite. We gave away as much of it as we could, but we still have what seems like an endless supply in our freezer, which it seems a shame to waste. I tried chopping it up and making spaghetti sauce with it. M (almost 3) ate it but nobody else was impressed--including me. I like liver and onions, but nobody else will touch it. So I'm going to be doing a lot of internet searches to try to find recipes that will adequately disguise beef liver. It gives a whole new meaning to the traditional saying, "What am I, chopped liver?"

I've gotten fairly proficient at finding recipes to use up random ingredients lately. We've had some fun trying out new recipes for things none of us have ever heard of before, and we've had some really enjoyable meals out of it.

For instance, one night we had homemade pita bread with a selection of dal palak (a split pea and spinach curry), homemade hummus, tabouli, pine nut couscous, beef heart, and chopped lettuce/tomato/cucumber to fill the bread. It was really good, and although not everyone liked all the fillings, everyone enjoyed the meal.

Another evening we opened a can of chicken and I improvised a sauce out of coconut milk, peanut butter and a few spices which we had over rice noodles, stir-fried with various frozen and canned veggies. It tasted very Thai even though it was lacking some of the "essential" ingredients like tamarind and fish sauce, and everyone had seconds and thirds.

Of course, other meals haven't been such a success--like the bean and vegetable soup I made in the crock pot, not realizing that I needed to start cooking the beans several hours before adding the potatoes, carrots and other items. The beans were hard and everything else had turned into mush by dinner time.

Tonight we had a tuna/noodle salad and split pea fritters (sort of like pancakes with mashed split peas in them), neither of which was a big hit.

Part of the issue is that I grew up eating a wide variety of foods of every ethnic background and flavor combination, along with lots of "health-nut" style meals. But DH grew up eating much more plain and bland "traditional American" foods, and is quite happy with that type of diet. My kids are not terribly picky eaters (they love spinach salad, most vegetables and all fruits, and a variety of other foods), but DH and the kids are all rather sensitive when it comes to unusual textures, strong flavors, or foods mixed together (like soups and casseroles). If they had their way we'd have chicken and white rice for every meal.

I keep thinking that if I constantly feed them healthy foods, whole grains and a large variety of types and flavors, they'll have to learn to like them or go hungry. What's for dinner is for dinner--nobody gets a different meal if they don't like what's on the table, and there are no extra snacks later. DH is basically supportive of the idea even when he doesn't enjoy the food. He'll eat whatever I cook without complaining and expect the kids to do the same. But they still mostly just choke down the minimum amount and then really fill up at the occasional meal of chicken and white rice.

After our family project is finished, I think our shopping habits will change. DH and I are both doing less "because it's on sale" and impulse-buying. We're wasting less food, and learning a lot about ourselves and our eating styles. We're learning to appreciate some new foods, and becoming aware of which foods are just never going to be liked in our home no matter what we do.

Rather than stockpiling food we wouldn't otherwise eat in case of a possible future disaster, as I tend to do, in the future I'll try to only buy things I know we will eat and that I actually have a (short-term) plan for.

Once our experiment is finished, anything left over that we're pretty sure won't get eaten will be trashed or donated.

Our budget, our storage areas, and our family's taste buds will all be thankful.