bringing back the yore...

i mentioned in an earlier post that i had taken inventory of my pantry and freezer. this whole month of limited spending is really a tribute to the fact that i have edible stuff waiting in the wings. (thank you costco! maybe for once i can recoup a fraction of what i give YOU each month!!)  the food is there but i haven't ever let myself fall back on what i have amassed because i realize that i always cook based on what i feel like eating or a recipe i want to try, and not based on ingredients i already have. i am always adding randomly to my food store without really making a dent into it beyond the occassional soup or tuna can etc. i know this seems like a pretty obvious error but somehow i continually make it week after week and it clearly sets me up for waste and budget busting.

it was such a satisfying process to go through and inventory my food and create the meal plans from that instead.  once i wrote out my inventory (which literally is a list of goods from freezer and pantry and the quantity i have of each thing which i then cross off as i use) basic menu ideas were pretty apparent.  in under 10 minutes, i had 25 dinner ideas from homemade chicken noodle soup and hummus to stew and  "grill night", breakfast for dinner, and pasta.  i'm serious about this, the whole inventory and planning probably took an hour and it will end up saving me so much time and money this month to skip the grocery store and daily "spontaneous" menu planning.  i also think i can use this inventory to plan future grocery lists and menu plans and narrow down what items really are invaluable in my pantry.  

i've been laughing that the whole, seemingly forgotten, purpose of a pantry is to stockpile food for when you need it.  it is an idea that stretches back millennia to "the days of yore"  when people were hunter-gatherers and had to literally weather a season of cold weather with baskets of grain and dried meat and fruit.   actually maybe i can even update the yore a bit even to the turn of THIS century when food wasn't global and you couldn't get a grape or a blueberry fall, winter, spring, and summer. modern times and conveniences have divorced us from this feeling of storing for necessity and turned it into something like amassing food just to have it.   brooks, my brother in law, told me that according to some study, his garbage disposal eats better than most the world. i think my pantry probably eats better than most the world too.   our food waste and our food plenty are definitely things i'd like to be more mindful of as a citizen of the world.

but getting off my soapbox for a minute,  is anyone interested in getting into canning next year?  i've now proudly made my own salsa, jam, and peaches but i'd like to take it more seriously next summer, and particularly look into growing more of my own food to eat and preserve.  i love the full circle notion of this and think it is such a great thing to involve children in. do our kids really understand what it takes to 'create' a carrot or an apple?  i can't imagine a more cost effective way to feed my family something delicious and healthy then to plant a seed, watch it grow into something yummy, and then harvest it  and preserve it for a cold winter day!  i imagine it would feel like that cute kids book 'fredrick' by leo lionni.  this was a classic when we 70s kids were babes, but i still treasure it and read it often to cleo and flynn. if memory is failing you, fredrick is a field mouse and he saves the words, poems, and colors of summer for his fellow mice for those harsh winter days when the food is gone and everyone is cold, bored, and miserable.  having a summer ripe peach in the middle of january sounds just as magical to me. maybe i should name my future pantry fredrick?