Gathering Fragments: Organizing the Pantry



"Let us be in a position so we are able to not only feed ourselves through the home production and storage, but others as well." (President Ezra Taft Benson)

Saturday:  I didn't do much gathering today but I did pull the last two potatoes to use in our dinner, as well as the last two apples.  I roasted a chicken with onions, carrots, potato chunks and apple quarters.  Apple is really nice with chicken.  I just wish I'd had some cider to baste the bird with...And by the way, you could also roast sausages with the same vegetables and apples and it would be lovely.  Pork sausages, Chicken and Apple sausages, or Kielbasas.  All would be lovely together.


I am setting myself a goal this week of organizing my pantry goods  and going over expiration dates, etc.  No, I likely won't be throwing any food away if I do find any expired, as the pantry is made up of mostly canned goods.  I will be using those items first in the coming weeks and months.   It will also be a great a time to note where I'm  missing items and to make notes about what I want to make myself  rather than replace with more of same or would like to have on hand in smaller quantities.

I also have one kitchen cupboard that I haven't looked over in the past couple of months.  It's the line of cabinets above the microwave and crockpot.  I know I have a big 24 ounce bag of Jumbo marshmallows but I also have most of a bag of Giant marshmallows.   The Giant bag is open and drying out so I'd like to go on and use them.  Of course, my mind goes right to Rice Krispies bars but I have no cereal of any kind at present so that might have to wait until we actually do real grocery shopping.  We'll see.   My real goal is to reacquaint myself with what I have on hand and judge what I need.

Sunday:  I tossed deli potato salad this afternoon.  Still within the use by date but John told me he'd had enough and was not going to eat it.  Well...I know I'm not going to eat it either so I tossed it.

Scraped together a lunch of this and that, all in the fridge: fried chicken, pizza, oranges, baby carrots, deviled eggs.  And then I used two of those giant marshmallows to make smores for a sweet finish to our lunch.

Monday: Gathered up a items from the weekend and made today's lunch.  I reheated Chicken Rice soup and gave John the sole hot dog from the fridge to eat along with his bowl of soup, while I had Ritz with cream cheese on them as my accompaniment.

Tuesday:  Leftover Chicken needed to be dealt with today.  I mixed up a quick chicken pot pie filling and put in the freezer without a topping of any sort on it.  When I am ready to use, I'll either make pastry or mix up the simple biscuit topping and bake it.  I now have one semi-convenient meal in the freezer.

I used the thighs to make up a small Poppy seed Chicken  Casserole for our supper.  I had no sour cream but I've plenty of good homemade yogurt and specifically had an unsealed container that I really wanted to finish using up.  It was the perfect amount for my casserole dish.

The chicken bones, leftover potatoes and carrots and skin all went into a bag in the freezer and will be used to make broth and a pot of soup one day soon.

I know I have spinach that needs to be used and originally planned to have it as a side to my Chicken Casserole but...I have beef strips to stir fry this week and I thought how yummy the spinach would be as part of the stir fry, so I'm planning to have that for supper tomorrow night.  

I found some bananas in a baggie in the freezer...I'm notorious for saving and not using those odd bananas.  I decided to thaw them yesterday and made Banana Chocolate Chip muffins today.  

Wednesday:  Not a lot of gathering today either.  I spent the bulk of my work day in the pantry, sorting out shelves, organizing, looking at expiration dates.  I was good on all but three items, one of which expired in 2017 and the other two in 2019.  All tin canned non acidic foods and the cans look great but I have pulled those things forward so I'll use them first.  I'll plan them into meals in the next couple of weeks.

I went over my fridge this morning and pulled the fresh spinach packets. These are not six ounce bags but much smaller bags that I get with my produce.  It's a different type of spinach than what we buy in the store,  a longer lasting variety, so some of what I had was three weeks old and some was just a week old.  I used it in a beef stir fry tonight and made a sort of teriyaki sauce to go over the meat and peppers, onions, and spinach.   It was really good!   

Thursday:   Today I did a more thorough job of going over my fridge.   I had waste.  There was a slice of tomato and some onion together in a small bowl that was looking very iffy.  Microgreens that I can't push at John in any other manner.  I've tried them all.  A teensy bit of salsa left in a jar, and a little container of egg salad leftover from making deviled eggs a bit over a week ago.  It's not a tremendous amount of waste but it's waste and I feel I should have done better.  I might have serve egg salad sandwiches though I'll confess to you that I am not fond of egg salad...And the microgreens could easily have gone into those sandwiches as well as into salads.  Ah well.   I must increase my attempts and do better.

Leftovers were gathered together for supper tonight and lunch tomorrow.  It's dibs and dabs but we're going to eat them just the same.  John's very good about supplementing a scanty lunch with a half peanut butter sandwich.

Friday:  I pulled pancakes from the freezer and bacon from the fridge that needed to be used up.   That served us breakfast this morning.  I come to the end of this week with only the smallest amounts of leftovers, so much so that I plan to make lunch from scratch today and we will eat those plus any leftovers tomorrow.  It's rather nice to start from scratch for the new week ahead.

Admittedly the week doesn't look like much from this end but I did what I could.  I will be pulling from the pantry (hello expired goods!) and cabinets in the weeks ahead. Hopefully you'll get better ideas than this week might have given you.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Haven't made them for a while but those big marshmallows are really yummy dipped in chocolate, even better double dipped. Don't ask this old diabetic how she knows. LOL. Expecting frost here tonight, and seeing a few leaves turning, container of chili in frig. I think fall is here! Gramma D

terricheney said...

Ooh, Dora, that's a grand idea! I'll keep that in mind, too.
We won't have frost yet but I do have to bring in my orchids this weekend as it's getting into the 50's...I wasn't able to put them outdoors until mid June this year due to cooler weather and now I'm bringing them in earlier than usual, too.

Lana said...

I ended up with a bit of potato salad in the trash too because I just made too much. Two hard boiled eggs and a small piece of cabbage and some cut cantaloupe that was way past went too. We have had a crazy ten days and are so far behind on everything that I am amazed that it was all that was pitched since some meals were grabbed out because we had to and others we were just too tired to cook on the day it was planned. Hoping for less drama next week!

Mable said...

I use leftover potato salad to make potato soup. I make some chicken stock, add onions, put in half of the leftover salad and use a hand blender to blend it so it becomes a thicker stock. Then I put in the rest of the potato salad and maybe some ham or bacon if I have some around. Topped with sour cream, it is tasty. Sometimes I don't have enough leftover for a whole soup so I just make my regular potato soup recipe and add the leftover salad to that. The mayo in potato salad cannot be tasted but it makes the soup creamy.

terricheney said...

Lana, you do make me feel less bad about my bits of waste. My excuse isn't drama or too much to do though. Just unable to cope with all the varying tastes. John's pretty good about eating leftovers but when he says it's done, there's no point in putting it out any longer, lol. He's done and he means it!

terricheney said...

Mable, I put pickles and boiled eggs in my potato salad...do you? It's a thought for next time perhaps.

Mable said...

Yes, we have pickles and eggs in our potato salad. But a lot of soup recipes have eggs in them and they disintegrate so you don't even taste them. And as for pickles, we like dill pickle soup so when I throw potato salad into a soup, all it does is give a little boost of flavor. If you are going to throw it away anyway you won't be wasting anything if you try recycling it into a small amount of soup.

Your John sounds like a wonderful husband but they (we) all have our foibles, don't we? I am glad my husband will eat leftovers until the proverbial cows come home, but he has other habits that would drive other women wild. It is all a matter of two people having habits the other can live with!

Coffee Chat: Love and Marriage