Store cupboard challenge

Callanish

Hi everyone - I hope you've all enjoyed the bank holiday weekend!! :beer: Sounds like people are getting on well with the challenge so far. I'm quite new to all this, so please bear with me...

I've just done an inventory of what I've got in at the moment and it's been a very instructive exercise - it's highlighted several things that I'd not admitted to myself before...

1) I buy FAR too much stuff at a time (this is only a one-person household!) and then end up throwing things out when they go out of date before I've used them. (I'm consciously trying to clear out the fridge and freezer so I can defrost them properly, so the fridge is not a true reflection of this habit...)
2) I tend to buy more than one kind of the same thing, then end up throwing them out when they go out of date before I've used them...)
3) I impulse buy when I go into specialist food shops - and then feel like I'm being virtuous for supporting them (and not just squandering my cash...)
4) I'm a carbohydrate junkie!

But on the positive side, I eat very little processed food and I enjoy cooking and baking when I've got time.

And apart from fresh veg, fruit and milk, I don't need to go shopping for weeks!! I really need to cut back this month, so that's good news.

CUPBOARDS
Pasta: various types dried pasta, plain dried noodles
Rice: Brown, Brown basmati, Arborio, wild rice
Cereal: Branflakes, Oatmeal
Dried pulses: Red lentils, Puy lentils, channa daal, black beans
Grains: bulgar wheat, popping corn, couscous, Quinoa
Seeds: Sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, linseed
Nuts: Cashew, Brazil
Oils: Olive, Sunflower
Dried mushrooms
½ bag dried mixed fruit, bag dried apricots
½ bag sugar, bag icing sugar, Vanilla sugar
2 different bottles of maple syrup
2 different kinds of cocoa
Various types of tea and coffee
SR and plain flour
Jars: 1 Pataks curry paste, 1 Scala pasta sauce, various jams
Tins: Chopped toms (loads), haricot beans, chickpeas (loads)
3 packs of different veggie stock cubes
Creamed coconut, desiccated coconut
Salt, pepper, loads of different herbs and spices
Several types of vinegar
Flavourings: Marmite, gravy browning, onion gravy granules, soy sauce, mustard
Bread yeast (but annoyingly, run out of bread flour!)
Catfood (for the cat!)

FRIDGE
4 Lemons
Cheese
½ Cabbage, ½ cauliflower
Carrots
Olives
Wine

FREEZER
6 cheese pasties, 9 large sausage rolls
1 ¼ bags low fat oven chips
1 ½ loaves wholemeal bread
2 small plain baguettes, 3 garlic baguettes
1 bag fresh pasta
2 packs tortillas, 2 large naans
6 Onion Bajis & 3 Samosas
5 Quorn Cumberland Sausages
Bags of spinach, peas, sweetcorn, peppers, blackberries
4 portions of homemade curry

Phew! Next step is to work out what I can do with all this... and how I can cut back in future.

Any advice / suggestions / recipes would be most welcome, especially anything non-fattening that I can do with those lemons - another impulse buy I'm afraid. I'm supposed to be losing weight :rotfl: but I bought them with a secret intention of making lemon curd, my favourite (but not exactly not diet-friendly!!! :eek:)

Bye for now,

Callie

MushyPeas

Hi Callie

WOW - what a list. I know.....why not invite us all round for a cup of tea or party and we'll eat the contents of your cupboard for you .

Quickly scanning your list, you could make some healthy soups with all the pulses, or some yummy curries using the tinned tomatoes, coconut and spices as base. That would go well with your frozen naan breads .

Why not visit the OS Recipe Thread and see what you can use your ingredients in? Just do a search.

Happy eating

aimeelister

I'm in for this one. I will still have my green box of fresh fruit and veg delivered each week.

I have a habit (dont know whether it's good or bad) of cooking too much and then freezing a portion and never labling it. I have absolutely no idea whats in the freezer but its normally cant do without offers (esp from the Co-op where things are on 2 for £ and also reduced and sometimes they pay you to take things away) and random stews. I even have some stuff in there from when my mums freezer gave up the ghost and she off loaded her randoms on to me, some of them must be about 1 year old!

I also have a load of lentils and beans, i must do a search through the receipies on her to find away to use them up!

Task tonight: list things in cupboards and freezer

MushyPeas

Blimey aimeelister, that sounds like a full freezer! Maybe you could have a 'suprise' night where you defrost something unknown Or for those small portions have them with a jacket potatoe.

I bought some sticky labels from Wilksinsons, very cheap, and use those for labeling.

Good luck with your task tonight.

Callanish

Thanks for your suggestions, Mushypeas! I've found loads of good recipes to try (I'd not noticed the Search before... duh!)

I could certainly do some serious catering, with that little lot... and a bit of cooking effort.

It's a shocking amount of stuff for just one person to have accumulated but I'm determined to use everything up, and not let any of it go to waste. And in future I'm resolving only to buy what I need and will use regularly.

Thanks again,

Callie

mgardner

MushyPeas wrote:

Blimey aimeelister, that sounds like a full freezer! Maybe you could have a 'suprise' night where you defrost something unknown Or for those small portions have them with a jacket potatoe.

I bought some sticky labels from Wilksinsons, very cheap, and use those for labeling.

Good luck with your task tonight.

Love this Suprise night idea. I think I have enough little packages of leftover this and that to have suprise every night for the week

So heres the plan for the next 7days

Breakfast, porridge, toast and marmalade

Lunch sandwich, soup or something on toast

Dinner Suprise for me, shock for my son, he he he (well its his fault there are so many leftovers. Its usually his dinner that I have plated up and then he does not come for it,

Good luck to all, mary

aimeelister

MushyPeas wrote:

Blimey aimeelister, that sounds like a full freezer! Maybe you could have a 'suprise' night where you defrost something unknown Or for those small portions have them with a jacket potatoe.

I bought some sticky labels from Wilksinsons, very cheap, and use those for labeling.

Good luck with your task tonight.

Thanks for that, I hadnt thought about having them with Jackets. And yes the freezer is full. :rotfl:

I think it will have to be a surprise time! It willl remind me of when i was little as my mum did exactly the same thing of freezing without labels and we would have interesting nights when she pulled things out the freezer and they wernt quite what she thought they were!

Next time im in town i am making a big effort to buy some labels for my tubs. Im also going to get some printed up with :
Unsolicited mail, return to sender. Sender please remove from mailing list, a suggestion from a friend as we get loads of mail from things we havent signed up to and the mps hasnt worked.

annie-c

My cupboards and freezer are absolutely jam-packed too and I am starting to feel ashamed of myself as I realise what a wasteful life I lead. Until fairly recently I was used to shopping randomly whenever I felt like a trip to the supermarket, coming home every day to a full fridge, choosing what I wanted when I wanted, and often ignoring it in favour of a takeaway and then binning anything that had gone off at the end of the week. And I wondered why I was always in debt!!!!

Even though I have being trying to do things Old Style for a few months now, I see from these sort of threads that I have long long way to go.

I was really proud of myself yesterday - I worked in the garden on my home grown fruit and veg all day, and at lunchtime had a bowl of home made stew from the freezer. But then I woke up this morning really angry with myself, for leaving a joint of pork out on the worktop uncovered all night after I forgot to deal with it before bedtime - more waste, even after a good day!!!

I just find planning ahead so hard - I don't know why, I am completely organised at work, but I have never really got into a discipline of financial or home planning - I wish it was something they had taught at school!

Thanks so much to the OP and everyone who has posted though, I really appreciate having other people to share ideas with. Hopefully it's not too late to take responsibility and learn to manage things better....

Annie

thriftlady_2

I have lots of single servings of main dishes,luckily mine are labelled (after the time I thought I was defrosting gravy and it turned out to be butterscotch sauce-they look identical:rotfl: ).Every now and then I pull out all these single servings,defrost them and we have a freezer buffet.The kids choose whatever they want be it a dab of each or just one thing,and I add baked spuds or rice or lots of bread.It's essentially a free meal that you don't even have to cook.

I'm up for a storecupboard challege.I've got lots of meat from when I bought a large freezer order from the butcher in March.I've got some salmon and lots of frozen veg,half a sack of spuds which need eating up,loads of rice,pasta, pulses and tinned tomatoes,tuna,fruit etc.I've also got plenty of baking supplies.All I need to get weekly are; fresh fruit and veg,dairy stuff,juice and bread flour.

annie-c

I'm good at buying healthy foods but not so good at using them up....

Can anyone help with recipe suggestions for using up lentils (green and red), mung and aduki beans (apart from sprouting), pearl barley (can it be used other than in soups/stews?).

I saw a recipe on here over Easter for lentil and sweet potato cakes, which I plan to try this week - yum! :j

Annie