Reverse Meal Planning

Primrose

I think our fridges are becoming increasingly cluttered with all these commercial products because manufacturers want to protect themselves against health and food safety claims so almost  everything is now labelled "refrigerate after opening".  Common sense should tell us thst products containing preservatives like sugar or vinegar keep well in non refrigerated cupboards but modern day thinking leads people not to think work these things through for themselves.

As a small child, immediately post war my mother didnt have a fridge and all opened bottles or jars were kept in a larder which had a small metal wire gauze ventilation cover over a gap in the wall to keep it ventilated.  And opened milk was stored in there in a water filled bowl with a damp cloth over it to try and keep it cool in summer and prevent the milk turning sour. (A regular occurrence) .  However there were far fewer products then in terms of jars and sauces than are on the market today.

EssexHebridean

Our HM stuff very definitely keeps absolutely fine - but we prefer pickles cold to have with cheese and biscuits (and they rarely last long enough to be a problem taking space in the fridge!). The balsamic dressing was a “keep refrigerated “ instruction from the producer, probably due to the fact that it contains fresh fruit juice as well. The pickled beetroot itself just lives in the larder though - at this time of year it’s mostly plenty cold enough from there. The mincemeat was in there because I’d added fresh apple to it before using for mince pies last Christmas - planned to use the rest of it soon after but clearly forgot! 

Primrose - that is precisely the ventilation that our larder has - during the coldest months we have to put a rolled up towel in front of the door as a draughty excluder, it has a brush on the inside but it’s not enough to stop the cold air escaping completely - and it reaches fridge temperature. 

Suffolk_lass

I've never tried chilled pickles but I might over Christmas. As you suggest EH, they don't last long unless they are a chutney I'm not keen on, and then I should just bin them. My own stuff basically lasts until the seal on the cover deteriorates or it gets a bit of rust. I think that is why I love Kilner jars with clip tops for pickles

EssexHebridean

SL you sound like us - we have to sort out the storecupboard every so often to make room for more jars when we make stuff and I know for a fact that we have HM stuff of ours there from 2008 and I think some stuff made by MIL earlier than that - we’re gradually trying to bring the older stuff to the front and use it.  This year we’ve done gooseberry jam - a green version and a regular - gooseberry chutney, gooseberry ketchup (that’s stunning!) Plum jam, the pickled beetroot, and piccalilli as well as the usual marmalade. The marmalade was only half the usual quantity though thanks to lockdown meaning we couldn’t get to the farm shop for the oranges, Sainsbug’s came to the rescue but their packs were half the size and they only had one left. 

Primrose

I pray for the time when some clever individual will invent store cupboards with revolving shelves which enable you to turn them around to reach the more ancient stuff at the back without knocking the front jars over to smash all over the kitchen floor!

The trouble with the mechanisms I've seen is that they're all circular and waste a lot of storage space.

Come on you clever inventers!  Give us something which will enable us to manage our food storage cupboards more effectively !  We have a deep full length "floor to ceiling" cupboard where every shelf is packed, so we face this battle every day.   Despite storing more irregularly used items at the back of shelves, it's still a problem to use up items in a timely manner.

EssexHebridean

Ahh we have a pull-out corner cupboard which is hard to explain but avoid the wasteful loss of corners - it’s essentially 2 sets of two rectangular shelves one above the other. The front one is attached to the door which you pull initially towards you to open, then the whole thing swings sideways to allow the back shelves into view/reach. We use ours for pans, Pyrex etc and it’s brilliant! 

The slow cooker has done its thing on the cheap electric overnight with a beef stew - half of it will get reheated in the oven for lunch with the addition of some dumplings, the other half will be frozen for use in a future week. That also sees off both packs of beef shin from the freezer - will need to think about restocking at next week’s farmers market. Did my usual trick of buying the biggest swede I could see in the tray at T’s - makes sense as they are all the same price - so we’ll need to factor in the rest of that, probably into a mixed-root mash at some point. 

Need to grab a tub of bolognese sauce out of the freezer for tomorrow night’s easy tea. I’m liking the idea of “easy meal Monday” - it might become a thing! 

Suffolk_lass

I'm really really fortunate, as I have a shuffle-in larder. There used to be a recess in the two identical rooms that share the inglenook fireplace and to be honest, they were mostly dust traps and wasted so I got the builder to take some from the sitting room (leaving enough for a bookcase) with a new wall, and open up the old wall and put doors that are flush with the front of the inglenook. DH shelved it with an old marble hearth as a cold shelf, and some oak floorboards from a reclamation place. We have since brought in an old wire shelving unit (maybe IKEA from 1990s) for tins and baking goods so the air circulates. Anyway, with a couple of wine racks under the shelves, that is my place

joedenise

When I had my kitchen installed a couple of years ago I insisted on a big larder cupboard to go in one corner of the kitchen which holds so much!  Having said that it's looking a bit depleted at the moment as I have been running down contents as we are away for a couple of weeks soon and then away again for most of December and early January.  Will give the cupboard a good clean before restocking in January.

I'm still also clearing the outside freezer and dinner tomorrow will be completely from the freezer - chana masala and pilau rice made last month.

ruby_eskimo

All the talk of proper larders is making me jealous!  Just a quick note on the jars thing - DH is the one who INSISTS that these things have to be in there.  He's a bit funny with dates on food and would happily just throw things away when they are still perfectly good.  I've taken to just ripping the best before dates off things so he can't tell, and I've never given either of us food poisoning in the 15 years we've been together.  Managed to cull a few of the jars over the weekend so it's definitely a lot better in there although I need to make some kimchi this evening so that will take up the empty space when I'm done 😆

Had some friends over for dinner on Saturday and made a huge lasagne which has resulted in a couple of portions for the freezer, plus some extra mince mixture too.  Going to use up a mixture of vegetables from the fridge and freezer to make a quick minestrone soup for lunch today and will also chuck the last two Linda McCartney sausages on the side.  Dinner is going to be cauliflower cheese soup using a rather large cauliflower I picked up yesterday, plus the last of the bread from Saturday night which I might turn into croutons for DH if it's too stale.

EssexHebridean

OK - I'll add to the larder envy factor then - ours is the original from when the place was built in 1956 - essentially a huge cupboard with a hip-height full depth tiled shelf as the "cold shelf". When we had the kitchen done in 2017 every single person who came in to the job assumed we wanted it got rid of to increase the size of the kitchen but we stuck to our guns and had it repainted, re-tiled and the old shelves replaced with waxed pine ones at a more user-friendly depth. Also had a movement sensitive light fitted at Mr EH's instigation which was a master-stroke - makes it so much easier to see what is where! The floor is the original tiles that the kitchen would have had originally so it stays marvellously cool - even on mid summer we can drink beers from it at a reasonable temperature and in the winter they often have to come out for a little while before drinking or they'd be too cold!  Very few of the flats still have them - most folk have either used the space to increase the kitchen size or have utilised it as a boiler cupboard instead, but it was an absolute selling point for us when we viewed the place. 

Bolognese sauce is defrosted and ready in the fridge for "easy Meal Monday" tonight - tomorrow will be couscous again - a usual easy fix for a day when I will be later getting in for the gym and MrEH won't eat until after rugby training. Freezer two got half of yesterday's stew from the slowcooker added to it - that will do a Sunday lunch either next week or at some stage during December.