Klatsch: a week without shopping

[andiesenji]

I would like to add that you should scrub the lemons well with a brush then place them in a solution to remove any pathogens for a couple of minutes.

I use a gallon of water to which I add two teaspoons of bleach.

If you haven't heard or read about the sampling of lemons (and other fruits etc.) in markets, restaurants, and so on, you have missed some important info which has been around for some time but apparently missed by many. (one of the reasons I refuse water in restaurants in which a slice of lemon has been placed.)

There is a discussion about preserved lemons with Paula Wolfert's directions for 5-day lemons, posted by her, in The Preserved Lemons Topic

See Post # 32

And the 30-day recipe is here: Preserved Lemons.

Edited March 13, 2009 by andiesenji (log)

[JTravel]

4 Weeks and still not too much progress. We did eat out one night, had noodles and brought home enough for 2nd night. So that slows down the usage. I stocked up with more milk and a bunch of green stuff on Weds. Roasted brussel sprouts for dinner tonight.

Today I will use 3 frozen hamburgers to make a meat mix with celery (it's still alive and well) and carrot, and yet more diced tomatoes. When we visit the kids tomorrow they will help me roll this up in some Turkish wrappers I found in freezer. Coat with a mix of egg, milk and oil and bake.

I had a large tub of almonds with the skins on in the cold pantry (cellar tub) and last night I decided to peel them in anticipation of using some of them for something. WHAT A JOB!. But they are done and sauteed in butter and some will go in Andiesenji's nut cookies above.

One jar of larger tomatoes pieces was used in salad....I marinated the pieces and some cucumber in some dressing I made (using packet of Greek salad dressing mix) and it really added to the salad.

A frozen, marinated turkey breast, from freezer, for dinner tonight, and a couple more nights I would guess.

Carnitas from last week's (new purchase ) pork shoulder will be shared with kids tomorrow, and whole shoulder will go too.

Some spots are appearing on shelves and there "must" be more room in freezer. There was WAY too much bread in there!

[Catherine Iino]

My freezers and my pantry are freeing up, but the cabinet where I store empty plastic containers is overflowing.

I have discovered that dry couscous does not last forever. A great thing about couscous--the stew--is that you can throw in one zucchini, one half a pepper, one carrot, and so on. Perfect for the bottom of the produce bin. The box of couscous--the pasta--that was sitting in my pantry for who-knows-how-long smelled fine in the box, but when I prepared it, it was rancid. Damn.

Now I have a pound or so of wheat berries that have been in my refrigerator for a year and a half. They smell okay, but I need to test them before I cook them for hours. Any ideas?

Also--how long do dried rice noodles and spring roll wrappers (banh trang) keep?

[Jujubee]

Dinner last night was a Korean-ish pork stew made with spicy bean paste, served with rice, of course. Alongside we had some asian pears.

Dinner tonight was some stir-fried pork with scallions, rice, and a subtly sweet and sour sauteed napa cabbage and carrots.

And yet, I STILL have 1/2 a lb of pork shoulder left. That was the last major chunk of meat left in my freezer and I thought for sure I would be done with it by now. This challenge never ends.

[rkolluri]

This has been a very fascinating thread and it has inspired us to cut back and see what we have on hand before going out food shopping. We have managed to avoid a couple of trips by re-thinking our options. It has been valuable even without actually actively participating in it. I am hoping we will soon be able to see what's at the back of the freezer.

I do wonder how deeply ingrained our urge to hoard is. There appear to be some pretty full freezers and pantry shelves out there (including in my house). However, can any of you top this?

[Catherine Iino]

While we are helping our own budgets, are we collectively prolonging the economic crisis by not buying stuff? By the time we're ready to restock, how many food markets will have gone out of business? I'm half kidding, and I'm no economist, but this does sort of encapsulate the dilemma of the current economic crisis, doesn't it? Then again, I suppose that food in the pantry and freezer is the least productive form of capital for the economy at large.

[Jujubee]

I finally used up the last of that pork shoulder in a stir-fry for dinner tonight. Since there was only 1/2 lb, I sliced it to a fine julienne, along with julienned carrots (last 2), celery, napa cabbage (last bit), and the rest of the container of dried mushrooms (about a cup). I also made a sort of egg drop corn (last of a package in the freezer) soup and served everything with rice.

[PopsicleToze]

I was asked to contribute Mexican cornbread for Sunday's family dinner -- it's a very moist recipe with creamed corn, onions, sour cream, jalepenos and cheese. I thought I had sour cream. Nope. The little sour cream container contained some reduced chicken stock from about January. After throwing that out -- I used my immersion blender to whip some half/half with some cream cheese as a sub for sour cream. Nice enough substitude. Then, no creamed corn. Used the immersion blender and creamed some whole kernal corn. I did, however, have cornmeal, jalepenos and cheddar cheese. It turned out great without making a last minute dash to the grocery store. I was proud of myself and very happy not to have to get out in the rain! Thanks for the inspiration.

[LizD518]

Also--how long do dried rice noodles and spring roll wrappers (banh trang) keep?

←

I recently used some spring roll wrappers that I have had for over a year and noticed no difference from last fall, when I last used them. I also have been using rice noodles that have been around for the about the smae amount of time and they seem fine.

[P1800Girl]

This whole 'no shopping -- empty the pantry' exercise has been very timely, enlightening and probably a bit fattening.

My indoor pantry (don't ask about the outdoor ones just now) is not a walk-in, but a 4-ft wide, 6 ft tall double door pantry with 5 pull-outs on each side.

Before this weekend, it was packed -- way more food goods than 1 person needs. So when I read about this eGullet 'no shopping' idea, I was kind of excited to get involved. I surveyed my pantry and decided I could make a lot of space if I got rid of the little 'bags' of opened stuff that were cluttering the top pull out. So, I ate the last of the whole wheat Wheat Thins, whose carton had long been recycled, the last few gingersnap cookies and their crumbs, and as I 'cleaned' out these things, I discovered NEW things I didn't even know I had. So, down goes another small box of Carr's Whole Wheat Crackers (oh my god, I must learn to make a leaner version of these crackookies -- very addictive even with the bran residue left in one's mouth after eating one or five). Now, to not appear too much of a glutton, I did spread the Carr's crackookies out over a couple days, averaging maybe 10 a day. Which, given that 2 crackers have about 80 calories, still doesn't make me look too good.

Of course, by this time I am so stuffed from unstuffing the pantry, I can't eat a regular meal, so things probably average out at the macro level for the day. But the challenge was to cook from the pantry/freezer, not pull up a chair and eat out of it! So, I kept digging and found some Lowe's Champion Beans -- a rare find from Whole Foods bulk bin last year which I had to have based on the nutritional analysis. According to the label, one half cup of these beans has 48 grams of fiber. Geez, I could cook up a small batch and pop them like Metamucil Tablets! So, I did cook up a batch just to get rid of them (at least from the pantry). Granted, it was close to a pound of beans, but it made so much that I couldn't eat all that in a week's time, so now I ended up storing them in little quart jars and putting them in my freezer.

I fear I'm just playing with my food -- moving it from the pantry to the freezer only to end up in the garbage one of these days.

-sabine

[shellfishfiend]

I was asked to contribute Mexican cornbread for Sunday's family dinner -- it's a very moist recipe with creamed corn, onions, sour cream, jalepenos and cheese.  I thought I had sour cream.  Nope.  The little sour cream container contained some reduced chicken stock from about January.  After throwing that out -- I used my immersion blender to whip some half/half with some cream cheese as a sub for sour cream.  Nice enough substitude.  Then, no creamed corn.  Used the immersion blender and creamed some whole kernal corn.  I did, however, have cornmeal, jalepenos and cheddar cheese.   It turned out great without making a last minute dash to the grocery store.  I was proud of myself and very happy not to have to get out in the rain!  Thanks for the inspiration.

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That is a wonderful use of on-hand products and imagination. You saved money, used what was on hand and saved time. Glad it turned out great. Your story is a perfect example of what can be accomplished when we don't just react, but actually take the time to slow down and think about what we have.

[Special K]

Yesterday I had the day off, so in between loads of laundry, I cleaned out the freezer (now that the job had become manageable). First of all, I was amazed at how many little plastic hanger thingies (the ones that they glue to plastic bags of things like shredded cheese to hang from hooks in the grocery store) I found in the freezer - I don't remember ever putting bags of stuff with those hangers in there, but there must have been twenty of them! Could they have migrated somehow from the cheese drawer? Spooky. Secondly, I found out I had a lot more individually-bagged meats (steaks, chicken pieces, etc.) than I thought (and here I was buying more and using it while these just got older, and older . . . ), and a lot of unidentifiable leftovers tossed in there who knows when - and tossed out again yesterday. (Note to self, #1: Don't over-fill the freezer to the point where I can't see what's in there, and #2: If it's just a little dab of something, and it doesn't get used right away, don't throw it in the freezer - it will never see the light of day again.)

I wish I'd taken pictures to post here from work, but what I ended up with was a very neat half-freezer drawer with a goodly amount of meats, a pull-out shelf full of frozen veggies (and the martini glasses, shaker and gin), and the other half of the drawer full of goodies like spaghetti sauce, chili, various stocks (which I made yesterday from the bones and scraps I found), and other odds and ends. And now, everything is labelled and dated! So lovely! Even though I certainly have fewer items in there than when this whole challenge started, I feel very satisfied that I have plenty in my hoard, because now I can see what I have and it's more than enough. Same with the pantry - I used up, gave away, or tossed out all the stuff I rarely use normally, and have re-stocked only what I will actually use.

This lovely feeling of being satisfied with having just enough of the right things on hand even inspired me to go through the rest of the kitchen cabinets and get rid of non-food items - duplicates and things I haven't used in a while. In my very small kitchen with its limited storage space, this really made a difference!

Thank you, Fat Guy.

[Fat Guy]

My apologies for going a few days without posting with much detail. We were recently contacted by one of the TV networks about doing a story on this challenge, and I've been working with them to do some taping. I haven't been able to do my own photography on account of the logistics, but if the video package comes out well (which I imagine it will) then it will be a lot better than anything I could have done with my little camera. It will be about a week before the story is produced and I'll provide details when things start to gel.

Tonight we cooked for ourselves, Ellen's cousin (the one who came over at the end of week one) and a camera/audio/production crew of three. I was surprised, as I've been throughout this experiment, at just how much crap I was able to pull out of the larder. It was an eclectic meal to say the least, but it was a feast. I made biscuit dogs, which were particularly well received, as well as chicken fried rice, the last of the chili from the freezer, and ravioli with tomato sauce. Ellen and PJ made oatmeal-raisin cookies for dessert. On top of all that, I made four quarts of yogurt -- those should be ready in the morning if I didn't screw them up.

I burned through a lot of what I was planning to cook for the rest of the week, but I'm actually still going strong. As the video footage I hope you'll all someday see demonstrates, the refrigerator is finally getting down to mostly condiments, chocolate and raisins (we refrigerate those things), but the freezer is still completely packed and the pantry cabinets look like nobody has eaten anything here for the past month. While I will not be pushing this experiment past Sunday, I have no doubt that with a little strategic purchasing of fresh ingredients on about a $20-per-week budges, I could continue this for two or three more months.

I have definitely learned a lot so far. I started this out mostly as a fun challenge. But now I'm realizing some fundamental problems with the way I buy, cook and eat food. I mean, more fundamental than just that I eat way too much of it. The main thing is that I have a serious utilization problem. I am not buying, cooking and eating $150 worth of groceries a week. I'm buying $150 worth, but utilizing much less. There's no way I'm going to let the budget climb back to anywhere near $150 when this is over. I've totally broken out of the paradigm that says I have to buy a bunch of unnecessary stuff. I am firmly resolved to get the budget down under $100 a week, and maybe even $75. If I could cut the grocery budget in half, that would be a big savings: somewhere in the $3-$4k neighborhood in our case. But even without that, we've saved more than $500 on groceries this past month.

[Milt]

I have continued to participate philosophically, while buying a few items to complete meals. My skills and experience don't allow me to create in the same manner as several of you who are obviously quite knowledgeable and quite accomplished cooks.

My challenge is to find recipes which use on hand items rather than those which cause me to buy more stuff. My confidence is such that I can make minor adjustments to recipes, but I still need to pretty well follow a recipe to have a decent dish.

There is more space in our refrigerator, pantry, and freezer. I am now able to see most of what is in each - and plan the next meal accordingly. My practice is to decide on a meat (I try to vary from beef to chicken to shrimp to pork to fish, etc.) for the meal and then work on the accompanying dishes. We still are quite heavy on pastas and grains - but the quantity is being reduced. Using fresh vegetables while they are fresh is getting easier because I am keeping less on hand.

Another parallel challenge is making more of what we eat from scratch. As a beginning cook, I found it very easy to buy mixes, prepared and semi-prepared foods. Last night's buttermilk biscuits were the best I have done. They can still be improved upon, but all fourteen were consumed (a first) - nothing left for future meals. I still personally prefer Pillsbury's Grands to my own biscuits - but I am going to keep working on my own. Again, space in the refrigerator is saved when several tubes of biscuits are not there.

Thank you everyone for your participation in this forum. I have learned, been inspired, and have been motivated. My wife commented that this forum is getting me to do what she has been encouraging me to do for a long time. Unfortunately, she is quite correct. Just the same, she seems to be very happy with the results. Our shopping list (I will shop today because of the weekly 5% seniors discount on Wednesdays at Publix and Kroger) is being kept quite short by only buying the ingredients necessary for a particular meal. My terrible habit, in the past, was to plan too many meals and, therefore, buy too many ingredients. Some of the meals would never get prepared and the pantry ended up with more in it.

[snowangel]

Since I have been participating in this "experiment" since the beginning, it has been easy, and has evolved into more of a grocery-buying change.

My grocery costs are greatly reduced -- I didn't realize how much stuff I had on hand! I'm now pretty much just purchasing produce, milk, eggs, and occasionally cheese. I did make an exception early this week -- we were out of canned tomatoes (none left in the freezer), and chuck roasts were greatly reduced, so I purchased several in preparation for a high school graduation party for my daughter.

Another change has been my organizational system. I know what I have in the chest freezer in the basement -- venison and frozen vegetables. But, the upstairs freezer has been a repository for all sorts of leftovers, bags of frozen roasted peppers, etc. I actually did an inventory and have a list on the fridge door so I now know I have two meals of gumbo, a vension/tomatoe braise container for pasta, five bags of roasted poblanos (four per bag, and destined for the grad party), two packages of potsticker wraps, walnuts, etc. Easy now to know whats in there for emergency meals or odd ingredients.

Yes, my fridge is barer, as is the pantry, populated by more different kinds of mustard and vinegar than I could imagine.

Oh, I also bought a 25 pound sack of jasmine rice, which is a staple here, and doesn't last as long as one imagines it would.

[NadyaDuke]

Secondly, I found out I had a lot more individually-bagged meats (steaks, chicken pieces, etc.) than I thought (and here I was buying more and using it while these just got older, and older . . . ), and a lot of unidentifiable leftovers tossed in there who knows when - and tossed out again yesterday.  (Note to self, #1:  Don't over-fill the freezer to the point where I can't see what's in there, and #2:  If it's just a little dab of something, and it doesn't get used right away, don't throw it in the freezer - it will never see the light of day again.) 

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I have had the same problem - I'm very visual so if I don't see it, it doesn't exist. Several years ago I bought a magnetic whiteboard and kept it on fridge and wrote down what was in the freezer: corn, spaghetti sauce, hamburger, etc. This really helped when I was menu planning to remember to USE it.

Now my problem is the still the occasional mystery container. I finally parked some painters tape in the kitchen so I can mark plastic ware before it goes in the freezer. I have something in there right now and I don't know if it's chicken soup or pheasant pie filling ....

[Jujubee]

Well, I think this challenge officially ended for me on Monday. I could have made it another week, especially since I hadn't spent my $15 weekly allowance yet, but I felt I had accomplished enough of what I had hoped to do, namely clear out the pantry in anticipation of our move in May.

Before I went shopping on Monday, my freezer contained:

1 bag of potstickers (my standard backup dinner)

tomato paste (individual tablespoons)

chipotle chiles (individually frozen)

yeast

2 parmesan cheese rinds

2 sticks of butter

The fridge shelves were also impressively bare, but since I have a huge collection of condiments it looked less so. I did have space in the door though (and heck, all the little bottles actually fit in the door - definitely a first), so the condiment stash is reducing.

I had also managed to reduce my pantry stash so much that I have one completely empty cupboard!

Now onto my next project: using up all the condiments (such as the 7 types of vinegar I have, or the enormous bottles of oyster sauce and fish sauce)...

[Special K]

One thing I don't think has been mentioned here is that your freezer has to work harder when it isn't full. I did a little search and found a suggestion that made sense to me. Freeze water! (Make sure you leave room in the bottle for the water to expand into ice). The person who suggested this said she did it to keep the freezer full so it wouldn't have to run so often, but she found that the water was a lifesaver when her water was cut off for several days after a storm.

[JTravel]

Five weeks starting tomorrow and some shelves are clearing out and freezer has given up some things. I had a portion of homemade Chinese dumplings from freezer (while DH had another box of Kraft stuff.) But with a bit of eating out , with leftovers, we have not done too well. I know there are at least 3 Chuck Eye steaks in there.....got carried away when I read that thread.

Things I've learned:

I should treat my homemade treats better, when I make something like dumplings I should portion them out and eat them up fairly soon.

A brined half turkey breast is a good thing. It was easy to cook, was juicy and tender, and made several meals.

Diced tomatoes are very useful. I had too many, but they are used in so many things. I friend taught me to combine a can of diced tomatoes ( pureed or not) and a can of tomato soup as a base for all kinds of variations.

I like bulgar. I made a sort of pilaf with broth, raisins and topped with pine nuts. But a little goes a long way and that will take quite a while to use up.....I should be more aware of inventory but the ethnic stores are so appealing.

There is too much bread in freezer (still) and condiments have taken over my shelves/ I found 4 bottles/jars of hoisin sauce! Inventory problems again.

I overshopped, according to rules, yesterday. DH had to have the huge jars of peanut butter from Sam's and I got a couple kinds of cheese.....that will last me a long time. Otherwise I carry on....must be pork in some form in there.

[Fat Guy]

Here in Manhattan, most folks don't have washers and dryers in their apartments. They have laundry rooms in their buildings. Our laundry room is in the basement. For the past couple of years I have been walking past this but not noticing it:

That's the door at the bottom of the stairs to the basement laundry room, propped open with a #10 can of tomatoes.

This tomato-can doorstop encapsulates, for me, everything I've come to realize in the past month about the way I've been buying, eating and thinking about food my entire adult life. That every resident of my building has been ignoring this can for years indicates, to me, that something has gone terribly wrong.

The can is now safely in my apartment, having been replaced by a brick. As my last act of my month without shopping, on Saturday night I'm going to cook something with it.

[P1800Girl]

Good job rescuing the can of Italian tomatoes!

Any plans for its neighbor -- the 5 gallon bucket of industrial sludge?

-sabine

[Catherine Iino]

I cooked up the wheat berries I mentioned earlier last night (after soaking them for two days). They were just fine--delicious, in fact. I made what could be the best pantry dish around, megadarra. So simple: wheat berries, lentils, onions. Most of the recipes I have seen use rice for the grain, but a local Middle Eastern dive makes it with wheat, and I love the way the wheat berries pop in your mouth. I could eat this every day for a long time.

Hey, here's a suggestion for future rounds: sprouts. A sack of mung beans in the pantry will help with the fresh produce issue. I just soak a quarter cup or so overnight, then drain them and put them in a jar and cover it with a mesh top. A few times a day you run water into the jar and drain it out again. Mung bean sprouts seem to grow best in the dark. Come to think of it, you can sprout all kinds of things--lentils, alfalfa, and so on. Why didn't I think of this earlier?

[Pierogi]

I haven't been actively participating in this challenge, but I have been watching & reading avidly. And, more importantly, I have begun to change the way I think about food shopping, having seen myself in the hording habits of many here. Actually.....way.......way.....WAY...worse. About 2 months ago, right after New Years, I cleaned out one of the shelves in my cupboards where I stored boxed rice mixes (you know, pilafs, "ronis", etc) and packaged noodle side dishes. I used them as a crutch when I made a quick protein and needed a starch. And I'd buy them and buy them and buy them and NEVER use them. I tossed 2 grocery bags full of them when I purged. And I've actively reigned myself in from replacing them.

After following this challenge, as I said, I've begun to rethink my shopping. Things that I always thought of as *staples* I no longer consider as such. How often do I really need anchovey paste? Or canned anchovies, for that matter? Sure, I occasionally make a recipe that calls for them, but shouldn't I just buy it then.

So, my question to all you Guerilla Non-Shoppers is......

What have you ditched from your "staple" list?

And.....

What are still, absolute, must have, will-die-without-them "staples"?

[Fat Guy]

I was thinking along similar lines this evening when I took a casual month-end inventory of my refrigerator, freezer and pantry.

I think I keep far too many packages of pasta, beans, split peas, lentils and tomato products around. My thinking is that if I have so much that in a month without shopping I still have tons of this stuff then I'm keeping too much around. It's great to have a box of pasta in the cabinet. It's great to have three, five or more, especially so you can have different types available. It's probably not necessary to have 20.

Stockpiling products that are on sale turns out, in retrospect, to be a money-losing proposition if you don't use the products. I've always thought, hey, big sale on kidney beans, I'll buy six pounds, surely I'll use them. Well, probably. But if you're not going to use them within, say, a year then two issues arise. First, even these super-long-shelf-life items like dried beans eventually deteriorate. They aren't ruined, but they're better when you buy them than they are a year later. Second, at some point the time value of money kicks in. If you're carrying $500 worth of unused product inventory in your cabinets for a year, you could instead be investing that $500 in bank stocks. Okay, not a great example but you get the idea.

At the same time there are products that I actually should be buying more of. For example I think I need to start purchasing flour in larger bags. The standard five-pound bag of flour is a massive ripoff when compared to the bulk sacks, and that's a product we use so much of that I'd have no doubts about being able to go through 25 pounds in six months. Storage is of course an issue, but when I stop buying all the other stuff I don't need so much of it will at least in theory fill up space for the stuff I do need.

I've also learned that I just don't need many of the "just-in-case" foods I've bought over the years. I buy things like mac-and-cheese in a box "just in case" I don't feel like cooking anything more elaborate. But here I am at the end of my month and I didn't open a single damn box of the stuff. It's still sitting there on the shelf, mocking me. And really, is preparing mac-and-cheese from a box any less labor-intensive than cooking pasta and tossing it with a couple of things like olive oil, peas, parmesan, whatever? I think that's actually easier than mixing the stupid envelope of powder with milk and all that.

[Fat Guy]

No photos from last night, which was the last night, because we went to Connecticut without the camera. We brought dinner with us: Arthur Avenue ravioli, tomato sauce, cream of doorstop tomato soup (I have some left and will photograph it when I can) and a cake that we needed to cheat on with borrowed eggs -- I have photos of that, which I'll post soon.

Anyway, now that our month is over, we're doing some pantry cleaning. We threw out a bunch of spices and condiments from 2002 when we took a cross-continent road trip and acquired a bunch of stuff we never used. And we discovered a huge inventory of honey.

Any ideas on what to cook with, like, six pounds of honey?