Klatsch: a week without shopping

[snowangel]

and I'm not going to do without dishwasher detergent if we run out.

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Chris, I would put dishwasher detergent in the same category as toilet paper.

Milk? Gotta get it when I need it. Can't freeze it because I have have a deer and a half and several pie fillings, tomatoes, and corn in the freezer. Just no space, and with three teens, milk goes, and it goes fast.

So, I'm heading to the market tomorrow, not to stockpile, but because I've only got one garlic clove, no parm, and only one onion.

I'm in for this except I may need to go to the market to get bananas during the week. They are a vehicle for medication for Heidi, and she won't eat them if they have a brown spot on them (EWWW!). That's more medical than food related, I'd like to think.

[JTravel]

Found a can ( on the cellar shelf) of sweet red beans (An?) used in Asian desserts. I found a recipe for microwave mochi so I will make that with a box of rice flour and fill with the beans. Yum. Those commercially made ones at Asian store are $1.25, so I'll see if I can duplicate them and have a special treat.

Edited February 19, 2009 by JTravel (log)

[JTravel]

Supper for DH turned out to be a HotDog.....at least it was a Zweigles....a Rochester tradition. 1 of 3 from freezer. With part of the jar of Bush's chili, AND Kraft Mac and Chesse. He loves that stuff. I had my most excellent Chinese soup. We shared cut up orange, one that I had zested a couple of days ago in order to make orange syrup.

We broke open a box of Tagalong Girl Scout cookies that we've had quite a while.

We shouldn't need anything for at least a week. Then maybe fresh fruit. We are in the "home" of Wegmans supermarkets and I love them.....usually get my meat there. But I shop where I am (Asian store, Day Old Bakery, Aldi's and Sam's Club) considering what I need. No special day as we are retired.

[JTravel]

Milk, in my limited experience, freezes very well.

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When we go away we always pour the last of the milk into a Lock 'N Lock and freeze it. We can use it in our tomato soup (chop out a chunk) when we arrive home at night. Or leave it out and have it for cereal and coffee next morning. Not perfect but OK.

[Chris Amirault]

I just went downstairs to see what we have in the pantry and freezer, and I'm feeling Atkins, I must say. However, the entire family -- wife, 11-year-old, 4-year-old -- are all game for the challenge. We're having a dinner party Sunday night, and that's the end, or the beginning, depending on your perspective. I've already started thinking about breads....

[Fat Guy]

Another thing I did when I focus grouped this idea was some kitchen inspections. There were a few objections that I really needed to test. Now, I have no doubt that everyone here is completely in touch with his or her kitchen. But here were some things I observed in the cases of two friends.

"We have no protein other than what we buy fresh for immediate use." When I looked around these people's kitchen last week I found: about ten cans of tuna, almost two dozen eggs, several pounds of beans, a little cheese, a pack of bacon and some frozen Hebrew National pigs in blankets -- certainly enough protein to allow a couple with one small child to have an overdose of protein for a week. And I'm sure digging deeper would have yielded more discoveries.

"We live in the Bay Area and have great access to the farmer's markets, so we just don't keep much around in our kitchen. No canned food, no frozen food, no packaged food other than pasta." Late last night (my time, that is), I asked these friends to photograph their freezer, refrigerator and cabinets and email me the photos. Their claims turned out to be dramatically false. The produce in the refrigerator, if rationed, would easily yield small but sufficient portions of fresh produce for two people every day for a week no problem. They have a WALK-IN PANTRY full of food, including lots of stuff in jars (that to me qualifies as "canned food"). And, get this, THERE WERE STEAKS IN THE FREEZER. Grass-fed, no doubt.

I'm not saying anybody in the world can do this. If you live in a tiny apartment you may really have no inventory. But before deciding you can't, take a good look around. Do you have a pantry? A cabinet that's like a pantry? Even one overhead cabinet full of food (as I do)? What's really in the freezer? Do you also have a second freezer? What about the refrigerator? Think about everything that's in there. A basket of root vegetables? A braid of garlic? A basket of fruit?

Bear in mind, I live in a New York City apartment that is not at all huge. I have a Whirlpool refrigerator-freezer that any suburbanite would consider puny. My root cellar is a plastic bin on top of said refrigerator. I have one overhead cabinet (two doors) that is my pantry, and two other cabinets that hold things like olive oil, condiments, pretzels and crackers. No walk-in pantry. No second freezer. Nothing like that. I am probably in a fairly low percentile of square footage per person for the US. And I am going to have no problem surviving without shopping. The only challenge for me will be to see how just how well I can eat.

[Fat Guy]

We had our first snafu tonight and the challenge hasn't even started. I'm actually glad this happened, because it was good for nature to take its course, but it still freaked me out:

Tonight was date night, rescheduled from earlier when we were out of town (our normal night is Monday). My mother came over to babysit and we went out. When we returned home, we debriefed my mother on all the mundane things parents need to know about bedtimes, etc. In the debriefing, it came to light that my mother and son had EATEN ALL THE MUNSTER CHEESE. I don't even know how that's possible. There was enough in there that I thought I could make several sandwiches next week, not to mention grilled cheese sandwiches. But they really went to town on it. I still have cheddar, thank goodness, but the cheese reserves have now been depleted dramatically.

We also got a dinner invitation for next week -- one that involves the consumption of an astounding amount of food. So that lessens the challenge a bit. But I'm trying to let things happen as in a normal week. So, we're going.

[petite tête de chou]

I'm in. I have many different roasts from different beasts in my freezer, tofu in the 'fridge and my pantry overfloweth. I don't foresee buying much more than a bag of raw, unsalted nuts for my husbands lunches. This will be especially interesting for me since I primarily eat fresh vegetables and fruits. But hey, change is good.

[Chufi]

I'll be following with interest, but I won't be able to play along...

It's Friday and the only fruit and vegetables I have left are:

1 lemon

5 shallots

garlic

half a cucumber, which we can't eat, because it's destined for the rat

a handful of very tired old spinach

1 wrinkled carrot.

1 bag of frozen peas in the freezer.

no potatoes.. no cheese except a tiny bit of parmesan.

no meat in the freezer.

plenty of grains, pasta, flours, rice etc. But without additional fruit and vegetables we won't make it through the week.

[sparrowgrass]

I just did this. We had about 5 inches of sleet and 3 inches of snow on Jan. 25, which kept me stuck on the hill for about 5 days, and when I did get out, I couldn't get my truck back up my quarter mile driveway for another week. I have a bad knee, so I wasn't about to haul groceries up--it was all I could do to get up and down empty handed.

I had everything I needed--flour and yeast for bread, home canned green beans and tomato sauce,frozen corn from the garden, some packages of chicken and many, many small containers of soup and chili. I think I ran out of celery and onions before the 2 weeks was up, but I survived.

The dogs and chickens had it a little rougher--the dogs were down to eating milkbones by the end of the second week, and the chix survived on sunflower seeds and leftovers.

[Fat Guy]

The observer effect definitely kicked in today. I'm not supposed to start this process until Sunday but I just did a big lettuce-washing project and couldn't keep from letting next week's plan influence this week's action. I washed a head of lettuce and have one more head of lettuce left. So that's going to be it for lettuce between now and next Sunday. Normally, when I wash lettuce I'm pretty wasteful. I just throw away the outer leaves and any leaves with visible defects. Today I was much more careful. I used a knife and removed bad spots and brown edges from the outer leaves but I salvaged the rest. Anyplace else I saw a problem I was very selective about targeting only the affected area. As a result, I probably increased by lettuce yield by 20% or more. Sorry about that.

I also got a dinner invitation for Tuesday night and have been thinking about how to integrate meals like that into my plan. What I decided is that I'm going to make the governing principles of my week 1- no grocery shopping, and 2- no spending money on food. Because I dabble in food journalism, however, I have various free food opportunities (the eat-free-in-NYC blogger should be so lucky as to be me) and I'm not going to reject all of those when they come my way. I'll reject some, though, because otherwise I'd just be eating out every night. And I'm not going to do any work on a couple of newspaper stories I'm writing that will require a lot of dining out. I'll work on those the following week.

[Chris Amirault]

The observer effect definitely kicked in today. I'm not supposed to start this process until Sunday but I just did a big lettuce-washing project and couldn't keep from letting next week's plan influence this week's action. I washed a head of lettuce and have one more head of lettuce left. So that's going to be it for lettuce between now and next Sunday. Normally, when I wash lettuce I'm pretty wasteful. I just throw away the outer leaves and any leaves with visible defects. Today I was much more careful. I used a knife and removed bad spots and brown edges from the outer leaves but I salvaged the rest. Anyplace else I saw a problem I was very selective about targeting only the affected area. As a result, I probably increased by lettuce yield by 20% or more.

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I think that the psychological effects are going to be very interesting. When I looked at my pantry and freezer, I realized that I have a "back of the X" problem: stuff migrates to the back and then I basically forget about until it's got freezer burn or has expired by a few years. When I get started, I think I'm going to invert the typical order and see what I can make with those out-of-the-rotation back benchers.

[weinoo]

You really have to plan ahead for a lot of the freezer stuff. some of that product takes 2 or 3 days to defrost properly in the fridge.

Me, I shop pretty much on a daily or every-other-day basis, yet still manage to have a bulging refrigerator and freezer.

[Fat Guy]

stuff migrates to the back

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Man are you right about that. Look what I just found by going into the deeper strata of the freezer:

Those aren't even old. Dave (the Cook) sent them to me in December. But the convection patterns in my freezer were such that they got behind the brisket and the chicken and disappeared.

Perhaps we can all start thinking about what the heck I'm going to do with two frozen, smoked trout next week.

I also wanted to illustrate my freezer. I think after you see it you will agree that, by American standards, it is exceptionally small. It's pretty much just the next level up in size from a half-height dorm-room refrigerator-freezer's internal freezer compartment. Maybe it's a relatively large freezer by Japanese standards, I don't know. But 100% of Americans I know who don't live in New York City have larger freezers, and most New Yorkers I know who are not students have similarly sized or larger ones. Yet, my freezer is so full of crap I'm getting concerned that at the end of next week it will still be overflowing. We may need to add a potluck to the calendar.

[slkinsey]

Hey, that's bigger than my freezer!

[Chufi]

I think that the psychological effects are going to be very interesting.

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In many ways. I've been doing a similar project for about a month now: shopping as little as possible, finishing up what's in the pantry, with the goal to save at least a hundred euros a month on grocery shopping for 3 months (incentive: a 300 euro plane ticket I bought and could not really afford).

Anyway, earlier this week I made a fantastic lasagna that we ate only a third of. The next day I had a friend coming for dinner and normally, I would feel ashamed to serve someone left over lasagna (not that it wouldn't taste good, but it doesn't look very nice when you're serving it) and I would have gone out and bought stuff for another dinner. But I checked myself, did not shop, served the lasagna anyway, and it was so good, and there was nothing to be embarrassed about.

Edited February 20, 2009 by Chufi (log)

[Fat Guy]

Hey, that's bigger than my freezer!

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I was actually wondering about the size of your freezer. Do you have the ability to extract the make and model of your unit and find out the actual cubic footage? I'm going to do the same with mine.

[Fat Guy]

Okay so earlier I said I have a small Whirlpool refrigerator-freezer. I actually have a Maytag. That's a good gauge of the reliability of the information you're getting from me.

Anyway, here are the specs:

MAYTAG MTB1956BEB Refrigerator

Model Number:  MTB1956BEB  Style:  Top Freezer w/o Ice thru door

Brand:  MAYTAG  Defrost:  Automatic

Manufacturer:  MAYTAG  Built-in Ice Maker:  No

Access Type:  Door 

Capacity and Size Measures

Fresh Food Volume:  13.08 (cu. ft.)  Height:  65 (inches)

Freezer Volume:  5.38 (cu. ft.)  Width:  30 (inches)

Total Volume:  18.46 (cu. ft.)  Depth:  29 (inches)

So for the freezer it's 5.38 cubic feet, which for those of you who speak metric is 0.15 cubic meters.

[nakji]

Your freezer looks to be the size of my fridge. But surely that is a small freezer by North American standards. The spec sticker on my fridge/freezer says it will hold up to 30 kg of food.

As for the smoked trout, can I recommend a maze-gohan? Cook some short grain rice as you would normally, flake your smoked trout, and mix it through your cooked rice. Mould in a ramekin, and turn it out on a plate; top with black sesame seeds or katsuobushi. Bonus of being able to use up some random Asian condiments in the back of your cupboard.

[Fat Guy]

How would you recommend restoring the trout so as to make it flake-able? Just stick it in the fridge for a couple of days? Defrost in warm water in the sink? Leave on the countertop? Microwave?

[nakji]

It's a whole fish, right?

My impulse would be to defrost it in the sink with water or in the fridge for a day or so. I'm no fish expert - I always err on the side of caution, so once it's thawed, I'd probably heat in up in a fry pan. Could you split it down the middle, grill or fry it, then pull the central bones out and flake it?

You could serve this with miso soup and quick pickled vegetables -a great way to make cucumbers you have today turn into side dishes later in the week. You could also serve this with some Japanese-style omelette and frozen vegetables tossed in sesame dressing.

[andiesenji]

Dinner last evening went well and my guests are intrigued with the "project" and have volunteered to test anything I am willing to cook.

To prepare for future meals, I transferred a duck (Saturday dinner) and a package of oxtails (Sunday dinner) from the freezer to the fridge to defrost. The pantry yielded a qt jar of peaches and a pint of apricot preserves, both canned in '07, which will go into a fruit and cheese tart for Sunday brunch.

I have a couple of other little cooking projects going today so will round out my menus in the intervals of preparing almond milk and drying the solids to make almond meal.

Dinner tonight will be homemade egg noodles, buttered, as a side to grilled trout with a grilled tomato and a green salad. (Dining alone.)

[Dave the Cook]

How would you recommend restoring the trout so as to make it flake-able? Just stick it in the fridge for a couple of days? Defrost in warm water in the sink? Leave on the countertop? Microwave?

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It's a whole fish, right?

My impulse would be to defrost it in the sink with water or in the fridge for a day or so. I'm no fish expert - I always err on the side of caution, so once it's thawed, I'd probably heat in up in a fry pan. Could you split it down the middle, grill or fry it, then pull the central bones out and flake it?

. . . .

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If you need it in a hurry, defrosting in cool running water will thaw it in about 30 minutes; cold, rather than warm or hot water will minimize moisture loss. Otherwise, overnight in the fridge should do it. The fish is already cooked, so flakes are pretty much guaranteed either way.

[Fat Guy]

Defrost in the Foodsaver bag, though, right?

[Fat Guy]

Taking further inventory I am also not thrilled with my fresh-herb situation. I didn't buy any new fresh herbs last time I shopped. All I have is a very little bit of decaying thyme in the refrigerator, a small amount of basil that I froze a couple of weeks before because it was similarly decaying, and the usual dried herbs that most people have. I guess I'm going to be relying mostly on the dried herbs.