Week One: Eating Down the Pantry

My husband and I went through the bank of shelves in the pantry that is four feet high and eight feet wide. He moved stuff out to the kitchen table one shelf at a time and cleaned the shelf while I sorted. It took us a couple of hours but such satisfaction when it was done!

I was surprised how little there was that had to go: a couple of items past their expiry dates and a couple of pest-infested containers. I moved all of the pasta out of bags and boxes to sturdier glass, heavy-duty plastic, and metal containers. We've not seen any mice in the pantry this year (though a couple died in our trap under the kitchen sink), but this should protect some stuff that was pretty vulnerable otherwise. I consolidated a few packages of things. I also wrote on the kitchen white board things that are a priority to use up.

Food this week that used up some things:

• lasagna: I had the cook-before-use lasagna noodles so I made a big lasagna with tofu, cheese, grass-fed beef, dried veg, and -- of course-- three pints of homemade tomato sauce. We had two meals of it this week and one lunch for me; two containers for two more meals went in the freezer.
• corn-tomato soup: I had two lunches out of this using a corn chowder mix I had on hand with some left-over stewed tomatoes
• lentil soup: I had some mix I bagged up a couple of Christmases ago as well as some dry sausage and more dried veg. With this years tomato stock we got a very hearty and nourishing soup out of it. We have one more evening meal and couple of lunches left.

Groceries actually purchased this week: milk, half-and-half (I use it in making yogurt), organic mushrooms, red and green peppers, zucchini. Total spent: $11.53 The milk and mushrooms should last us two weeks.