Oct 24, 2008
The Daily Poverty Post.
You are looking at a package of Trader Joe’ Swiss chard, and it is in the trash. It’s in the trash because it went bad before Bossy and her husband had the chance to cook with it, which leads Bossy to the subject of today’s Poverty post: ??!!!#@$$$&%$^&@#@!!!!
Last year Bossy wrote about her surplus food issues, but given the state of her wallet where state equals hello is anybody in there? Bossy is committed to address this surplus food issue and how it relates to her debt, where committed equals when they finally get here, lord hoping they bring a straight jacket.
Meanwhile, Bossy will wait right here while you click the above link for an example of what her freezer and cabinets currently look like, because even though those photos were taken last year, there isn’t much improvement because = crazy.
Each day when Bossy goes to the food market and struggles not to spend any unnecessary money, what she seems to forget is she has enough food in her freezer and cabinets to live off for a month. Or more? And precisely this is what Bossy will determine and report back to you, beginning now until her food runs out!
Well maybe not beginning now, because boy does Bossy have a cheap and delicious soup recipe to share with you that requires lots of fresh ingredients from the market and not a single freezer item!
Meet you back here over the weekend!
we have enough food for 2 months in both our pantry and freezer.
we keep a running shopping list in the kitchen; use an item up, write it on the list.
we also keep a freezer inventory on the computer so we don’t overbuy/exceed the capacity of said freezer.
I shop only 2 times/month at aldi’s and redner’s; going to these stores has helped me get more bang for my buck. every other store in my ‘hood (genuardi’s, giant, acme) charges too damn much for the same items.
“this is joe your greengrocer with your tip for the day” – does bossy remember this?
Ike took care of my freezer issues by taking my electricity for two weeks, but I SO understand the cupboards. We’ve been trying the same thing, and slowly but surely are making progress. At least looking over the cupboards frequently is keeping up from buying too much we already had.
Here’s an idea I try sometimes. Go to allrecipes.com and type in the ingredients you have and need to use, and then decide what to make for dinner based on that. I usually go the other way around: “What am I in the moooood for? I think I want Mexican. Oops, nothing Mexican in my overflowing pantry, guess I’d better go to the store” then I buy Mexican and pick up a few other things while I’m there that are on sale or also sound good to me, and then I have more things to stuff in my overflowing pantry. So picking recipes based on the ingredients I already have on hand is a way to avoid that. Assuming I’m in the mooooood for it. (When did food become about my mood and not about filling a hunger?)
Sigh. Anyway. Goodluck!
We are very short on money all the time but for a 3 month period last spring we were scraping the bottom of the barrell. I was determined to not spend any money at the grocery store except for milk and bread. I shopped from my cupboards and freezers and for 3 months we spent only $120 in groceries. Mind you it was not fancy cooking and some nights we were all “What the Hell are we eating?” but it worked for us. And it cleaned a Hell of a lot out of our freezers and our cupboards were bare!
Oh dear Bossy- you are preaching to the choir. We, and by “we” I mean “I”, spend so much time and money at the grocery it’s criminal. I feel your pain and raise you two packages of organic baby lettuces.
Menu planning has been a huge help to me in saving $$$. (And it took throwing away a STEAK that had gone bad to really drive this through my stubborn skull).
My biggest splurge of the week is fresh fish from the Farmers Market on Sunday (I get a vendor discount but it’s still $7-$10, even buying the least expensive variety). I spend an additional $10 on fresh fruit and veg (I start with a 20 dollar bill and see how far it will stretch after buying fish), then come home and plan the week around what I have in hand, supplementing from the cupboard. We eat bean soup once a week (lentils are $0.99/bag = 4 batches of soup) and I pack leftovers every day for our lunches. I still spend a horrifying amount on groceries and *cough* organic milk/booze *cough* but it’s a start…
I’m right there with you. Food shopping is an addiction for me. I . must . go . every . week. I did just send tons of canned goods to school with my daughter for her school food drive.
Boy, do your cabinets and refrigerator look like mine! My spices alone have multiplied and there is no longer room in the cabinet for all the duplicates!
I have cleaned out my freezer and am using what I have in there, rather than buying new.
3 large jars of cumin, 3 large jars of cinnamon, and 1 JUMBO jar of cinnamon later and I realized something important.
I MUST INSPECT MY CABINETS CAREFULLY BEFORE MAKING MY GROCERY LIST.
I’m with you, Bossy. I just need to actually DO this!
I went the entire month of February last year just living off of food in my cabinets and freezer. I bought milk once (not a huge milk drinker in the first place), and some bread. But I had lots of frozen veggies and fruits so I was actually mostly able to eat pretty well-balanced meals. It did get hard towards the end of the month, but it was an experiment worth repeating. It’s amazing the stuff I stocked up…twelve million cans of corn? Check. Cranberries from two Thanksgivings ago? Check. Jello? Check.
I wish I could cook everything in my cabinets/fridge, but I can’t because they’re actually Grandmaw’s cabinets/fridge and she is a total food-hoarder. And she’s very old, so I try not to upset her too much. But just to give you an idea – the cabinets are stuffed, and we are using her son’s childhood BEDROOM as an extra pantry. Plus, an extra refrigerator downstairs. Terrible!
Bossy, you are not alone. Since gas prices went up, we have been trying to live off of what is in the pantry and the freezer. I keep an inventory list on my freezer and cross things off when I take them out. When the list gets too crazy, I go through the freezer and make a new list. There are also a lot of coupon sites on the internet where you can print off your own coupons. I make my own pasta sauce in the summer and freeze it in serving size bags. I also make my own applesauce and freeze my own berries. Berries are so expensive in the store! I wish wine wasn’t so expensive. Now is the time we really need it the most!!!!
We just started our “use it all up” campaign a couple of weeks ago. Our garage freezer needed to be cleaned out and defrosted so we could begin our garage enclosure project. It’s amazing how much less I spend on groceries when I do not have to purchase meat. The hard part is remembering to thaw it out ahead of time……I’m getting better at this! What kills my grocery budget? Wine.
thats ok bossy. Today I went to the Italian Market to save some pennies on sweet potatoes.
I didn’t see the “very hidden” fire hydrant.
ticket= $51.00.
I won’t get over this any too soon.
I am horrified to admit that I have this *thing* with having to have my cupboards and freezers full, at all times. Right when we’re trying to seriously cut back. Oiy! I did manage to put together a fantastic 16 bean soup (believe me, I’ve got way more than 16 kinds of dry beans in the house, I just couldn’t identify the various beans in UNLABELED cannisters! What if I don’t like the other ones?) with beans on hand, ham hocks from the freezer, canned tomatoes, and all sorts of other stuff I had on hand. Hubby will be thankful he doesn’t have to stop at the store on the way home to pick up something!
Mmmmm, it smells so good, just simmering away on the stove.
I have this same problem and I’ve always wondered if I wouldn’t do better by adopting the “European” routine of shopping each day for the evening meal.
Then I think, “Crap! I hate to shop once every two weeks, no way could I commit to a daily stop at the grocery.”
We have the full-pantry sickness @ our house too. I think it comes from being so poor growing up, but nonetheless, I have in fact an “on-deck circle” where I keep a spare of all staple items (ketchup, syrup etc.) in the pantry at all times so to prevent running out. The original idea was that we would have ONE spare on the on-deck circle of each staple item.
However, we too now have three new bottles of ketchup and I believe I just saw two unopened Costco-sized jars of cinnamon. Ridiculous.
I can say that we do eat out of the freezer more often than not. Our problem isn’t running to the store all the time, it’s just buying things in bulk when we do go, so we end up with far more than we will ever need.
I grew up in a house full of boys, so nothing ever lasted for very long. Which equals empty fridge and freezer all the time. Then I met my husband, and almost died from excitement the first time I saw his mother’s refrigerator/ freezer/cupboards. They were bursting! I thought I would live the rest of my life fat and happy with an enormous selection of all things fattening and delicious. And when we got married, it was good for awhile. We’d do a huge shopping trip together twice a month and buy and eat to our heart’s content. We even bagged faster than the cashier could ring us up! Then came the kids, and that was the end of that. Kid stuff filled the fridge…gogurts, baby food, etc. Then the kids got older and my husband discovered his own version of weight watchers plus south beach, and now our fridge looks like that of a bunch of college guys in an off campus apartment. Nope, nothing but milk, fake butter, spinach, some other veggies, and a few pathetic leftovers in there. The freezer is filled with chicken breasts, weight watchers fudge bars, veggies, and lean cuisines. It’s BAD. On the flip side, since I’m way too lazy to do the food shopping, or even care anymore about what we have in the house, my husband goes to the supermarket at 7 a.m. every Saturday morning. And I’ve learned that if it’s not on the list, he’s not getting it. So the best way to clear out that freezer and cupboard? Forget about taste and just eat to live. It’s the lazy man’s preferred way of eating.
i woke up at 3am last Thursday – and decided I needed to write down everything in my pantry and refrigerator.. two hours later – I had completed the pantry – but didn’t get to the frig. I am constantly throwing away un-used produce and buying duplicate stuff.
I think this is a sign from god that you shouldn’t buy swiss chard.
ewww…and I even like brussels sprouts
I don’t even know what chard is. But if it tastes like it’s name, maybe it’s best that you threw it out. I probably shouldn’t judge food names; I eat things like grits.
A Poverty Party reference can be found on today’s post at amycates.blogspot.com.
What the ??? How did that stray apostrophe sneak in there in my comment above? It should read: “But if it tastes like ITS name, maybe it’s best that you threw it out…” Stupid comment tool. Must be ITS fault.
I have index cards inside the cabinets and pantry door that list the stuff IN them. I do the same with my freezer. This has helped me overcome your problem. No more finding I have six boxes of corn starch or two packages of chicken breasts riddled with freezer burn.
I have this problem too–like you, I am a work on progress.
Organizing and labeling my cupboards really helped. Once I did this, I could really see what we had. I also stopped buying bagged salads because they seem to go bad before I can use them and heads of lettuce are generally less expensive. The final thing — grocery shopping online. In the Portland (Oregon) area, we have a great, local store that delivers for $10. I can see what I have in my cart as I go and check my cupboards to make sure we really need 24 cans of black beans and 83 cartons of soy milk.
I never thought of putting uncooked pasta and cheerios in the freezer. Is there a reason?
I never buy anything unless it’s on sale or it’s a basic product like milk or bread. Anything else, we buy on sale and stock up if it’s a really good price. Sure, my freezer and cupboard seem like they’re overflowing, but, some weeks when I look at the grocery flyers and see nothing I like in my cheapo price range, I dig into that freezer and get away with spending only about 50$ than week to feed two adults with healthy appetites.
P.S.: I love swiss chard, even uncooked…!
i hate to say it: menu planning. because our freezer/pantry used to look just like that and i will say, we throw out a lot less produce than we used to…not that i’m still not guilty of a smooshy eggplant every now and then.
Yes, I know this problem. What compounds it for us is that we buy our meat directly from the farmer every 6 weeks, so we had to start making lists of what we’re putting in the freezer so we don’t lose it in there. One thing we did has made a huge difference though: I have asked my husband to do the grocery shopping. He goes once a week, we make a plan and list before, and he just doesn’t do impulse purchases. That really helped.
Finally -an area where I can lend bossy my expertise!
My mantra is – buy the least amount of things in packages…
To krg:
Indian Fucking Meal Fucking Moths!!! 21 day gestation period.
May they never happen to you or anyone else.
And this is why I post my boring menu plans on every Monday. Otherwise, I go to the place your son used to work and spend a whole paycheck on stuff I have to cook fast because I already had similar stuff at home that I was too hungry and tired to find.
Thank you for fessing up to remind me I’m not alone.
Happy week.
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