We’ve just moved across town and I finally have my land!
After multiple moves in married life I have come to prefer the across-town variety. There is no imperative that the contents of any given box make sense—you can figure it out on the other side. You can overstuff them because they do not necessarily need to be stacked and will be opened and filed swiftly. I can do a little everyday.
We got the keys while Wilson was out of town and I was eager to begin the move myself. We decided to take what we knew we needed and to camp out on air mattresses while we wait for the big, strong man in our lives to come to the rescue with real furniture. A little of this, a little of that.
When it came to my pantry items, I haven’t any idea why I brought what I did and why I left what I did. Perhaps I was acting as referee to our three beautiful children at the time of pantry-packing; my distraction led to coffee with no coffee filters, bread baking ingredients minus the honey, my Guatamalan tortilla skillet (a gift from my bread baking mentor, who was once a missionary there) but no tortilla press, and nothing for either fruit or snack except for one oversized jar of dehydrated peaches. Super yummy always, but the kids have wearied of those three times a day.
This is what I have learned: I only need half of what I have! My cooking very likely may be better. Each meal takes much more forethought and creativity, and I’m enjoying it when I would have certainly guessed it to be stressful. For instance, this morning we ate boiled eggs, some leftover fruit salad, and hash browns made from dehydrated potatoes. That’s a wonderful, hot breakfast that did not take more than 10 minutes to assemble. Last night at dinner we ate the 2nd half of The World’s Largest Can of pinto beans—I simply made them into refried beans and added some salsa seasoning.
I had a clearanced pack of ribs (literally TWO ribs) that cost a whopping $1.48. So I boiled and shredded that meat into the refried beans and whipped up some fresh tortillas (sans tortilla press—oh-my-goodness, did I miss it!). Again, the whole meal took only 20 minutes, and was extremely healthy (with a frozen veggie on the side), and I fed 4 of us for probably a GRAND total of $2.50 ($3.50 if you count the small glasses of milk)! Not per person—for the whole meal!
When the kids are playing in the other room and I’m scanning my bare pantry shelves, I imagine the t.v. cameras and announcer—I’m on the Food Network, on some weird quasi-reality game show… “You have 1 can of tuna, 2 raw eggs, and some carrot sticks—GO!” It has been a wonderful challenge and this is what I have learned:
1) You can substitute even staples—barley or wheat berries for breakfast instead of oatmeal, honey for brown sugar or molasses for honey, etc.
2) Rotate which spices are in the front of your spice cabinet—you have gotten into a rut and don’t even realize it!
3) Fewer Ingredients to save money–If you calculate price-per-plate, the more ingredients you are adding, the higher the cost! I know that is basic common sense, but we all sneak in a pinch-of-this or a shake-of-that without doing the math on salt, basil, and so forth. Very often we overdo it on spices or ingredients anyway.
4) Back to the Basics–Most of us have succumbed to the belief that complex is fancy. We have watched too many cooking shows! Some of the yummiest things are just the basics (homemade tortillas with nothing but wheat, butter, water, and salt).
5) Don’t overthink it! Sometimes dinner is staring at you on those shelves, but you miss it entirely because you are trying to see something that is not there (“if only there were tomatoes”, and so forth).
So I hope that I’ve encouraged you today. A favorite game of mine in the past is to see how long I can “eat down” what is in the pantry without a single trip to the store…and then the cheese runs out, it’s game-over. Get creative, worry less about the conventional meal that your family might be used to getting from you, and experiment!
—Chaya