The Great Pantry Experiment Kicks Off!

The other day I went to Trader Joe's to stock up on ingredients. I'm a sucker for their simmer sauces, their jarred olives-- the stuff that makes cooking easier. Except that I like to cook from scratch, from what's available now, and I seem to forget this when I'm at Trader Joe's. So I come home to find that I'm now the proud owner of not one, but five jars of simmer sauce, about 3 jars of different honeys, 4 kinds of chutney... ::Sigh::. Just like so many people we feel the need to stock up, like we'll never get to Trader Joe's again... but the reality is that when we go back, we'll likely have the same stuff we stocked up on last time, and we'll just be going back for more. And the worst part is that our bill is about twice what it is when we go to our fab local market, DeKalb Farmers Market, to do our weekly produce and protein shop.

So. I'm taking it upon myself to save myself, my husband and Lily, our dog, from a pantry filled to the brim with overpriced chutney: we're dedicating ourselves to cooking from our pantry, and cooking down to the very last drop, if we can. Of course, we can't live off chutney, so we've got to lay down some ground rules. Here are the things we're deciding are "on limits" to buy:

Protein
Dairy
Produce
Grains, like bread. In fact, just bread.

Basically, perishables.

Of course, part of this challenge is also cooking through what we have in our fridge and our freezer(s) (we have two; the previous owners left their full freezer downstairs). We haven't taken inventory of what's in there yet (and there's a load, let me tell you) but to make this all official we did take inventory of our pantry and had some pretty exciting discoveries. Like, we need to make vermicelli stat, preferably with jerk seasoning. If I figure out how to attach the doc I will, otherwise I'll just have to post it, cut and paste.

The first thing we wanted to do when we finished our inventory was go out to dinner. Danger, Will Robinson! This isn't for the faint of heart and, being dedicated troopers, we ultimately decided to use one of our stir fry sauces to create an asian stir fry for a quick dinner.

The upside of all of this is obvious: we'll save a load of money, we'll maybe figure out how to use some of the exciting packaged items we seem so drawn to in the stores (what does one do with rose water? just puddings?), and, of course, we'll make room for more.

As I have the attention span of a flea, I'm hoping that some people out there in the universe who share our plight will join us in our cause. We can push each other, like a weight watchers support group.

My intention is to keep my pantry list up to date, and I'll also have to take inventory of what we have in our freezer shortly and keep that up to date as well. We'll carefully monitor what's coming in, and if it doesn't meet our requirements for items we can procure, there better be a pretty darned good reason (such as my parents coming for birthday dinner next weekend. Chutney, anyone?).

I'll also post about any new recipes I come up with, making use of the weirdo ingredients in my pantry like tapioca flour. What the heck was I thinking?

Game on, fellow food hoarders!