Occasionally I idly wonder how long one could live on the food we stockpile in the pantry. Or larder. (What's the difference between a pantry and a larder?) And why do we keep so much food? It's not as if we live several hours from the nearest supermarket, as does T.'s best friend M. - who lives somewhere in outback New South Wales and has to drive two hours for a cup of coffee not made by herself. There's a store not a hundred metres from our front door.
Moving house provides an ideal opportunity to run down stocks. I've already thrown out dozens of empty glass jars - why do we keep empty glass jars? - and other hoards. An entire drawer of plastic bags. A box of string, twine and that plastic fishnet stuff that onions come in - all useful for tying up tomato plants. All out. We can collect again at the new place. Or not.
And the food: dried beans and peas. One of every colour. They look pretty on the shelf. Yellow split peas. Green ones. Red lentils. Brown lentils. Brown rice. White rice. Arborio rice. Brown organic arborio rice. Sushi rice. A big bag of A-1 Basmati rice, imported by Ravi Imports from Manzoor & Company, Lahore, Pakistan. Best by 10-2005. Best get cooking curry!
Cans by the score: tomatoes - Italian - I recently stocked up at 49 cents a can in Sydney Road - you can't beat that. Tuna: in springwater, in olive oil, in brine. With chili, with lemongrass, with tomato salsa, with vinaigrette, with pepper. Once, tuna came in only one flavour - tuna. Now there are hundreds. We've got the complete set. There's probably even tuna with chocolate. I didn't read all the labels.
More beans - chick peas, red beans, white beans, four bean mix, baked beans. Corn. Beetroot. Sliced peaches. Halved apricots. Quartered pears (yum, I love canned pears - I used to make a dessert with pears, red wine and vanilla ice-cream, haven't done it for years). Soups: cream of chicken, cream of asparagus, cream of mushroom.
Then there's the freezer. I suppose we should make inroads on that before moving. God knows what's in there.
Moving house provides an ideal opportunity to run down stocks. I've already thrown out dozens of empty glass jars - why do we keep empty glass jars? - and other hoards. An entire drawer of plastic bags. A box of string, twine and that plastic fishnet stuff that onions come in - all useful for tying up tomato plants. All out. We can collect again at the new place. Or not.
And the food: dried beans and peas. One of every colour. They look pretty on the shelf. Yellow split peas. Green ones. Red lentils. Brown lentils. Brown rice. White rice. Arborio rice. Brown organic arborio rice. Sushi rice. A big bag of A-1 Basmati rice, imported by Ravi Imports from Manzoor & Company, Lahore, Pakistan. Best by 10-2005. Best get cooking curry!
Cans by the score: tomatoes - Italian - I recently stocked up at 49 cents a can in Sydney Road - you can't beat that. Tuna: in springwater, in olive oil, in brine. With chili, with lemongrass, with tomato salsa, with vinaigrette, with pepper. Once, tuna came in only one flavour - tuna. Now there are hundreds. We've got the complete set. There's probably even tuna with chocolate. I didn't read all the labels.
More beans - chick peas, red beans, white beans, four bean mix, baked beans. Corn. Beetroot. Sliced peaches. Halved apricots. Quartered pears (yum, I love canned pears - I used to make a dessert with pears, red wine and vanilla ice-cream, haven't done it for years). Soups: cream of chicken, cream of asparagus, cream of mushroom.
Then there's the freezer. I suppose we should make inroads on that before moving. God knows what's in there.
I totally know what you mean. I guess it makes me feel better to have 2 trillion lentils around.
ReplyDeleteI love it when the boy scouts or some other group leave a note on my porch, offering to pick up any canned goods I leave on my porch the next day. Then they donate the food to charity for me and everybody wins!
We could probably feed a small impoverished nation between our two larders, Beth.
ReplyDeleteBut they'd have to like lentils.
It's a feeling of security and calmness, knowing you can throw dinner(s) together without having to step foot outside. I like to say it's because of my living in earthquake country or perhaps the Mormon background, but it's probably just some combination of laziness (I dislike shopping) and gluttony.
ReplyDeleteEllen, no earthquake country excuse for me. But I think hoarding string, paper bags and glass jars comes from my parents who lived through postwar austerity and their parents who lived through the Depression.
ReplyDeleteI must admit to a slight feeling of sadness when read of you throwing out all the plastic bags. They have become gold like to me because I don't get them from the supermarket anymore and discovered i had 101 uses for recycling them...yes my parents were offspring of the depression (or there abouts). I once counted the items in my mum's bathroom cupboard - 32 rolls of toilet paper, 12 new tubes of toothpaste, 14 cakes of soap. I refuse to hoard string.
ReplyDeleteBut food is another matter!
I use old dried beans (which face would probably survive a nuclear war and still be edible if you had the water) for blind baking. I have some kidney beans I have reused a zillion times and still do the job of weighting down the pastry.
Actually I didn't throw out the plastic bags, AOF - as you say, they are like gold now that supermarket bags are being phased out (about time too) - I put them all in another bag and took them to the beach house to use as pooper scoopers when walking Goldie along the beach!
ReplyDelete