Monday, November 19, 2012

Abundance

I was recently jolted and humbled when I surveyed the obscene amount of food I have on hand, while many others often go hungry. Some of my stash went to a food bank, but they have rules about Best By dates and dented cans, so many things that I am perfectly comfortable eating can't be donated. I abhor waste, so I had to make a plan.


Here's my story: When I was on my quilt-making kick, I eventually amassed enough fabric to cover Montana in patchwork. I moved on to scrapbooking and my supplies now equal the inventory of a small scrapbook store. A friend introduced me to a tempting discount grocery and my garage has morphed into an impressive supermarket. I don't consider myself a hoarder because I do use the products and give some of my creations as gifts and sometimes even give away the raw materials. But, there is no getting around it, I am a collector....a hunter and gatherer.

I finally succumbed to the reality that I was no longer interested in producing 40 quilts a year (not that I ever came close) and made an impressive fabric donation to the local Habitat for Humanity thrift store. My husband wants me to switch to digital scrapbooking and I have made a few books in that fashion, but mainly I'm still doing it the old-fashioned, hands-on way because I enjoy the social and creative aspects it offers. Besides, I have to salve my guilt by using at least a fraction of the reams of cardstock and file cabinets full of those cute (and, therefore, irresistible to me) little embellishments. That brings me to the food stash, wherein lies the problem that eats away at me (no pun intended). While some in our world have very little to eat, I have too much...and I'm not using it like I should. This being Thanksgiving week, the guilt over my abundance of food is somehow compounded.

The food gathering began innocently enough. We have to eat, after all, so grocery shopping is a necessary thing to do, but not something I'd particularly enjoyed doing--until my friend Susan invited me to accompany her on a shopping trip to a small discount grocery not far from my home. Actually, she'd been trying to get me there for a year or two but, for reasons I can't recall, I'd never been (good thing---I'd have two more years worth of groceries to deal with now). The store can't be seen from the street. It's tucked behind a small strip of businesses and you have to know it's there. How word gets around, I'm not sure, because the store doesn't advertise. So, there I was in this modest little store, just 4 aisles (merchandise on both sides), plus a small room for refrigerated and frozen items and another for a wide assortment of goods from canned soups to spices, from black licorice to day-old bread. The store carries overstocked items, some late date products and a few dented canned goods. On my first visit I was bowled over to find many of my favorite gourmet items (Silver Palate, Bonne Maman, Rao's) at a fraction of the high prices in other stores. I was hooked.I will reveal more of my acquired addiction in a future post. For now, I will say that I quickly filled a good-sized kitchen pantry and an entire wall of shelves in my garage with my treasure-hunting finds. Although organized at first, the garage shelves became disorderly over time. Of course, I was using these wonderful products but I was replacing them (and then some) faster than I was using them and running out of room to store them, thus the chaos.

A couple weeks ago I went on an organization mission that took two full days and part of a third, and the results are glorious! Everything is arranged in categories: baking, soups and broths, Mexican, Asian, Indian and so on. It is beautiful. But, as I admired a food supply that would probably sustain us through Armageddon (supposing it takes awhile for good to defeat evil), I had an epiphany that has motivated this personal challenge: to build meals around what is on my shelves, buying only fresh products (meats, dairy, vegetables and fruits). I have plenty of meat in my large upright freezer, so I shouldn't even have to purchase meat for awhile. Of course, Thanksgiving will have to be an exception because I would be stoned if I failed to make the dishes the family expects to be on the table....and, we do enjoy eating out from time to time so we will still do that.

The purpose of this blog is not to become the Julie and Julia blogger, or even for anyone else to read it. I am doing this to keep myself honest and record what I use from the shelves, the dishes I make using these products and how they are received. So, here I go! Tonight's dinner was Spicy Citrus Glazed Shrimp, using a Good Earth boxed dinner. The shrimp is from my freezer, everything else (seasonings, sauces and angel hair pasta) is from the box. There was also cooked fresh spinach. The box and the large (1 lb.) bag of fresh spinach are both from the discount grocery. BTW, how does a giant 1 lb. bag of raw spinach end up as 1 cup of cooked spinach?

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