Embroidery of Thoughts

I often find myself looking for whatever food in the pantry or in the fridge, you know just to cook whatever I can come up with. I'm sure I am not the only one who has lots of stuff in the cupboard, canned goods, seasoning mixes, boxed foods that just sits there, until their expiration dates. I am bad about that sometimes. You know how you would just grab a can of this and that, and when you get home you put them in the pantry, cupboard and forget about them. I do that sometimes. I would grab a can of corn, a can of fruit, even those seasoning mixes in envelopesand store them in the pantry. Sometimes I would forget about them till they get old and moldy. Since we last moved I actually dug them up and I couldn't believe what I had in my cupboards. Ancient, antiques canned goods and pickles and seasoning mixes. Some of them I had been searching but couldn't find them when I needed them. Well, I tossed them all to the garbage, seems that I have acquired on of the American habits - wasting food. And now in our new place I try not to buy any canned goods or seasoning mixes that I wouldn't use. It's one of my strategy of trying to eat healthy, I try to buy fresh stuff. Although it's unavoidable that I would grab a can of mushroom or a can of olives, tomato sauce and all the other stuff that are used for quick food preparation like Spaghetti and pasta recipes.

Well, ocassionally, I would make goulash, I was actually surprised that I found recipes for goulash. My goulash is actually quite different, really it's anything you can find in the fridge and toss them altogether in a pan, pot, as soup or stir fry. I made goulash for lunch with instant chicken noodles with broth, I cut up some left over chicken breast from yesterday's baked chicken and refried it, and tossed up some baby bokchoy. And then tossed them up with the noodles, broth and all. It was actually pretty good. I am trying to use up left over foods, more often we would toss our left over, so I try to fix foods just enough for me and hubby, but sometimes, my calculation is sometimes bigger than what we can fit in our tummys. During garbage pick-ups I would have to toss all our left over for the entire week. All wilted or spoiled vegetable and old stuff. I think it is a great practice, not the tossing of food or wasting of food but to clean up the fridge and pantry every once in a while to get rid of expired and old food stuff. It would actually drive away roaches breeding deep in the stock of food. You know when foods sometimes are not moved for many months, after sometime roaches and other insects breed under them. Not that I know exactly where they are coming from.

So, next time when you find yourself looking for spaces to fit in your groceries, maybe try cleaning up, toss old and expired goods to make room for all your groceries.

I find that when I look into the fridge or in the pantry and make a grocery list, it actually helps. I would buy stuff that would go with what I already have. Like for example; I see some spaghetti pasta or fetuccini in the pantry, I will just buys stuff for spaghetti, ground beef and spaghetti sauce and mushroomss maybe, and stuff that would go with fetuccini. We love pasta alfredo, so I would get Alfredo sauce , shrimp or chicken and that would be two meals there.
Sometimes there are so much stuff in there that wouldn't actually go with each other, I have to think of what I want to cook, and then what I need, then add them to my list. I would like to use up what I have bought in a few days before going to the groceries again. Sometimes food are stored too long, even in the fridge may loose it's freshness. Fresh foods are vulnerable. One thing that I have noticed is that when you keep wet vegetables or fruits in sealed plastic bags they rot easily,compared to keeping them dry. Even fruits that are wet and stays in these plastic containers when wet, they develop molds easily than when they are kept dry.

Well, just rambling with foods and stuff steaming from my head.

posted by Unknown @ 12:01 PM