If you have to smell the milk twice whenever it occurs to you to use it, maybe it’s a sign you should just stop buying it altogether.
On a semi-related note, continuing in the spirit of almost-spring cleaning, I’m half-assedly/non-committally challenging myself to use up most of the contents of my cabinets and freezer before buying new stuff.
Once upon a time (when I was 20), my fridge contained vodka, white wine, and guava preserves, maybe a little cheese. Times have definitely changed. People look in my fridge and say, “Whoa. So much…healthy. Stuff.” My cabinets are almost too full of things. Apocalypse dinner party at my place, you know what I’m saying? A few years ago, an impulse buy would have been a diet coke, today it’s an ounce of bee pollen.
So yeah. Edamame stir-fry tossed with whole wheat linguine instead of, like, soda noodles? Why not? Things could get interesting…
Do you ever do any culinary spring-cleaning?
AGREE. With three interns living together, the amount of food in this house could sustain us through the end of the internship in June. But we go to the store at least once a week anyway. WHY?! It seems totally asinine. Then I run out of yogurt and I know.
I was out with a few of my classmates last night and we were all laughing about how we go food shopping way too often! It’s so hard to just buy that one thing…
Ha! I feel you on that impulse buy thing. I was a diet coke addict back in the day, and my 20 year old pantry included mostly: cereal, twizzlers, vodka, and canned green beans. Yikes! Now days, people are like “what do you *snack* on?!?!” , to which I respond by pointing to my bag of spinach.
I love it—it’s, like, “I snack on food, duh!”
LOVED this post, culinary spring cleaning = genius. Can you explain guava preserves? Just not what I would expect someone with 4 ingredients to own.
Well, that summer, I was taking this Global Lit course, where we read a book called “The Hour of the Star” by Clarice Lispector. The main character lived this dreary life and ate bread with cheese and guava preserves. It actually sounded kind of good, so I bought some Goya guava preserves and would go to the Whole Foods across the street every few days and buy whatever soft cheese was on sale and some baguette or something. I’d keep the bread in the fridge so the mice wouldn’t eat it. Not the nicest place I’ve ever lived…
I have a serious condiment addiction. It doesn’t help that I live across the street from a giant Asian supermarket. In the other direction is an Indian market with two entire aisles of just spices. I don’t even know what half the stuff is, but you just never know when you might need some fermented black beans or that tamarind thing in the really cute crock. Seriously? How can you throw that stuff out?
Haha so true! If I lived where you do, I’m spend way too much of my time in those stores!