Nope...I think that I must have been starving in another life...

Shaun, your panties are out of control? Why doesn't that surprise me? (grin)

I'll stand right there with you and LindaC on the pantry issue, though. Now, understand, I have a fully stocked basement of home canned stuff and a freezer full of homegrown beef, pork and ducks. So why the heck do I think I need to buy chicken?

The only way for me to deal with this is to forbid myself to go to the grocery store, or to walk there so I can only buy what I can carry home, LOL. I periodically have a POOPed week, where I only cook what I can Pull Out Of the Pantry.

If I want to make something and I don't have the ingredients, too bad, I have to make something else. It's like drug withdrawal, I just have to go cold turkey!

Annie

Don't get your panties in twist over your pantry!

OK, sorry. But I had to. You started it!! LOL

Actually I've been on a rampage lately to USE UP all the extraneous stuff in my pantry. Well, a mild rampage anyway. I have a jar of pickled garlic I'm never ever going to eat. (It doesn't agree with me). I have a bag containing a very few Pickle flavor potato chips - Nathan's the only one who eats them. He needs to come home and finish them!

I bought two - TWO - jars of chocolate spread from world market a while back - listen they were BOGOF. What am I ever going to do with them? I do love chocolate but I very seldom eat dessert. Guess I'll just put them and the pickeled garlic out at my next party.

I do stay to my list 95% of the time. Especially now that it's just me and Len and the kids are gone. But you know, every once in a while, I succumb to temptation!

Oh Shaun, I am glad you changed your typo. I'd hate to think of putting too much EVOO in my panties.
My pantry is Soooooooooooo out of control We already inventories the freezer and have been poofing, but we need to do the same with the pantry. And I definitely need to get rid of a lot of the "gourmet" stuff in there and get back to basics.
Sherry

I'm having periodic pantry withdrawal too. Is there a patch for that? What doesn't help is traveling and having to go to every grocery store that we don't have in our area.

Shaun, the good news is that we don't have basements. I've got to show you my new pantry. Not as beautiful as Tony would have made but functional.

Yep, same problem here. I go to the pantry to prepare a meal, don't have one item, go to store for one item and bring back ten items.

Also, I go to the store for items for several meals, then forget what I was going to make with the items I bought.

Me too. Isn't there a law against buying only one thing at the grocery store anyway? I can't say I've ever done it. The other day I intended to buy some yeast after work, but the problem was, by the time I got off work that day, all I could remember was that I needed to go to the grocery store. I couldn't remember what I needed, and why make a list of just one thing. Well, when I got to the store, I got overwhelmed remembering things we were almost out of, if not all the way out of. I went home with 3 very full shopping bags. (Have you noticed that when you bring your own bags they fill them up with 40 pounds of stuff, but if you use their plastic bags they put one item in each bag? But I digress.) The next time I started to make bread, I realized what I had forgotten on that grocery trip. The yeast. Aaarrrgh.

Sally

I'm lucky if I can shut the pantry door. Overflow is in the garage. I'm trying to get my head around a complete kitchen remodel and thinking about how much space I can steal from other rooms or do we just add on....

Nancy

I do that too, Beverly, buy things and forget what I'm going to make.

When the girls were home I let them plan menus for every night of the week. Ashley got to do it one week, then Amanda. If they found a new recipe, I'd try that too but they had to mark the recipe so I could buy the ingredients.

Maybe I need to go back to making a weekly menu. Sigh.

Annie

May, don't hesitate to send me those pickle potato chips if Nathan doesn't get home before they get stale, okay? I just LOVE them!

Mustangs - I'd like to see a picture of your pantry.

Mine is usually pretty full - especially since we joined BJ's. But what is even more full is my papergoods section of the basement - I have enough pt/tp/tissues to build two Empire State Buildings out of paper mache and maybe I could even manage the Chrysler Building too.

I don't have a pantry, but that hasn't stopped me from overstocking the kitchen cupboard I use for storing food, to the point that I fear an avalanche of cans and jars whenever I open it. I blame my mother, who lives in a place where you can't always get the stuff you need and when you do it's expensive, meaning I grew up watching her shop for an army whenever we got to a proper supermarket with proper prices.

However, I am unemployed right now, so I am now actually using the stuff faster than I am buying it.

I did much better when I was on Weight Watchers. We would plan the meals for the week, and when we went to the store, bought ONLY what we needed for that week's meals. I guess I need to do that again. Especially since all my pants, um, er, seem to have shrunk. Just can't get good clothes like you used to. Hee hee.
Sherry

Pantries and pastries are for making whoopie pies.
Panties and pasties are for making whooooooopee.

Here is a way to manage your pantry:

Get self-adhesive colored dots, they are very cheap from art supply stores.
Every time you buy and put something in the pantry, you stick a color dot on it. Each color represents a year.

You can tell very quickly the stuffs in your pantry how long they have been there and if you should throw them out or used them soon.

I donÂt have a suggestion as to how you can manage your panties.

dcarch :-)

Hi Netla, glad to see you posting! What happened with the India trip?

I totally agree with Netla that one easy cure for an addiction to condiment excess is to be broke! I was half way there already, but I am very fast turning into my depression era grandmothers in cooking style. I can't afford to have something in the pantry that isn't going to feed me fairly regularly. I can't afford to "carry" condiments in the fridge anymore that will not go directly into my stomache or are at risk of going bad and wasting money. So my cooking style is developing into that style that we call "old fashioned," peasant, or grandma style, a few simple foods made with simple inexpensive ingredients, served over and over. I have to stick with the tried and trues, the basics, and I have to use things up before they go bad since waste just means money that doesn't go into my stomache. For example, I made Cabbage Agrodolce this past weekend from a recipe I picked up at Wegman's that called for a bunch of "gourmet" ingredients which I am sure were just put into the recipe to get you to buy the stuff at Wegman's. For example, golden raisins. There was a time when I had all kinds of dried fruit in the pantry--dried blueberries, currants, golden raisins, cherries, cranberries. No more. It's plain old dark brown raisins, which is what you get at my house if you want dried fruit. The other ingredient was "chianti red wine vinegar." I used to have all kinds of vinegars too. Now it's cider vinegar for most things, although I do keep rice vinegar for aisan and balsamic for a flavor splurge. But gone are the red wine, white wine and white balsamic vinegars. Gone are all the store bought cookies--too expensive. Guess I'll just have to make my own, oh the tragedy! Gone are all the different kinds of nuts. Almonds for magnesium, peanuts for asian, sunflowers for protein, and walnuts for fancy. No more pecans, pepitas, hazlenuts, cashew or pine nuts for this gal. I used to buy pre-seasoned diced tomatoes--jalepeno, italian, fire roasted, etc. Now it's just whatever store brand, I add my own seasonings. And so it goes. It has actually been somewhat liberating, to be free of all the excess. And to re-learn why grandma knew best.

Where is Jessie?

Since I have been laid up with this broken hip, DH has been doing all the shopping and he ONLY buys the food on his list - no extras! Also he has been on a crusade to use up everything in the pantry and clean it out. So the pantry is looking pretty bare. No panties! LOL
Clare

Attack over and over. I've had fair success getting things in the pantry used up. Now I seem to have a problem with repeat purchases. Somehow I find myself with three identical bottles of basalmic vinegar. Four rolls of wax paper. Three bottles of hot sauce... hmmm Dave's Insanity sauce needs to be set out at a party. Stupid grocery store stopped stocking my favorite tunafish.... empty space on my pantry shelf in the tunafish spot.

Actually it looks like I could do some stocking - NOT shear black seamed either.

: )
lyra

Sally, YEAST...make a saying..
You Eat At ST. Michaels...or something like that..
THAT's HOW I remember...If I have 3 things on my list...I make up some kind of pun or saying....CAT Pee (cat food apples, peanut butter)....most of the time I remember what they mean...haha! Mostly I write items down and keep the list in my purse.

I bought sliced ham at the deli this weekend, and I had a regular ham to put in the oven...I totally forgot about the bone in ham I had bought to have on hand for the weekend! Duh! I guess I was channeling the bone-in-ham at the deli counter. I bopped myself on the head when I got home!

I'm just relieved to know I'm not the only one with that failing. I'm guilty, I admit it. But I try to be careful most times and stick to my budget. That's my motivator.

Lpinkmountain, thanks for asking. I have posted a thread about it in Conversations.

There are some pretty funny responses in this thread. It's good to get back to...I mean it's good to share our shortcomings.

I could and have-stood in Sherry's pantry and just marveled at the space.

Woodie, I bought three cabinets on sale ($33 each) that were the same as my laundry room cabinets. I had them stacked and installed in the blank wall of my laundry room. This gives me additional room to buy and store more stuff until it's time to throw it away.

Not just the pantry.....the cupboards.....the walk-in closet in the spare room.....and the canning shelf. ALL overflowing.
But you know, I still have to stop at the store for milk, or sour cream, or something.
Or I get a wild hair (no panty reference .......please!) to make a certain dish and stop to get ingredients for that instead of making something from what I've got.

You guys are a bad influence.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Deanna

Some of you may recall that I posted recently about finally caving and buying a Mini Zojirushi Bread Machine.

And what does this have to do w/ pantry overflow, you ask? Well, I justified the expenditure by disciplining myself to eat only what was stocked in my pantry for 2 weeks. I used the money I had budgeted for grocery shopping to buy the machine.

The plan worked well. It freed up lots of cupboard space for the overflow that always comes w/ the holidays, and I got much satisfaction from "living off the land."

I confess that I planned to do this during the time DH was away on business for most of a week. I supplemented my stash with skim milk, yogurt & fresh greens and DH didn't even notice.

mustangs - Thanks for sharing your pantry. What a good idea! I need a home for all my cookbooks and I like having them nearby, but out of sight. Something like that might work in my laundry room.

Oh Cathy, how did I know your pantry would be so neatly organized? (grin)

It might work for me too, if I had a laundry room. Instead I have an unfinished basement, just block walls and cement floor and only under the kitchen and dining room, here they call it a Michigan Cellar.

The problem with that is that I don't have enough shelves, plus no one ever sees it so I tend to just stack things down there.....

Annie

Wow Cathy, nice nice. I'm embarrassed to show you mine. But I will.

Deanna, your wild hair comment almost made me spit iced tea. THAT was funny!

Well it's certainly nice to know I'm not alone in my pantry overflow problem. I dont have the kind you can get into and walk around, you have to pull out my drawers to see what's in em.

I'm sitting here just laughing at myself......... ok ok ok. Here is my pantry:

Now that I'm looking at the picture it doesnt look as bad as it does in person. There is literally NO room to put anything else.

Cathy please come over and organize me?

Shaun, I have those pullout drawers in some of my cabinets, and LOVE them. And Mustangs, I adore your laundry room and how it looks so neat and tied together. Looks like having a front-loader makes far better use of workspace. The laundry room in this house is plenty big, but it's mostly nonfunctional space.

Mine's not in too bad a shape. I get to go the grocery about once every two weeks, and I have to be careful to bring back only what I can carry myself, which is about three of the large cloth shopping bags. DH makes it home about every six weeks, which is when we stock up on non-food itesm (Dishwashing soap and cat litter are HEAVY!) And like Netla and IPink said, when you need to make every purchase count, there's just not a lot of opportunity to overstock. When I'm at the grocery, I see people spend in one trip more than my budget for two months. Neither good nor bad, just different. :) One thing about not having a lot of extras in the pantry, though, is that I have lots of room for the counter appliances I don't often use and to tame my plastic storage containers. No more spending ten minutes hunting down the right lid!

I grew up in a house with a pantry larger then than the bathroom. (Before I mislead you, I should point out that, in the bathroom, you could sit on the toilet, put your feet on the tub, and reach the doorknob. My dad built an addition, and two of the things my mother insisted on was a pantry and a "mud porch". My parents were not well-off, but they grew up during The Depression. Appreantly my mother was deeply affected by it because she bought food almost obsessively. That pantry was packed floor-to-ceiling on three walls. We periodically (when she wasn't there) had to go through and cull expired products. When I think of the amount of packaged food thrown out over the years...well, it would have fed that small third world family she kept harping at me about when I didn't clean my plate! To her, just having the food around her was security. (Too bad she was the world's worst cook.)

Thanks for pulling out your drawers on the internet, Shaun.

Cathy, that Pepsi bottle bothers me. Would you please move it into the corner and move that other bottle to the right next to the V8 - it will make me feel better.

Hey Woodie, is there anything you want me to move in MY pantry to make you feel better? hahahahahahahahah!!!!!!

But Woodie, there are other bottles behind the Pepsi 'cause that's the Pepsi row not to be confused with the Lipton tea row!

Shaun, You have wasted head space; you could use one more shelf above your beautiful pullout drawers.

Cathy! You're right!

Head space above her pulled down drawers....that would be her DH spitting out the wild hair, right?

OK, Evil Jessy, that's TWO monitor cleanings you owe me!

Thanks y'all for such an entertaining thread! After some of the BS that's been going down on here lately, it's much needed.

Thanks to all of you who make this such a pleasant place to be.

I lurk here everyday, had a horrible t-giving with miserable inlaws,(1200 miles in 4 days) and then came back, caught up, and read the "Swollen Sausage" thread. Started out choking on my coffee, then almost peed myself laughing!
It really put me back on track, so thanks for being such perverts ;)

Back on topic, I'm all outta head space and I think my drawers are filled to capacity.LOL

Joan

(((nosnowtn))) welcome and glad we could share our special brand of joy!

Renee, I'll clean your monitor for ya. When is the snow in?

LOL @ lyra and EJ!

I did give all the ladies head(country seasoning and sauce) for their pantries at canny camp a few years ago.

I've been using up stuff in mine for the last couple of months so it WAS looking good until I bought 40 pounds of flour(on sale .89 for 5 pounds), 24 pounds of sugar(on sale 2 for $3.00) and 15 boxes of chex cereal and all the other stuff for chex mix and white trash. Bush beans, pasta, various crackers, and other canned goods need to be used up too. I'm not taking any pictures.....not sure Cathy could handle my mess...LOL!!

David

I'm not showing my pantry! I don't have head space and no open drawers,LOL, but I do have rows. I even alphabetize my spice cabinet and try to keep it that way!

I have two freezers full of meat and vegetables from the garden. Two refrigerator/freezers full and the pantry that I am not showing is full and in rows. The overflow from the pantry goes in the shelves in my garage and my "storage building" outside.

Even though it is just the two of us I feed alot of people. We just finished peanut/cotton and corn harvest. I have been taking lunch to the field for two+ months and a sandwich in the evening if they are working late, which has been much of the time for 8 to 15 people, so I keep well stocked.

This has been a fun read, thanks Shaun!

This thread is making me think (BUT NOT POST) another one about.....hard and limp.... veggies....that we have in our fridges.

I just pulled out a limp English cucumber. Figures, it WAS English....

Trixie, my mother would have felt very secure with you. :)

Jessy, the snow "done fell"! We got about eight...um...quite a bit of snow night before last. More eected this weekend. C'mon over with your scree-cleaning supplies. Nothing prettier than Carson Valley in the winter.

What I have eliminated from my pantry I have made up for in my freezer. I now have a gazillion cheapie versions of things in there. I used to buy canned beans, now buy the dried ones and make up a big batch in the crockpot on weekends and then freeze them in pint jars. I have a lot of bread I got at the Peppridge Farm Outlet giveaway, and all kinds of herbal pastes I made from the garden this summer--sage pesto, thai cilantro curry, frozen caramelized onions, frozen parsley, frozen raspberries, vegetable broths, bread flours, applesauce, butter that was on sale . . . all things I would never have kept on hand before I became marginally employed.

Thai cilantro curry?
Please elaborate. :)

shaun, where do you keep your canned goods? I see you like ziplocks as much as I do.

mitchdesj, they're in there too.