I thought I should post a pantry update to go with last week’s freezer update.  To be clear, these things aren’t going bad, but they’ve been around for a while and I’d like to use them up before we switch over to summer foods.

As background, my goal is to eat down these things consciously so they don’t just sit there taking up space.

Recipes:

• 1 jar of pesto, 1 package of sea salt, 1 package of sugar in the raw – These came in gift boxes.  We can use all of them, it just needs to be conscious planning.  I used about a third of the pesto with steak.  It’s still in the fridge.
• 0.5 bag of marshmallows, 1.5 boxes of graham crackers – Probably waiting for next summer’s smores season.
• 3 pecan pumpkin quick bread mixes – We like this.  I just need to remember to make them.
• 2 single serve cups of pineapple tid-bits  I made two pineapple upside down cakes.

I’ll eat them eventually:

• 5 2 single serve packages of plain oatmeal – I need to finish them off.
• Dates, whole & chopped – Progress has been made, but some are still there.
• 2 single serve brownie mixes – These came from a Friday Freebie coupon.  There were four in the box and I had one.  It was ok.  I will eventually eat the rest, but they’re not tasty enough to actually spend money on.

Kids snacks:

• Ritz crackers – Sent these in as school snacks.
• 6 pk chicken ramen – I bought these as snacks for the oldest.  I need to introduce them to him, but he hasn’t been snacking as much as one might think for his size/age.
• Whole almonds, whole cashews – The boys used to snack on these, but they haven’t recently.  I cook with cashews occasionally so I’ll just need to plan to use these up.  Not sure yet what to do with the almonds.
• Coconut oil, dried apple rings – I had planned to make granola with these, but haven’t.  Maybe I will actually get around to that.

I don’t feel like I need to add more to the list at this point.  There are a few perishables that we need to consciously eat through:

• 1.5 packages 1 package of English muffins – I rarely buy these.  But, did bite when it was buy 1, get 2 free.  I realize I could freeze them if necessary.
• 50 lbs of Russet potatoes – These were under 20¢/pound last week plus I had a few on hand already.  Again, I know they can be stored for a long time, but I don’t have a properly temperature-controlled space for long-term.  That being said, we usually eat 3-4 pounds of potatoes with a meal so it should not be a problem to use them.  Mindfulness really.
• 6 lbs of yellow onions – I was almost out and these were buy 1 get one free.  So, more that I would normally buy, but its winter and lots of soups/stews/etc. call for onions so we should be able to use them up too.

On the one hand I didn’t make as much progress as on the freezers.  On the other hand, we don’t actually need to.  I may touch on the pantry in the final freezer post, but I think we’ve made good progress here.