Pantry Purge

I boasted to Food Safety Queen Kathleen that I was spending my Saturday cleaning the pantry. "Why bother?" she said. "You never throw expired food away."

I throw food away. Only when it's rotten. Since I don't believe in "expiration dates," it has to be moldy, rancid, soggy, or bug-infested. Regardless, the pantry was a mess. I can't find anything anymore.

I told Marty, "I have always hated theses wire shelves. I feel like they are going to collapse at any moment. I want real shelves, and maybe some drawers." He said, "That will be my Spring project. I'll start now, on Pinterest." I miss the days when home improvement started at the hardware store.

I decided to begin with the top shelf and work my way to the floor. Here was my first problem. I save plastic containers, just in case. Except just in case is never necessary. I save them from restaurant leftovers, Chinese take out, and grocery store deli items. Our city only recycles plastics #1 and #2. Since these are mostly #5, I just keep them. And they multiply. Saying a guilty prayer for the landfill, I tossed almost all of them.

I started grouping foods so I could put them back in an organized way. In doing this, I realized Marty has been collecting fish fry and hush puppy mixes. He bought a small deep fryer 2 years ago, and experimented with fish for a short period. Marty likes culinary experimentation, but when he experiments, although very tasty, it's usually intense and short-lived. Like the winter we ate nothing but paninis from our new panini maker and haven't eaten a panini since. In addition to the fry mixes, were 3 gallons of re-re-reused cooking oil. "Dump them," he advised, marking an overdue end to the fish fry phase.

I threw away 5 additional foods: (1) miniature marshmallows that over time became 1 giant marshmallow, (2) a small bit of crystallized honey, (3,4) rancid graham cracker and Oreo cookie crumbs. These crumbs were crust ingredients from Marty's cheesecake-making phase. They expired in 2008 and 2004; Marty's cheesecake phase expired in 2003. The last item to hit the trash was 15-year old baking soda. It was open, behind the cheesecake crumbs, and clearly forgotten.

I proudly told Kathleen that I thew away a few expired things (but left out that I was simultaneously making vegetable soup with freezer-burned veggies). She would choose starvation over surviving on the contents of my pantry and freezer for all the "food safety violations" therein. She was happy for me, but distracted with her own problem - hosting a slumber party involving children with a combination of food allergies, lactose intolerance, Celiac's disease, and vegetarianism. She was up to her eyeballs in gummy bears and gluten-free funfetti cake (whatever that is), hoping to make it 24 hours without anyone leading a rebellion or going to the emergency room.

Why do we have so many koozies? Do we need 4 kinds of hot sauce? No one should have this many canned beets. (I entertained the thought of making Kathleen a scrumptious beet cake with 15-year old baking soda and decorative miniature marshmallow amalgamations.) I stacked paper cups and plates, organized cans, lined up boxes, admired home preserves and felt satisfied.  Next, I am going to tackle THE FREEZER!