Forgotten food that ends up at the back of the pantry and never gets used really bothers me. I go grocery shopping all the time, and we eat most of the new stuff I buy, which means the stuff in the back languishes. Occasionally I get an urge to finally eat this food. In the past week, I have used a couple of items that I’ve been pushing around for a long time.
Thanks to the internet, it’s easy to find a recipe for any ingredient. For example, we had a bag of rotini pasta that I’m pretty sure we’ve had since we last moved. I have no idea why we bought it, but I finally decided I would use it up. (I do check the expiration dates on anything I use. This one expired the date I decided to use it. It was fate.)
I’m not going to recommend the recipe I chose for this pasta. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t worth making again. However, that wasn’t the point. I just wanted to use up this bag that I’d had in my pantry way too long. I don’t ever intend to buy rotini again (we are medium shell pasta eaters), so it doesn’t matter how great the recipe was.
There is great satisfaction in using up food items you have in your kitchen. Plus, it makes me try new recipes. Hubby and I tend to repeat our meals since we like what we like. So far, my new recipes haven’t been winners, but one could be, and then we’d have something new to add to our rotation of tacos, stirfry, tacos, chicken, and tacos (we love tacos.)
We’ll talk later about decluttering in 2021, but every time I eat something lingering in the pantry, it helps declutter the kitchen, and that is the best reason of all to do it.
