A New Goal For Myself...

My full freezer in the garage.

An equally full freezer in the house.

The overcrowded pantry begging for mercy!

Perhaps none of you suffer from this problem, but it's an issue for me. I'm in the grocery store and I see something that I think would be fun to cook at home and so I buy it and then it sits on my shelf, ignored, until I look at it blankly six months later and wonder what on earth I bought _____________ (fill in the blank) for. I'm also a sucker for a sale. Buy one, get one free! Who can resist? It's all fine and good, unless the food ends up going to waste, getting freezer burn in the back recesses of our freezer.

Or maybe I get all virtuous and decide we will never eat white sugar or white flour again and then I go to the co-op and fill bags with bulk ingredients and bring them home, unlabelled and unloved and, eventually, uneaten.

So, here's my challenge to myself: Use up all the stuff I've bought before I go out and buy more. Of course I am not going overboard here, my family will have fresh milk and eggs and other produce but I really want to clean out the freezer and pantry. They're both pretty darn full.

This will save us money and give me more storage space. That's a win/win, people.

I ran out of traditional oatmeal and so I used steel cut oats this morning to make homemade oatmeal with an apple cut up and thrown in. Wow! Everyone loved it! Delicious! Would I have made it if we had those little flavored oatmeal packets? I doubt it. This little project is going to force me to try new ingredients and recipes in order to use everything I've purchased. I like it!

I'll keep you posted on my progress. Let's hope I do better on this goal than the giving up shopping goal!