Pantry clean

I missed yesterday’s blog because I was tackling the pantry, a long overdue chore to remove old items, wash the shelves and restack everything into a position where it can be found. Sounds simple enough, but it was a good three hours before I had the last item back on the shelf.

This, coupled with a chest infection, meant I also didn’t do my morning walk or feel like doing anything else for the rest of the day. But that was okay, it is not the end of the world if I do things differently some days.

We had a number of mice in the house earlier on and it was then that I decided to put all loose items into containers. The only trouble was I would have to pick up each one to actually find what I was looking for. Now these are labelled so it will be easy for us to find the rice, cornflakes and porridge for example, rather than searching through each container.

It feels good to get rid of items that haven’t been eaten too. I tend to have a habit of keeping things, as I must have done with the last clean-up, thinking, I’ll eat that soon. The soya and coconut milk were past their used-by date as were some pickles. I know the latter can keep for some time, but these had already been kept and not eaten. To me it is not worth risking the consequences of eating a product that may carry toxins.

I remember growing up as a kid and we had to be careful of botulism. One doesn’t hear of that these days but it was a very real threat then, particularly with canned food. I see we have a can of mackerel that is gathering rust. I didn’t check its expiry date, but I think I need to. I have no idea where it came from. I certainly didn’t buy it.

I do hate wasting food though. As much as it is good to remove old items, I don’t like the fact that they have got to that stage, uneaten, particularly when one knows people are starving in parts of the world and even closer to home. It is great that there have been Pataka kai stalls set up locally. I certainly wouldn’t place my old food in these, but it is good to know that food is being donated for those who may be hungry. It is somewhere for extra fruit and vegetables to go when one has a surplus, rather than being wasted.

I think I have talked about this in a previous blog, and I am sure my views on wasting food stem from my parents, particularly my father who lived through two depressions. As children, we weren’t allowed to waste any food, eating left overs regularly. Fruit was bottled, vegetables eaten or stored for a later date. We were pretty much self-sufficient too. How I loved sausages or mince when we had those, a beautiful change from the constant mutton meals of hot roast, cold roast and the occasional stew thrown in. And bought biscuits. They tasted divine, although now I am an adult, I do value the quality in my mother’s home-made versions.

With the price of food these days, I don’t have the supply of food that I used to, meaning there is more room in the pantry than there ever was. Instead of a 10 or 20 kg bag of spuds, now there is a small 2kg bag. Same with the kumara. There is no pumpkin either. I guess in time, these items will come back down in price but for now, my pantry has plenty of room, is clean, and tidy and has all containers labelled.