Pantry Moving Revelation

We are currently in the process of moving to a bigger house. Over the course of packing and weeding out the things we really just do not need anymore, I made a startling discovery.

I know it’s a strange thing to start with, but on this particular day I had run out of things to pack up that weren’t in the bedroom near the babies. So, I turned to my kitchen of all places.

I opened my pantry door, and decided to start organizing and boxing the things we just really do not use or need right now. I discovered that I had 8 boxes of Cheerios.

These weren’t ordinary boxes, either. These are the 36oz, double-bagged super-duper extra-huge boxes. I had the equivalent of 16 large-sized boxes of cereal in my pantry (plus one newly opened one on my counter!)

Now, we do go through a lot of cereal each month. We get one huge box per child per month from having the WICC program. I really do not know how the state can possibly expect a toddler to consume that much cereal in one month, but apparently they think it’s very possible.

Don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful for this program. It’s just that I am amazed, knowing how much the kids really do eat and waste from being babies each month, and I am quite certain that we could NEVER possibly eat that much cereal.

Next, I noticed that I had over 25 cans of evaporated milk sitting on my shelf. I don’t normally cook with evaporated milk unless its Christmas time. I can tell you that we will probably be making a LOT of fudge this Christmas!

Then there is the case of the pound of beans or peas we get for each child per month. I know that I have only ever cooked one pound for them. They adored the black-eyed peas, too. In fact, we STILL have some in our freezer from that original pound that I figured out how to cook one weekend.

It made so much food, that I have been hesitant to cook anymore as we STILL have leftovers! A friend of mine who also has quite a collection of dried beans and peas in her pantry has decided that we really should get together and pool them.

We have decided to either put them in a shallow wading pool and put it in the backyard as a make-shift sand box for our kids, or make dried soup mix bags and give it out as Christmas gifts this year.

I haven’t even opened our fridge yet. Then again, I know that since it quit cooling a few weeks ago (in anticipation of our moving I think it just gave up on us) that I had to throw out 8 dozen eggs that had potentially gone bad. I was afraid to test them on anyone to find out if they were any good or not after not knowing how long the fridge had been warming up.

It’s amazing the things we accumulate over time in our pantries. I could open my own grocery store soon if this had kept up. As it is, my fellow WICC recipient Mom’s and I plan on brainstorming for new and innovative uses for our surplus goods.

Our apologies in advance as our closest friends, acquaintances, and maybe even the mail man, will most likely be getting a festively adorned Holiday Gift Basket from us this Holiday Season.

It will come well stocked with some sort of Cheerio/Chex mix adaptation, some yummy fudge made from our evaporated milk, and possible some brownies or cookies from our surplus eggs supply (the babies only eat eggs if husband cooks them & that only happens on weekends)…

We even promise to come up with some nifty soup recipe to include in our very interesting yet oddly alluring dried bean & peas soup-mix included in your gift basket!

‘Till then, I am very creatively going to plan out my new pantry with all of those surplus boxes and bags. If I do it right, I may be able to make extra shelving space if I stack the boxes a certain way…After all, waste not, want not!