Cleaning Out The Pantry

If your house and refrigerator is anything like mine, you are constantly buying things that you already have in the freezer or stuck back in a cabinet where you can't find it. So you buy it again, and your kitchen is filled with so much stuff you don't need. So every year I go through and clean. I don't really throw out much, but I rearrange things, so that what's been sitting in the back of the cabinet or freezer that I forgot about, now moves forward.

I recently did this, and found, extra packages of cubed butter, frozen homemade soup, frozen lasagna, frozen Italian meat sauce, and juice bars and ice cream that I didn't even know I had. I often make big batches of soup, lasagna and chili, then freeze it in containers (usually old yogurt containers), but I don't label them so I have to guess what's in them. Not very smart on my part.

Now my challenge is to throw out as little as possible and use up all the things that have been sitting there forever. Luckily, I now have a dog, so very little will go to waste. It's a great way to lower your food bill for a month or so. Just use up existing food and fill in with a great salad or other side dish.

We had a barbeque in August, and as usual I overbought. I've got lots of frozen hamburgers and hotdogs, and can only eat so much of them. So, I take the frozen hamburger patties and turn them in to Italian meat sauce or ground beef for tacos. Occasionally I give Pepper a barbequed hamburger as a special treat. Eventually, I'll get the freezer cleaned out. Maybe I should get some labels so I know what I have. I think I know what I have, but the question is, can I find it?