Eat the Fridge: An Eco(nomic) Challenge
A sampling of my provisions
I am leaving New York in a month. Not for vacation, or for the summer, but for realz. Which means I will be leaving many dear friends, a beloved apartment/neighborhood, and a great job. And — the current stress on my mind — my pantry.
Over the 2 1/2 years I’ve lived in New York, I have accrued a ridiculous amount of food. Apparently, I was stockpiling for Armaggedon and didn’t even realize it. (If I knew what I was doing, I probably would have laid away some jugs of water and a flashlight instead of two kinds of salt and so much jam.)
I hate, hate, hate wasting food. The task of cleaning out our apartment’s refrigerator typically falls to me, and I find it cringe-worthy. This food was once perfectly good! But looking at my pantry is even worse; this food still is perfectly good, and I need to figure out what to do with it before May 1st. (If you can’t wait til the list of food that follows, you can follow these links to see some of my thoughts on stocking the freezer, the fridge, the vegetable/fruit bowl, and the spice rack.)
Enter eGullet’s “A Week Without Shopping” challenge, in which, basically, you give up shopping for a week and live off what is already in your pantry or fridge. The guidelines, my supplies, and my call for suggestions, after the jump (keep reading! I need your help…):
The rules (for the full listing, see post #11 on the eGullet forum):
1. No stockpiling. (i.e. you can’t shop double 2 weeks before the challenge knowing you’ll do the challenge soon). My unfortunate natural stockpiling, on the other hand, is exactly what the challenge is about, and is therefore perfectly acceptable.
2. No endangering your children. (no problem here)
3. No making yourself miserable. (thank you, eGullet, I will be going out to buy some lettuce and coffee and yogurt before the challenge’s official kick-off)
4. Chronicle every day. (we’ll see)
5. Have fun! (again, we’ll see)
Here is the list of food I have in my possession. I’ve only (“only”) listed items of note, so you can assume I have sugar, spices, various other condiments, salt, any oil under the sun, etc. for the purposes of your comments/suggestions. Also, I’ve tried to categorize things a little.
Without any further ado:
Freezer:
- 4 hot Italian sausages
- 1 pint pre-made curry sauce
- 1 package artichoke and olive ravioli
- lots of chicken stock
- leftover chicken enchiladas (maybe 3 servings)
- 3 bags Trader Joe’s edamame (unshelled)
- ice cream
- sliced bread
- pre-made chocolate chip cookies
- frozen bananas
- vodka
- gin
Fruits & Dried Nuts:
- pecans (small amount)
- sliced almonds (medium amount)
- curried cashews (small amount)
- pepitas (pumpkin seeds/small amount)
- dried figs (large amount)
- dried cranberries (large amount)
- dried mango with chile and lime (medium amount)
- dried pineapple rings (a few)
- 1 bag dried persimmon slices
- ½ bag raisins (a lot)
Jarred Items:
- 1 full jar cornichons (small pickles)
- 1 full jar mango chutney
- ¾ jar plum chutney
- ¾ jar curried sauerkraut
- small jar truffle-infused honey
- ½ squeeze bottle regular honey
- 1 jar raspberry preserves
- 1 jar fig preserves
- 3 jars green tomato marmalade
- 4 jars lime marmalade
- 1 jar ginger preserves
- some applesauce
- 1 jar dulce de leche
Canned Items:
- 1 can black beans
- 1 can whole peeled tomatoes
- 1 can gross chicken soup
- more chicken stock
- butternut squash soup
Solid Items:
- 1 bag cornmeal
- ½ bag polenta
- a little flour
- 1 1b. “calamarata” pasta (looks like calamari rings)
- 1 box stroop wafels (yummy cookies)
- 1 bag Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux cookies
- ½ container garlic/basil flatbread crackers
- ½ bag wild rice rice cakes
- 2 boxes Annie’s mac and cheese
- 2 bags Thai Kitchen rice noodles
- ½ box graham crackers
Uncategorizable:
- 1 bag Hawaiian black sea salt (impulse buy at TJ’s about a year ago)
- fleur de sel
- ¼ lb. dried chipotle chiles
- pretty big container dried seaweed
- ricotta salata
- Parmesan
- Cheddar
- Havarti
- Eggs
- A little more bacon fat
- 2 big sticks goat’s milk butter
- 2 lemons
- 1 red onion
- garlic
- a few regular onions
As you can see, if you even made it this far in reading this post (congrats, and thanks), I am in pretty good shape to last way longer than a week. As you can also see, there are some pretty obvious ideas here. I’m thinking:
- skillet cornbread with the leftover bacon fat
- some kind of curry, with a bunch of the dried fruits and nuts
- polenta (making a small dent in my chicken stock holdings, with ricotta salata, heated up whole tomatoes, and sausage)
But what do I do with the black salt? And what about all those preserves? And I feel like I should be able to incorporate the chiles somehow — into the cornbread? into some black beans to serve alongside chicken enchiladas? — but I’m not sure how. And why did I buy so very much edamame?
So please, give me your suggestions. And if you have an idea that uses something not on this list, feel free to give it anyway — I very well might have it buried in the recesses of my fridge, or might be willing to bend the rules a little and go out and get it. And check back in next week to see how this whole thing goes down…
Good luck with the move!
Frozen banana, ice cream, dried fruit: rehydrate some of the dried fruit and blend it with the banana and ice cream for a smoothie. Add a pinch of black salt or a squeeze of lemon juice to cut the sweetness, or toss in vodka or gin for a kick and salt the rim of the glass.
Sausages, canned tomatoes, garlic, calamarata: calamarata alla salsiccia. Cut the sausages into coins (or thaw, remove from casing, and roll into small balls) and brown in olive oil. Remove from pan and drain on paper.
If you want to go savory and spicy: saute garlic in the same pan, add diced tomatoes, season with salt and chili pepper or hot pepper of some sort, and simmer until slightly reduced. Put sausages back in to finish cooking, and reduce to whatever consistency you like your sauce. Grate over Parmesan and throw in the pasta (for this sauce, the pasta can be cooked directly in the sauce rather than in a separate pot. Just put it in with the tomatoes, and if the sauce looks like it’ll finish before the pasta, thin the sauce with water or chicken stock to give the pasta more time to cook).
If you want to go sweet: same as above, except instead of garlic, saute diced onions until translucent and sweet. At the end, grate over Parmesan and lemon zest for a bright, fresh note.
Chipotles: rehydrate, drain, dice, and put in the cornbread. (random recipe here)
Fruit preserves: fruit tarts/tartlettes. Crostata di marmellata is easy, tasty, and can be made with any kind of preserve. If you don’t have a lot of flour or sugar, use a 3:2:1 flour:butter:water tart dough instead of the one in the recipe and scale it down to use however much flour you want. It should be awesome with goat’s milk butter, yum.
Nuts and pepitas: Including them in the fruit curry will provide contrasting texture.
Sliced bread, raisins: Bread pudding?
sauces for the ravioli: saute a tiny bit of onion in a little olive oil, add chicken stock, reduce, add a few drops white wine vinegar or lemon juice. Or do a kind of carbonara – sautee minced garlic in a little bacon fat, remove from heat, add egg yolk (or whole egg), and toss with ravioli and ricotta salata or Parmesan or lemon zest.
edamame: Boiled edamame for a snack/breakfast/appetizer. Edamame and rice cakes? Boiled, chilled, and mixed with pepitas? Tossed with the Thai rice noodles? Fruit, nut, and edamame salad?
Mac & Cheese, sliced bread/flatbread crackers: Is the mac and cheese the instant kind? Make a gratin out of it: cook mac and cheese to al dente, put in a baking pan, add a little goat’s milk butter-bechamel (optional), top with bread or cracker crumbs (toast and smash the sliced bread), ricotta salata, and Parmesan, and bake it at 350*F. If the cheese in the mac and cheese is Cheddar, I guess grating cheddar over the dish (instead of ricotta or Parmesan) would also work.
Canned chicken soup and canned stock: give it away.
Oops, just realized I omitted salt in most of that. Salt and pepper to taste wherever you like.
Edamame: cold salad, with a red onion vinaigrette.
My strategy would be to concentrate on the freezer and opened dry goods (fridge too, I suppose). Full cans and other unopened dry goods can always be donated to a food pantry. Bring cookies, dried fruit and nuts, and other such snacks (even the edamame) to work and share with coworkers. Or have friends over to nosh.
Have the enchiladas for lunch, with a small salad if you need more food (and use up some of the dried fruit and nuts in the salad).
I am also facing a move soon (just across town, so some food is coming with me). I’ve officially banned myself from buying anything but produce and dairy products for the next 2 months — I should have plenty of pasta, lentils and canned veggies to last me.
why are you leaving nyc!
I toss Edammame in with my KD when I make it. I imagine it would be delightful in some kind of sauce over pasta. Or you can just steam it, slather it in butter and a sprinkle of salt and serve it as an appetizer/side.