New Challenge

As Bret begins his final year of residency we have both talked a lot about the upcoming year. We have so much that is going to happen and so much to look forward to. The biggest of these is our move. We have no idea where we are going to move to but we know for sure that we will be saying our goodbyes to the 800 square feet that we now occupy.

Some of the residents that we knew this year were packing up in some of the other apartments. As they were going through this process they started to give away a lot of things that they didn't want to take with them. Most notably were pantry and freezer items. No one wanted to pack up food and move it. I remember this from when we moved to PA. We gave away a lot of great meat because it was frozen and couldn't transport it this far very easily. I handed my neighbors grocery bags of food because we didn't have the space to pack it all up. Although this time around we will most likely have the space to pack it I got an idea. I want to USE all of the food we have. Why am I going to the grocery store every week and purchasing $100 or so on food when we have a pantry and deep freezer full of food? Granted we will still need the basics like milk, produce, bread, etc. I just want to make a real conscious effort towards trying to use up everything we have in our pantry and freezer. After all Bret or I bought it all so there had to be something we planned to do with it. Even if that means making 134324 batches of chocolate chip cookies to use up my Sam's Club bag of chips.

My plan for this weekend is to first clean out everything that is no longer any good (I think there are still some potatoes we brought back with us from Bret's sister's wedding a year ago in the freezer) and make a pretty comprehensive list of everything we have. I am a little intimidated by the list part but I figure if I can get something started I can always add to it as we start using up things in the pantry.

Don't get me wrong I have seen way worse (deeper) pantries than ours. I know off the top of my head we have a ton of pasta, cans of tuna, enchilada sauce, etc, etc. Who know I may be all the way through our pantry by December (ya right) but even that would be great cause I will work really hard to use the groceries we buy so we have nothing we need to take. My FIL would love this challenge. I always hear him gripe about how much food they have and that they don't need to be buying more. I think it comes from YEARS of living 90 minutes from anything besides the wood floor mom and pop grocery store (that may or may not have had slightly higher prices and slightly lower selection than your average grocery chain). Either way I think it could be fun to try. So for the record my goal is not have a single food item to pack come the third week of June 2011. Does that sound soon to anyone besides me?