Pantry Cooking

Hubbs has decided that we are going into "Extreme Saving" mode. He always freaks out a few days before payday. But usually he just rants about it for a few hours and forgets about it by the next day.

Not this time though.

This time he is actually following through with it. I was chosen to be in charge of the meal planning. Oh goody. I will probably have to cook it all too.

But instead of starting a fight about it, I actually started looking for recipes. I will post our meal plan in a few days, after I get it all worked out.

We will just have to take it like everything else, one day at a time.

We are going to have to focus our meals on what is already in the pantry and freezer. Luckily I have a pretty nice sized pantry of food stuff to work with.

Update on Mixing it Up and Red Bull Friday

My freezer was delivered this morning. Yay. Its still empty since I grocery on Saturday mornings. Plus I still have to figure out what I am going to keep in the fridge freezer and what I am going to put in the chest freezer.

I left work at around 3 yesterday. I went straight home to get started on the crazy mess. First, I cleaned out the used-to-be-play room. Hubbs took apart Monk Man's bed and took it out of the room sometime yesterday morning so I had a lot of room to clean in. I started on the toys first. And oh my hell were there toys. I dumped them all out on the floor into a pile and set out boxes. 1 box for stuffed animals and 3 for the others. I filled those all up, took 2 bags of broken and Crappy Meal toys out to the trash, AND I took a bag of baby toys to my moms for Ollie.

It only took about an hour and a half to completely empty the used-to-be-play room. Well, the clothes are still in it but I will get to those this weekend.

My living room was packed with boxes of crap. Sorry, no pictures. I was going to take them but Hubbs cleaned off the computer desk and lost my camera.

Then FedEx showed up with Hubb's computer. A day early. I was in the middle of running the vacuum and the driver was lucky my dogs think they are tough otherwise I wouldn't have even noticed.

Hubbs was at Wal-mart getting storage boxes for this weekend's divide and conquer.

When he got home and saw the boxes, all hopes of getting any real work out of him were gone. And so were my hopes of getting all of this done uninterrupted.

But he did manage to help in between trying to get it set up and all the programs loaded.

After the used-to-be-playroom was empty and clean, I moved on to the used-to-be-pantry. I had to put on my MP3 player so I couldn't claim not to hear Hubbs yelling, "Honey! Come here! Where does this plug in?" and "Honey! Come here! Look at this!".

I unloaded the food into laundry baskets and in piles on the floor so Hubbs could move the book cases into the now-a-pantry. Then all the laundry baskets got pushed into the now-a-pantry and emptied. Eventually all the food and stuff was in the now-a-pantry and put back.

By then it was time to pick up the boys. It was an interesting rest of the night. Bobblehead and Monk Man wanted to help. Ugh. Don't get me wrong, I appreciated the attempt, but at 3 and 1, they didn't really help until it came time to put their crap in the empty now-a-play room.

I think I made myself quit around 10, 10:30. But it was around midnight when I finally fell asleep. I think.

Tonight, I still have to go through my artsy-fartsy-craft stuff and put it all away in the now-a-pantry. And move all the clothes from the now-a-pantry into the now-a-playroom.

So that's whats in store for this week's edition of Red Bull Friday.

Clothes. Moving them. Washing them. Putting them away. Maybe. We did rent a bunch of movies on Wednesday.......

Looky what I did this weekend

Ugh. I caught the cleaning bug again.

I am exhausted! But I did get a lot done.

My Stockpile in progress: Its so organized and pretty!


My baking stuff, spices and bread


My Fudge making stuff


Under my sink


The rest of under my sink



The storage in my "Office"


More of my "Office"--Who else do you know that eats THAT much Ramen Noodles?



Another shot of under the sink


2 1/2 empty shelves!


The hall pantry is being cleaned out for all my appliances. Like the crock pots, the deep fryers, the coffee machines, extra dishes. Notice everything is a plural? When we had our wedding shower we received a lot of duplicates. All that stuff is spread out all over our house. I have a deep fryer in my bathroom cabinet, 2 sets of good occasion dishes in my bedroom, you get the idea.

It makes me feel really good about myself that I am actually (finally) getting one of the things done that I had planned on doing while Hubbs is gone.

My Pantry

My Formula Stash


Baby Food, Bottle Liners and Baby Snacks


My Baking Supplies


My Cookbooks


Pasta & Mexican food stuff


Soups


Fruits & Veggies


BBQ Sauce, Chili, Mayo, Jelly and other stuff


No Place to Put these yet-Flour, Sugar, Rice


Potatoes, Onions and Oil


Mac & Cheese, Hamburger Helper & Brownie Mix


Cereals


Crackers


Trash bags, Ziplocks, popcorn, bread & Tortillias




It is a VERY small stash compared to other people. But I am just starting out and going very slowly. I would hate to overdraw the checking account. Again.

I have a pantry project planned for this weekend. Hubbs is going out of town to pick up his work truck. While he is gone, I am going to turn part of my office/junk room into better pantry space and put my small appliances like the deep fryer and crock pots in the hall pantry so I can have a little less clutter in the bedroom.

Yes, I am going to try to build some shelving. Never done this before so keep your fingers crossed I don't pull the walls down while trying to get this accomplished!