Spring Cleaning Your Pantry

By Ann Martin

If you’re anything like me, every time I reach for the garlic powder in my spice cabinet, I find every other spice but that. As I started going through my spice cabinet in search of my garlic powder, I realized how disorganized and down right messy that cabinet really is. So then I start checking out my pantry and other kitchen cabinets and realize that the chaos has spread! There is absolutely no rhyme or reason why I have eight boxes of the same cereal. But it could be due to the fact that they were dispersed in multiple cabinets and not all in one place. Are you laughing with me now? So, I decided that enough was enough and that it was time to have some order back in my kitchen. But where do I even begin?

First, it is easy to see what you have if you take everything out! I never realized that I had two containers of ground mustard. Why do I even need two? Well, I don’t. But obviously I didn’t know that I already had one – main reason being, it got lost in the mess of my spice cabinet. So, take everything out of your cabinets and pantry. While everything is out, give a quick wipe down of the shelves themselves.

Now, before you even start to organize what you have, check for expired goods and toss them. If some canned goods are on the verge of expiring, put together a few meal ideas that incorporate those so they won’t go to waste. Next, try grouping similar items together. For example, breakfast foods and fixings, like pancake mix, syrup, cereals and oatmeal can be grouped together. Snacks like popcorn, chips, granola bars, etc. can also be together in one place. If you bake, group baking powder, sugar, sprinkles, and birthday candles together. Sometimes, I even put my baking items on square dinnerware, to make sure all the baking goods can be easily pulled out from the cabinet and all at once as well. These are just recommendations, but I found that grouping related items together makes for finding them later much easier. And once you grocery shop, always put the newest items in the back, that way you use the older products first.

Here are just a few tips to organize your spice cabinet. Again, take everything out so that it is easy to see what you have. Now, remember spices never really go bad, but the potency of the spice is drastically reduced after 6 moths. So really think to yourself, “How long have I had this ground ginger for?” If you think it has been longer than 6 months, go ahead and pitch it. If are fortunate to have shelves in your spice cabinet, I recommend keeping the most frequently used spices on the bottom shelf and the other spices which are hardly used on the top shelf. Essentially, you are keeping what you need at eye level and therefore it is easy to find and easily accessible.

Now that order is finally back in place throughout my kitchen, I can actually see what have in my cabinets and pantry. By having everything in its place, my food bills have actually gone down as well! A huge bonus! Now maybe I can start to organize my dinnerware!

Freezer Cooking Storage Tips

If you have wanted to try out freezer cooking but thought you would have to purchase 30 freezer-safe casserole dishes beforehand, you are in luck.  As it turns out you only need one or two of them! Here are some tips on how to freeze and store all of your meals:

• Stock up on aluminum foil, jumbo sized plastic storage bags, and both gallon and quart sized plastic freezer bags.  Around the holidays the aluminum pans go on major sales.  We shop at Costco for our storage bags, buying in bulk saves a lot.  No room to store bags in bulk? Go in with a friend to share the boxes and still get the discount.

• To make the most of your freezer space, try to freeze your foods as flatly as possibly.  You will be able to stack them on top of each other and fit more food into your freezer.

• To freeze casseroles, you’ll simply line the casserole dishes with enough aluminum foil to come up over the sides of the dish.  After the casserole is assembled, bring the foil up and cover the casserole tightly, and then wrap it in a second freezer bag.

• Once the casserole is frozen, remove it from the outer bag, pop the frozen casserole out of the dish, and place the aluminum foil wrapped casserole back into the freezer bag.  When it is time to cook the casserole, remove it from the freezer and place in the same baking dish to thaw.  Once thawed, take it out of the freezer bag and cook.  Since it is lined with the aluminum foil, clean up will be a breeze!  Simply throw the foil out and wash the dish!

• As you know, a full freezer is more efficient.  To prepare your freezer to freeze all the food, wash out your empty milk gallons and fill with water.  Place them in your freezer.  And if you wanted to quick-freeze something on your cooking day, all you need to do is take out one of the frozen gallon jugs and smack it on some cement to start cracking the ice.  Place the cracked ice and the items you want quick-frozen into a smaller camping-type cooler.  They’ll be frozen in no time!

• Make it a point to label each freezer bag.  You can write the name of the entrée and the reheating instructions on a piece of paper and stick it inside the bag, on top of the aluminum foil covered casserole or write the instructions on the bag with a permanent marker.  Another idea is to print out the information on packing slip labels ahead of time and just peel and stick as you cook and freeze your items.

• Keep track of the meals you have on hand by placing a magnet mounted whiteboard on your freezer door.  If you add three lasagnas, two portions of chicken fajita meat, two beef stews and one ham casserole, write them on your board.  As you take things out of the freezer to thaw, erase them.  It can be easy to forget what you have previously made, and if you don’t remember it’s there, you’ll never be able to use it!

• If you don’t have a deep freeze, try bulk cooking in two-week inventories.  By freezing things flatly you should be able to store two weeks worth of food in a normal sized freezer.  Our menu plan is set up for very small spaces and weekly freezer cooking.