The very first step in
Living the Savvy Life's Food chapter is to make an inventory of kitchen staples.
The idea is to facilitate creating and using a master grocery list. That list helps avoid to forms of waste: overstocking items already in the fridge or cupboards, and making repeat trips to the store for forgotten items.
I used to think I didn't need a written inventory, because I had a high-functioning mental one (like my now-defunct mental rolodex, with dozens of friends and family phone numbers). And to some extent that still holds true.
But attempting to inventory everything in my fridge and cupboards turned out to be less shopping preparation and more wake-up call. While our staples do rotate through the kitchen regularly, staying fresh and becoming ingredients in a range of favorite dishes, a surprising amount of space is bogarted by edible curiosities. A can of Quinault Pride canned salmon? Although it doesn't show a date, it's definitely from the last years of the last milenium. The glass jar of Moroccan Tagine simmer sauce (discontinued by Trader Joe's several years ago)? Likewise, no date. In a sense, both are on the shelf for sentimental reasons.
But our precious storage space isn't meant for keepsakes. It's there for food, serving dishes, tea cups to fancy to use everyday, and other assorted kitchen paraphenalia that later parts of the Food chapter will require me to confront. So before I complete the inventory, I'm taking on the culling step. If the Moroccan Tagine sauce smells good when I open it, we'll have a commemorative supper this week. And the Quinault can will live on as a photo only (for safety, the actual can's headed to the dump).
When the paring-down to actual staples (and a reasonable amount of extras) is done, I'll report again. I may even be brave enough then to share my master grocery list, as Melissa Tosetti does in the book.
