Pantry re-org 2012

I try to go through my pantry every couple of months,  but who am I kidding, two months becomes three and four and by the time I get to it, the poor shelves have become a mess. To begin the year with a clean slate, I took everything out and grouped things on my dining room table before putting them back.

Again, I didn’t spend a cent on this – I had most of the bins already in the pantry and found a few others throughout the house.  I made the labels and hung them with some denim-stitching thread.  Easy peasy, simple, and it makes me happy to open the pantry doors – btw, they are old cabinets that my husband repurposed so we’d have more food storage.

Here is where I store many prized items from Peru – a powder mix for lucuma ice cream, mazamorra mix packets, and various others. I’ll tell you more about Peruvian food soon.

The soups and broths bin, plus a rogue tub of french fried onions. We love miso soup, it makes for such a comforting meal, or snack, depending on what you put in it.

Potatoes and rice. And lentils, apparently.

A veritable cornucopia (ha) of sauces. Pasta sauces, white sauces, Indian cuisine, etc. We do love our sauces. What I like a lot is that I can cook two pieces of chicken and put spicy sauce on my husband’s plate and not on mine. Spicy hot food and my esophagus do not get along.

The most often used bin in the pantry. My oldest boy eats pasta every single day, and lots of it. I buy pasta at Trader Joe’s, where it’s still 99 cents/lb., cheaper than anywhere else. I also buy plain marinara sauce at TJ’s, and then doctor it up with spices.

Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. We have a ton of jams and jellies, and pancake and crepe batters. Yum yum.

That’s my pantry as of two days ago – I can find anything I need easily and it’s also easy to see how much I have left of various items. There is another shelf at the bottom where the bulk items go, i.e. flour, coffee, etc. At some point I do plan on making the pantry prettier, but “organized” will have to do for now 😀