How Many Items are in your Refridgerator? (Do you ever "Eat It Out"?)

[Bathsheba]

What sort of 'fridge do you keep? Is it overpacked or can you clearly see every item?

I can clearly see that we only have about 8 items in our fridge at the moment:

Milk
Eggs
Butter
Capers
Mayonaise
Yogurt
Juice
Cauliflower

It doesn't worry me that it has got this low. We've temporarily stopped doing big weekly shops in favour of buying fresh daily. We have a few bills to pay and this will work a treat. Best of all I don't snack as much and very little goes to waste!


Our pantry is also looking nice and "minimal".

This is the best money saving tip i can give anyone. People spend so much food on things that end up getting lost and forgotten about in their fridges and pantries.

Or do you hate the look of an empty fridge or pantry?

[feeb]

My fridge badly needs a cleanout!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stuff in there thats out of date forgotten about and possibly no idea what!

[Bathsheba]

I was thinking of my mother's fridge too.... she lives by herself and constantly stocks her fridge with way more than we do as a family of 5. It is always jam packed so that you can never find anywhere to put anything.

[Mak]

You are so right - especially about the snacking!!! We periodically eat out the pantry and fridge/freezer as I tend to purchase multiples of things and then we change our meal plan/preferences! Such a good idea and saves heaps of money and waste too.

[Miss.September]

We pretty much eat ours out every week. I do a weekly shop and by shopping day, it's looking fairly bare. Nothing much goes in the bin, which makes me really happy!

[Bathsheba]

Yes, hardly anything is wasted here. I have worked in commercial kitchens and seen sooo much waste.... terrible! Swore I would never waste food in my own kitchen. We can't afford to.

I buy in bulk only if the item is non perishable. Otherwise it's fresh all the way. I understand living on a farm or out of town can mean you have to stock up... but we have more than 5 supermarkets within walking distance! It's seriously easy to just buy things on a daily basis and not risk the waste.

[krysalyss]

I would actually spend more that way as if I buy every day I can pick up whatever my latest cravings might be. LOL. We only have a mini fridge at the moment and it doesn't fit much in so we are pretty careful about how much we buy each time so it doesnt go off.

[Kazmar]

Well I went and spent $400 on food the other day and our fridge is tiny sooooo, it's fairly packed! It ****s me though, because I always end up throughing out stuff that has gone out of date and hasn't even been opened! We just didn't see it as it was packed in the back

[Bumperstump Cummerbund]

I was JUST talking about this with DH last night Bath - stalker much?

My fridge isn't that bad, but I have thrown some things out recently. My pantry is absolutely overflowing, and I have no idea what's in there We've got our local farmers market on next weekend, so I said to DH that I'll be writing up an inventory of the meat we buy, and an inventory of exactly what is in the pantry, and comparing the two to make meal plans for however long it takes to empty them out. From then on, we'll be working purely from fortnightly meal plans, so there shouldn't be any wastage/clutter.

Sounds good in theory

[Pandora]

Are you going to do the meal plan first, before the farmers market? That way you won't buy what you don't need?

Say me whose refridgerator is full of mystery boxes and forgotten leftovers.

[MrsFabuloso]

My fridge is pretty good. We shop fortnightly and every fortnight, I am down to the dregs. I make and effort not to buy surplus food and will make a concerted effort cook things before it's over it's use by. Like when we went shopping this fortnight, DH put in more potatoes and pumpkin, which we didn't need, but I will just make sure I make some pumpkin and potato soup and have 1-2 baked dinners in the next fortnight so it won't go mouldy or gross.

At the mo, it's fairly full since we only went shopping last Thursday. Plus DH brought some beer which makes it look fuller than it is!

I ideally want to make up some fortnightly menu's and coinciding shopping lists, I actually worked on it a bit today, but it's taking some time to get it all sorted!

[Phteven]

I like to think of my pantry as a mystery box.

[Glamourcide]

I love nothing more than an almost-empty fridge!! Because my fridge is usually so 'well-stocked' (ie, packed to the brim with a whole bunch of crud, some of it rotting or at the very least, past its use-by date) that to see it with lots of room means there's nothing unnecessary in there, whatever's left is good to eat and shopping day is just around the corner
Every few months I do a 'stocktake' of my pantry, see what I have lots of and do a meal plan to use up all the stuff that's been sitting there for months or is getting close to its use-by date, or has just been covered up with other stuff and forgotten about. I hate to see food go to waste (which means I'm constantly upset because the girls are SO bad for wasting food - a few bites here, another couple there, no I changed my mind, I now want to eat x instead of y, mum) so a bare fridge and pantry is a sign of success in my mind
And yes, reducing the snack attacks is another helpful feature, for me anyway... DH is ALWAYS carrying on like a pork chop about how we never have any snacky food in the house and mopes over a bowl of Coco-Pops for afternoon tea instead hehehe

I still prefer to do weekly shops over 'fresh' food shopping, I find it just costs far too much to go to the grocery store every day to get items, as I always end up buying more than I need. Easier to keep the impulse buying in check if I only go in once a week to buy actual food, then pop in a couple of times during the week for extra milk, bread, cold cuts and fruit & veg

[Bumperstump Cummerbund]

Are you going to do the meal plan first, before the farmers market? That way you won't buy what you don't need?

I understand what you mean, but no, I'm doing it the other way round. I've never been to the farmers market before, so I don't really know for myself what kind of cuts they'll have, all my info is from the woman I work with. But I know what kind of cuts I'll use, so I don't intend buying anything I wouldn't know how to cook. Then its just a question of separating out the meat into meals to be frozen, ticking off the relevant items in my pantry and writing down a (hopefully very small) list of additional necessary ingredients. For instance, I have a lot of those packet meal bases, that need things like sour cream or mushrooms - I don't keep those things in stock, so to use up the pack I'd hafta buy the sour cream y'know?

It all makes sense in my head anyway

[maz]

I like to think of my pantry as a mystery box.

mines a lucky dip hon

I like to have food in the house....especially coming from living on the streets and with a sister who never bought food.

If my kids are hungry I want them to be able to eat what they want. We dont have waist either...I cook nearly every day and once a week it left overs.

[Bathsheba]

I guess you have to do what works for you but I find that I am more inclined to "impulse" buy if I go into a supermarket with a trolley (with the vague intention of filling it) instead of just my arms Each day i buy only what I can carry. And if I can somehow manage to skip a day like I did yesterday when my boys were home with colds then all the better... love days when I don't spend anything. I also don't drive so even if I use a basket in the supermarket I only buy what will fit underneath in the cargo section of my pram.

ETA: I think it helps to be able to be creative and cook from scratch. Give me the basics: eggs, flour, milk and some flavours like vanilla etc I can whip up something. Scones, Breton Flan (only takes half an hour). My kids are usually happy with a big bowl of pop corn (the plain kernels, not the flavoured sachet things)... always a staple in our house that I bulk buy because it doesn't go off quickly. We eat cereal like muesli as a "snack" food too.

[briggsy's girl]

we have "staples" that we don't let run out that live in the fridge - half of one shelf is tinned fruits and other things like that which we replace as we use them (so if a tin of pineapple gets used we replace it next shop. there is always beetroot, pineapple, peaches etc. the other half of that shelf is cheeses - we buy cheese by the kg as DD likes it, plus we use a lot in cooking so running out isn't something we want to do.

the top shelf is for leftovers from the night before (we always cook more so that i have lunch at work and DH has lunch at home - doesn't take much to bulk out a dinner with extra veg) DD tends to eat leftovers as well. we live out of the main shopping areas (takes about 20k trip to get to a decent shop) so we tend to try to avoid the need for bread. we do buy and freeze, but if we can have leftovers, it is better IMO. also on the top shelf is anything likely to perish any time soon. things like salami or kabana if we buy it for DH, yogurt etc. we do a check of best before dates each week before we shop and either cook stuff that is going to go out of date soon

third shelf has containers with chocolate or choc biscuits, and a container with coffee for DH's coffee machine.

bottom shelf has a drinks rack - it has drinks (obviously lol), celery gets laid on top of the bottles, ummmm, cat food if we use a tin for him and it has leftovers, and then generally a container with table scraps for the dogs)

the crisper gets emptied every week - we will make soup or spag bol or pasta bake and mix everything in before we go shopping again. this weekend DH bought some broc and cauli so i will make vegie bake with that in it at the end of the weekend to use it up. if it is something like carrot/broc/cauli and we don't want to use it immediately, it gets blanched and thrown in the freezer.

we don't have a lot of waste here to be honest. i DO like having a chance to start fresh sometimes, but it's nice to NOT have and empty fridge atm given we're financially not in a great place. it's nicer to know we have SOMETHING we can have all the time lol

ooh, pantry wise - ours is lovely! all tupperware modular mates - if it was a better shape, it would be awesomely organised - i hate that we have to stack stuff behind each other! BUT, nothing in there is out of date. we check everything every few weeks and then pull out anything nearing it's best before, and it gets used. i find it unendingly frustrating though to open food that is in date, and its' stale anyway! tortillas have been terrible for that lately!

[maz]

impulse buy...sorry Bath...gotta have the $$$ for that