Pantry Stocking

[Alix]

Also a good plan Breezy! Thank you. So...my plan for now is:

1. Inventory my pantry and kitchen
2. Put said inventory on the computer
3. Get a voice recorder for the kitchen

I think this will help immensely. I have a pretty good "inventory" in my head. Where I fall down on things is when OTHER people are using my kitchen. For example, my youngest daughter is now becoming quite interested in baking and is doing a fair bit of it. Thus...I run out of things like flour/sugar/chocolate chips and cocoa without realizing it. The voice recorder will help on that front.

The inventory written down on the computer I can see being invaluable for meal planning. I've always done a weekly plan (white board on the fridge now) where everyone picks a couple of things they'd like to have for dinner that week. This way I can have a list of "on hand" items that they can look at and either pick something from those or they can put down their choice and put something like an asterisk or exclamation mark next to it (I HOPE!!) to let me know I need to shop.

I think the other trick for me is to make it sort of fun for them to help me with this. The voice recorder will help there, and I think I'll maybe get some magnetic farm animals and coloured white board markers to facilitate the menu and list making.

I'm open to more ideas if anyone has another suggestion. Thanks all!

 

[BreezyCooking]

It does work. For instance, recently my husband bought a bunch of bananas, & several of them were starting to reach "science experiment" ripeness. Immediately I thought "Banana Bread". I knew I had everything on hand except perhaps for the walnuts (which for me are vital to Banana Bread), but didn't need anything else at the market to justify a trip into town (not a big hardship, but 8 miles away nonetheless). Freezer inventory showed a bag of walnuts that I'd forgotten about. Hooray - Banana Bread all around - lol!! I'd never have remembered I had those walnuts in the freezer if I hadn't put it on the computer.