What’s In My Cupboards

Old Mother Hubbard jokes aside, I have 4 cupboards for food and no extra storage. But, there are only two of us here. As long as I don’t stock up (a la Doomers), the space is enough. Especially when you see how I use my cupboards: I don’t “need” a cupboard just for tea or just for spices. They make me happy, though!

Here’s how I organize things. The 4 cupboards are the main pantry cupboard, one for baking supplies and dry goods, one for spices and mixes, and one for coffee and tea.

The main pantry cupboard currently contains:

• 4 kinds of cereal (2 for me and 2 for spouse)
• 4 kinds of crackers (whole wheat, Tricuits type, melba toasts, and graham)
• 2 kinds of packaged cookies (Pirate cookies hard to resist – FYI same as Girl Scout Do-Si-Dos)
• Brown, white and wild rice
• Boxes of quinoa and couscous, rarely used
• Quick and regular oats
• Peanut butter, marmite, honey
• Flavoured applesauce
• Jam, marmelade, maple syrup  – unopened back-ups – wouldn’t want to run out!
• Soy sauce, plum sauce, salsa
• Canned tomatoes and corn
• Jars of spaghetti sauce
• Chick peas, brown beans, kidney beans (plan to start cooking them from dried one of these days)
• Prepared soup (mostly make own)
• Bread (same – just getting started – 6 weeks now!)
• Leftover honey-roasted peanuts, banana chips, Kraft Dinner, and flavoured rice mixes from when Link was living at home

The baking and dry goods cupboard is a work in progress. I haven’t quite sorted out what goes in the pantry cupboard and what goes in baking/dry goods. Note the nice new jars from Dollarama 🙂

• White flour (whole wheat is in fridge)
• Rye flour and rye flakes
• Corn starch
• White sugar, brown sugar, icing sugar, molasses
• Baking powder and baking soda
• Vanilla extract (will be making own soon)
• Almond extract
• Cocoa powder
• Baking spices: cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, etc.
• Unflavoured gelatin
• Yeast
• Salt
• Raisins, dates, dried cranberries, dried apricots
• Walnuts, almonds, peanuts
• Dried shredded coconut
• Chocolate chips
• Marshmallows – for making fudge
• Every colour of sprinkles – for making Pride cupcakes 🙂
• Cupcake papers
• Birthday candles, gently used
• Assorted candy belonging to Rom and Link, left over from Xmas and other holidays (no chance I would ever have leftover candy)
• whole wheat pasta & white pasta
• red lentils & green lentils

and Rom’s impulse buys which I hope we will use up eventually:

• millet
• mung beans
• barley
• bulgur

The spice cupboard (and the big cookie jar full of spice envelopes) has all the cooking spices such as chili and curry, cumin and coriander, 5-spice, basil, thyme, summer savoury, lemon pepper, bay leaves, cheap saffron, etc. I also keep a few packages of gravy mix, taco seasoning, onion soup mix (for meat loaf), tapioca, jello and…tofu?

Finally there is the hot drinks cupboard which has an embarrassing array of coffee, decaf, espresso, hot cocoa mix, tea, flavoured black teas, green tea and herbal teas…I don’t even want to count how many!

So that is pretty much all the food I own except for the freezer. I am including a pic of how the fridge looks mid-week when it’s full of leftovers (chili, soup and rice) and re-stocked from grocery shopping. Not out of control yet!