Pantry/ Shelf Life

 

Once a year, I clean out the corner pantry.  Everything comes out, and the pantry is washed out from top to bottom.  Then all the expiry dates on cans are checked, out-of-date pasta noodles are tossed,  and so on.  I make a list of what staples need to be replaced.

I like the feeling I get when my pantry is filled to capacity, especially in the fall.  It’s probably the way a squirrel feels, lying in its supply of food for the winter. There’s just this feeling of security, of being prepared.  Because we live in an isolated area, we do a major shopping trip every two weeks, and then maybe one or two smaller ones in between to pick up essentials like milk, bread, and forgotten items.  When there are case lot sales, I tend to load up.

However, as items start to be crammed in willy-nilly, I also forget what is pushed to the back.  The result is items going to waste.  So this time, I reorganized as I cleaned.  The shelf on which I put all my nice holiday dishes is now used for all my pasta storage containers, put where I can see them.  The dishes are on the higher shelves, as they are used less often.  And now the soup cans are in one place, the vegetables in another, the salmon and tuna in another.  As items are used up, they will then be replaced, and only then.  There’s no point in having thirty cans of tomato soup if they are not all going to be used by their due dates. 

It’s a fine balance between making sure that one is prepared for, well, emergencies, and being one of those survivalists, which I am not.   I realize that there was some excessive hoarding going on, and I am going to stop that.  I want to enjoy the satisfaction of a well-stocked pantry, without the frustration of digging for items on crammed shelves. 

My pantry no longer has the pretty display of dishes and glassware, but it is much more functional.  I still have a few little ornaments on display – for example,there is my  little “farmyard” scene up on the wall near the ceiling.  Autumn will be here soon, and I can feel, like the squirrel, a sense of accomplishment, of things being put in order, of being ready for the winter.

 Just as recently as in my mother's " time" (she passed away in 2005),  our pantries were filled with home-made preserves.  As a child, and then when I was older, I picked saskatoons, raspberries, crabapples, chokecherries, and so on.  Summer was the time for canning, and even after I was married, often I would go over to her home and we would can together.  The fruit, jams, jellies, syrups, etc, were placed in her  back closet, to be taken out and used throughout the winter months.  My own pantry contains no wonderful summer memories any more, but it does remind me of my mother. Once in a long while, I make jam, but I haven't had a real vegetable garden in ages.  I think this is because I have worked full-time outside the home for so long now.  And those special times my mother and I had are now gone.

 

 from   “my mother found herself”

my mother found herself one late summer
afternoon lying in grass under the wild
yellow plum tree jewelled with sunlight
she was forgotten there in spring picking
rhubarb for pie & the children home from
school hungry & her new dress half hemmed
for Sunday the wind & rain made her skin
ruddy like a peach her hair was covered
with wet fallen crab apple blossoms she
didn’t know what to do with her so she put
her up in the pantry among glass jars of
jellied fruit ... 







by Di Brandt

(from  Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey)

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