Waste or Want: Pantry oddities

I started thinking about this post when I noticed a few truly antique items in my pantry and freezer - packages crusted over with ice; dented boxes of exotic grains; twelve varieties of stale nuts.  Too many items to list individually, really, and plus right off the bat, we know they're going to waste.

But I'm going to plow ahead anyway, because the amount of stuff sitting there unused is truly wasteful.  I mean, imagine if you added up the stuff everyone had sitting unused in pantries and basement freezers!  I bet you could come up with Thanksgiving dinner for every homeless person in New York City.

So, I polled a few friends to find out what they had in their freezer, to compare similarities with my own excesses, and here is the resulting list of items that linger, in order of popularity (or non-popularity, however you choose to think about it):

1. Quinoa. A grain-like crop that originated in South America, cheap and very high-protein, most of those polled mentioned quinoa (KEEN-wa).  Fabulous, but I've yet to find a person who can cook it so that it is edible, or even knows how to cook it.  Boxes of these pebbly bastards grace a lot of shelves, including mine, if they haven't been trashed already. I vaguely remember using it with cauliflower and cheese to make a casserole a decade ago. 
2. Coconut milk.  Why, why, why?  Because the name sounds good.  Meryl Streep once said on The Actor's Studio, when asked her favorite word, that she had posed the question to her young daughter, who immediately mentioned the infamous unused ingredient.  Yep, sounds pretty.  But unless you've got the curry and lemongrass and rice noodles and what-all that usually go with this to make a dish, you're screwed.
3. Bulghur wheat. Same story as quinoa.
4. Panko bread crumbs.  Because you never know when you're going to fry up a batch of tempura shrimp!
5. Matzoh meal.  Making matzoh ball soup must be complicated.
6. Tomato paste.  Classic thing that you pick up, thinking, "Oh, think I'm out of that!" and you never are.
7. Turkey chili and beef jerky for a planned camping trip that evidently never occurred. Or if it did, they ate wild greens.
8. Soba noodles.  They're great.  I just never got around to cooking them.
9. Confectioner's sugar.  Quite a few bags and half-bags out there.
10. Lotus nuts in syrup.  (That was my husband's inexplicable contribution.)
11. Half-box of frozen ice pops. Weather changes, who wants 'em.  The other half of the box, still in liquid state, sits on the pantry floor.  When I bought these, the cashier cheerily said, "Hey, I've had a box of those in my room for about five years!" 

The moral here:  Beware of buying ethnic food ingredients if you aren't making the entire meal tonight, and already have everything you need.  Clean the pantry every year or so so you don't keep buying the same staple items over and over.  Go easy on seasonal items. Oh, and stick to a list when you shop.

Now, would they like Panko crumbs for the school Thanksgiving food drive...

~BurbMom

Comments

[Lynn on the Cape]

Quinoa? Easy and essential. I use it in place of couscous in my take-to-parties dish:
sauté an onion and some garlic, add to the mixture 1/4 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp turmeric, 1/4 tsp ginger powder and 1/4 tsp cinnamon (I usually double these to 1/2 tsp). Add wine or broth as you would do to make risotto, adding liquid until the quinoa is done. When all the liquid is absorbed, throw in a handful each of chopped dried apricots, pistacho nuts, currants, and parsley. Salt and pepper to taste. Yum. Oh, and I'll take that bulgur wheat. Great in Turkish recipes.

[BurbMom]

Uh, who has tumeric and ginger powder just hangin' around? And what do you mean, "As you would make risotto?" If I knew how to make risotto, I'd know what the heck to do with quinoa!