Destashing The Pantry

Pantries gain stash due to sales (buy one, get one free, cheaper if you purchase five, that's such a good price that I can't pass it up... you know how it goes), when you get tired of something after you've stocked up on it's ingredients, or the fact that rarely do items come in the exact quantities you need. Dead bananas show up in the freezer due to the nature of bananas.

Bananas have three states according to my family: yesterday's bananas (brown), today's bananas (yellow), and tomorrow's bananas (green). At my mom's grocery store, you can actually frequently buy all three (yesterday's bananas are in the produce clearance section), but my grocery store stocks only today's and tomorrow's bananas, and rarely both at the same time. Buying bananas is never as simple as saying "seven bananas for seven days." This is because for the first few days, you will likely only have tomorrow's bananas. Then, on one (unknown in advance) day, you will suddenly have seven today's bananas. What you don't eat that day become yesterday's bananas, although occasionally you can get today's bananas to last two days.

Due to my allergies, I am particularly fussy about my bananas being today's bananas. I suspect that precisely today's bananas has the fewest compounds I'm allergic to. (Although I can't always eat them, either.)

Yesterday's bananas are not a total disaster, though. For baking, yesterday's bananas work best. And, if you don't feel like baking at the precise moment they're rotting on your countertop, simply stick them in the freezer.

So... a lot of these pantry items keep pretty well, and you'll use them eventually, right? Right! So where's the problem? Moving. In particular, moving long distances, especially when there's an international border involved. Now, I plan to foist my leftovers on any friends that will take them, but I'm trying to use up some of my more, um, shall we say "unfoistable" ingredients. Like the dead bananas in the freezer, a partial tin of "getting older" quick oats... stuff like that. And if I use up some of my foistable ingredients while I'm at it, so much the better... I seem to do a bit more baking than my average friend. There's probably a limit to how much I can foist upon them.

Anyway, last night around 9pm, I felt the urge to go out and have both human contact and a bit of exercise. So I wrote up my grocery list and went grocery shopping. When I was making up my list, I had a look at some of the pantry stash, to see what I could make if I had the correct perishable ingredients. I found out that with a 1 L bottle of milk and a six-pack of eggs, I could make banana bread, oatmeal chocolate cake, and chocolate pudding, probably using up nearly all of the milk and eggs, and a bunch of the items in my pantry. I also have all the ingredients for fudge on hand, as long as I use baking chocolate rather than chocolate chips. (At a 1 to 1 ratio... last time I used less baking chocolate, I got a very tasty chocolate syrup, but it was not fudge.)

Today I started with the banana bread. I put chocolate chips in, because I like it better that way. It occured to me I could also use up the last of my pecans this way... since I would have to buy more brown sugar if I were to make more cinnamon buns. (And then have leftover brown sugar.) Pantry stash used up: all dead bananas, all pecans, half of chocolate chips, one stick of butter (one left to go), and I also made a dent in my white sugar and vanilla. (Between fudge and chocolate pudding, I may be able to use up the rest of the vanilla too.) I think I did pretty well with today's effort at destashing.

So... anyone want to visit me now? I've got fresh banana bread!