This week, I was really busy, but I still managed to use up a few items that needed to be used.  I got some help from the girls.

I used some cauliflower that I preserved in the fall.  I used some green beans from 2014.  I always have a carry-over and use the oldest jars first.  When all of the ’14’s are used, we will start on the ’15’s.  My husband thawed some lunchmeat of undetermined age and we ate it.  I used some home-canned grape juice from 2009.  It was great.  I found a few more jars down there in the basement, where I keep my canning, that will be used soon.

One daughter used 2 containers of gluten-free pizza crust I had bought quite a while ago at Grocery Outlet.  They were expired, but were still fine.  We used the rest of the personal-sized pizza bread rounds that had been purchased as a school fund-raiser, as well as the rest of the little packets of sauce, pepperoni and cheese that came with that kit.  There were some really, really old packages of sliced salami buried in the freezer–like 3 years old or older.  I wasn’t sure if they would be eatable, but they were.

My older daughter used the croutons I had made a couple of weeks ago in a salad.  She made Caesar Salad with homemade dressing.  She also used some bananas in a chocolate-banana cake and used a 1/2 package of milk chocolate chips as well as some of that huge box of bananas we were given.  She also made a white-bean, sausage soup that used some canned white beans we’ve had for ages.  Some of the garden carrots from last summer were used in that soup as well.  She informed me that the remaining carrots are not in good shape, which makes sense–they’ve been in there for months, so I’d better put them on the list to sort this week.

I have a very large amount of food storage.  I save a lot of money and we eat very well.  I have a basement full of home-canned items.  I have a garage with shelves of food, and several freezers.   Right now, those freezers are stuffed with home-grown turkey, turkey burger, and chickens, as well as fruits and vegetables from the summer.  Each year, we buy 1/2 beef, and we have most of that right now.  I also store loaves of bread and other baked goods in the freezer.  That way, I can cook from scratch when I have time, and use it up on days when I’m busy.

I buy in bulk and when things are on sale.  It is not uncommon for us to buy 25 pound bags of things like beans, sugar, or rice.  I have many plastic ice cream buckets I have saved over the years that I fill with these bulk items.  I also use old tins, Tupperwares, and plastic zip-top bags, and anything else I can find.    I also buy cases of things like canned mushrooms or mandarin oranges if I find an excellent deal.

We grow a huge garden.  Right now, I still have carrots and cabbage in the fridge in cold storage from that garden.  I still have squash and onions that are keeping fine at room temperature in the garage, shop and front room.  The rest of the garden I preserve or eat fresh.  It is normal for me to can 100 quarts or more of green beans alone.  That is only 2 jars per week and we regularly eat that amount.  Canned peaches, pears and applesauce are a regular part of our meals around here.

So, as you can imagine, it is easy for something to “get lost” in that amount of food storage. I work pretty hard at not letting that happen, but sometimes a few things get away from me.   I am very happy with the amount of things we are using up this month, and can’t wait to see what else I can clear out during the rest of the month.  Since I preserve so much, it is a natural thing to have an overabundance in the fall, and makes sense for me to bring that amount down to a smaller amount during the winter.  After all, that’s what it’s for!

I’m still on a mission to use up things that need to be used up, instead of buying more.  These dried bananas have been in the cupboard since 2014.  They were still great.  I put them out for the kids to try at 4H and then showed them how to make more.

I used some quinoa that expired last summer–finished up the package.  I made a salad with it, using the leftover dressing Patsy tried out for me the other day.  I also used some feta that had been languishing in the fridge for a couple of months in that salad.

I used some crusts of gluten-free bread to make croutons.  I will probably grind them into crumbs for cooking.

I used some millet flour, sorghum flour, and cornmeal and had the 4H to make some gluten-free waffles.  This was in addition to the batch I made earlier in the week when I was testing the recipe.  I also finished up a very old package of flax meal from the fridge.  I was able to remove another package from the freezer and start using it.  It had been in there for at least 3 years.

My carrot-coconut bread turned out terrible.  It was dry, crumbly, and fell to pieces before we could eat it.  We ate a bit of it by squishing up a bunch of crumbs between our fingers and stuffing that ball of crumbs into our mouths.  We finally decided that sometimes you win–sometimes you lose–and we gave up and fed it to the pigs.  At least those ingredients went to some good use.

I pulled some lemon bread out of the freezer and served it.

I also got out a bunch of fish, tried out a recipe for some fish nuggets and had the 4H make it.  It was swai fish, which was very inexpensive, and ended up working well for the recipe.  I’m not familiar with this fish, but got the entire 2 lb bag for only $5 a while back, which is a pretty good price for fish.  It also used some corn flake crumbs I crushed up several months ago and have stored in a jar in the pantry.  It included home-made tartar sauce, which used some of the pickles from 2014.  They were a dill pickle, but had a little sugar in them, which we ended up not liking as well as our tried and true recipe, but they worked well in this sauce.

I took some bread and butter pickles from 2012 to a birthday party today, and they were devoured.  Home-canned foods last for much longer than 1 year, but I always use the oldest first, as they are nicer when they are fresher.

The first week of January is a good time to reflect on what goals and projects I want to accomplish in the new year.  I didn’t want to decide what I wanted to do for a whole year.  Life around here is always changing, so any plans I make now for months into the future would probably be changed anyway.  A bout of winter weather kept me home for a couple of extra days after the holidays and I was able to decide what I wanted to do as my January project.

I decided that I wanted to use up as many odds and ends as I could, especially from my food storage.  It really bothers me to store foods and then have them go bad because I didn’t use them.  It really, really bothers me to think that foods I’ve preserved might go bad, since it is a lot of work to can, dry and freeze food.

So, I set myself a challenge to use at least 31 food items up that are odd, getting older, unusual, etc., an average of 1 per day. I am especially  looking for things that might go bad if not used promptly.  I don’t anticipate working on this project on days that I work, instead, I’ll double up on my days off.  I expect to actually use far more items than that.

I started by going out to the garage, where the bulk of my food storage is.  I grabbed a gluten-free flour mixture Ja’Ana had mixed up for a recipe last summer.  I also grabbed quite a few other gluten-free flours that needed to be used. I grabbed some dried cherries that had been there for a long time.  Patsy and I made sweet cherry biscuits yesterday.  Today,  Ja’Ana decided to make a cake with the remains of her flour mix.  I mixed up some waffles and froze them for easy breakfasts.  I also am trying a carrot bread recipe I found.

So, for January so far, I’ve used:

some dried cherries,  sorghum flour I was given quite a while ago, millet flour, oatmeal, carrots from our garden that have been in the fridge since September, the rest of the flour mix Ja’Ana made months ago, some jam I canned several years ago, emptied 2 mustard containers from the fridge, and a bottle of Diet Coke that has been in the garage for WAY over a year.  That’s already 10 items and it’s only the 5th!  (I only listed things that had been there a long time)

How about you?  Are you putting any of the grocery money you’ve previously spent to good use in January?  I plan to put any extra money I save by doing this project away for future purchases to restock.