I’ve been on a cleaning kick this week, and I have discovered some alarming things. Remember my problem with frozen chicken br**sts? (Why the stars? I don’t want to be attached to a google-search for that word…..) I have shared with you that I keep buying bags of chicken, because I’m always sure that we’re “out” at home. Well, apparently that’s not all I tend to buy without reason. This week I attacked the pantry and guess what? I found 4 cans of evaporated milk. First of all, I can’t remember the last time I used evaporated milk. And secondly, the only thing I think I use it for is mashed potatoes and fudge, neither of which has been made in this house for a long time. So – weird. The next thing I discovered “en masse” was almonds. Seven bags of them, all unopened. At least I had the good sense to buy different types. There were whole almonds, there were slivered almonds, and there were sliced almonds. I’m good. I think that I had intended to make a few batches of this incredible recipe and couldn’t remember what kind of almonds it called for. But I know that I didn’t buy these packages all at once – they accumulated. I know this because they were all in different spots in the pantry. FPS.
Just so you don’t think my problem is limited to food, I also cleaned out my closet this week. (I took Monday off – remember? I got a LOT done.) I actually sorted my shirts by color (I know. Too much.) and guess what I found out? I have a problem with white shirts. You wouldn’t believe how many white shirts are in my closet. Now in my defense, this is a completely different situation than four cans of evaporated milk. None of these shirts are exactly alike. There are different fabrics, different necklines, different sleeve lengths, and different styles. But still. I don’t think that on the days that I’m going to wear a white shirt, I need to have that many choices to face in the morning. FPS.
So, here is where the contest comes in. I want to know that I am not alone in this lunacy. Surely there are some of you out there who have an overabundance of something in your freezer/fridge/pantry/closet, that you never intended to have in abundance. Please tell me I’m not alone in this. And yarn doesn’t count because there is no recognized word in a knitter’s language that translates to “excess” or “overabundance”. Fortunately. Leave your answer in the comments section, and I will draw a name next Friday, February 1st, for the winner. What does the winner get? A skein of Wollmeise Sock Yarn. 🙂 I thought that would be a good way to start out our monthly blog contests for 2008. And for those of you who don’t have this little problem? You can still enter the contest. Just leave a comment and say, “I don’t seem to have that problem.” and consider yourself entered. I will try to contain my jealousy.
Speaking of contest winners, thank you to everyone who cast votes for the Q4 Challenge this week! There were actually several entries that ran neck and neck with a lot of votes, but the one that got the most votes was the Anemoi-Inspired Mittens, done by Nicole. So Nicole gets the Knitters Choice Award – a $25 Loopy Gift Certificate. And the randomly drawn winner from all of the entries was the Monkey Socks by Karen! Karen also gets a $25 Loopy Gift Certificate. It’s always so fun to see the different interpretations you all come up with for the Quarterly Knitting Challenges. You still have over 2 months left to participate in the Q1-08 – I hope you’ll join us!
Monday we will start a new, regular blog feature called The Loopy Limelight! We have so many fun and interesting people who have become part of the Loopy Family (and that includes all of you) and I thought it would be nice to introduce you to some of them. Monday, I will introduce you to a longtime friend of mine, who has a wonderful recipe (it contains chocolate – yum!) that she is going to share. We’re looking forward to sharing many more people with you in the weeks and months to come, usually on Mondays. We hope this brings some fun recipes and tips and inspiration for all of you.
Sheri anyonehaveanygoodrecipesthatusealmonds,chickenbr**stsand/orevaporatedmilk??
Hello Sheri —
For me it’s cous cous, and, more specifically Trader Joe’s Whole Wheat cous cous. Don’t ask why, because I don’t know, but I keep finding more boxes deeper and deeper in the pantry…
If only each grain of couscous were a skein of cashmere or qiviut…:-)
Around here, it’s arts and craft supplies for the kids. I act as if, come next August, there just won’t be any washable markers and crayons available. And even though I still have tons from the year before, I still buy more when they go on sale. Glitter, construction paper, glue sticks…it’s like a supply store here! It’s a sickness.
\I stash most things in life. I like to know that it’s available if the whim would ever hit me or a family member. Common items include:
*kleenex (boring)
*art and office supplies (paper and writing implements are favorites)
*shower supplies
*coconut milk
*pasta
*ice cream!
Lemons, and sugar-free cranberry Jell-o. We can get organic lemons inexpensively when we buy a dozen or so in a mesh bag, and I’m always thinking we’re out of lemons when we’re, um, SO not out of lemons. I buy a mesh bag, head home, and discover that we already had a mesh bag full of lemons. Sigh. The Jell-o seems to pile up entirely on its own. Perhaps we have Jell-o elves.
The other thing I have an inordinate number of – dictionaries… not just English ones (since I think I’ve only go one of those) but all sorts of languages: Middle Welsh, Biblical Hebrew, Old Norse (including one super large scholarly one from Old Norse into Danish), Old English, a bunch of Latin, Norwegian, Danish, German, French, and I don’t think that I’m likely to slow down any, I tend to get one new one at least every academic year.
Here’s a motto about extra food storage – if in doubt, throw it out!
Watch those aging cans of tomatoes – eventually the acid will eat through the can. I was helping someone move, and he picked up a can of tomatoes, and the bottom of the can separated from the tube.
That was really really disgusting. I think the same thing happened to someone else I know with peaches or apricots.
My over-stocked item would be tea. I think there are about 15 kinds on hand right now, but I think only four or five are open. I usually have two kinds of jasmine tea and two green teas. I have the regular type for everyday use, and then a special one I enjoy when I have more time and can have more than one or two cups. I blame this habit of collecting on trips to China, where I buy it and receive it as gifts. I recommend making friends with people from Sichuan, they grow great teas!
I have quite a lot of psotcards. I always buy them thinking to augment my photo albums with things I could not manage to photograph, but there are way too many to ever use. I don’t need to send that many either, even if I used the postcard exchange service Postcrossing (URL above) much more frequently. Well I do enjoy them when I remember to look at them ….
I used to have a wrapping paper issue. Then I bought a plastic container which is long enough to hold rolls of wrapping paper, and I just keep enough to fit in the box. It has been working very well. I would prefer the holiday cards would also fit in there, but I guess that would be asking too much.
I am trying to remember to check the expiry dates on condiments in the refrigerator, and use up what I have rather than buy five more kinds of chili garlic sauce …
enjoy your stuff!
Canned tomatoes and brown sugar! I have diced tomatoes (some flavored & some plain), stewed tomatoes, whole tomatoes, tomato sauce. All in all, I counted 17 cans of some-kind-of tomatoes! Brown sugar –I have 3 bags, and 4 boxes of brown sugar. What makes us do this???
You are not alone! We had a flood a few weeks ago because a radiator broke and had to clean out the kitchen and pantry. I found 4 large cans of chunk pineapple, too many cans of beans, and 3 boxes manicotti pasta. I don’t think they’re meant to be used together but I can’t even remember buying all these.
Paper towels and garbage bags. I always assume I’m out and then when I come home and put them away I find I have plenty. Same goes for cans of tomatos that I use for pasta sauce. I think it may just be that I’m too darn short to see things in the cabinet!!
Frozen bananas! It might seem crazy, but I just can’t throw out those bananas that are too ripe to eat. So I stick them in the freezer. I’ve got a ton of them, just waiting. Inevitably, someone always asks, “why do you have so many bananas in the freezer?” I just say, “they’re for banana bread,” or something that could be construed as a sensible answer, but I don’t think I’ll ever really make 10 loaves of banana bread. It’s darn good, though. Banana bread, I mean. 🙂
My husband is actually the one who does the food shopping (no, you can’t have him). He is generally very good, but he gets into toilet paper purchasing frenzies. And I don’t mean the four roll a pack purchasing. I’m talking about the 18 double-roll toilet paper sized ones. He buys them every time he goes to the supermarket (which is generally twice a week) and when we run out of space to store it, I have to remind him NOT to buy any. Otherwise, our house would be drowning in toilet paper (do you think there is some kind of subliminal message here?).
I had a problem with chocolate chips (semi-sweet, milk), butterscotch chips, raspberry chips, candy covered chocolate pieces. I guess I wanted to make some cookies but never got around to it.
Lately it has been with salsa, some medium and some hot but several jars worth. I guess I don’t want to run out.
I have waaaay too many post-it note pads – so many the sticky stuff is starting to dry out on some of them. All different sizes, shapes, and colors but more than I use…
Chocolate chips – I must have 15 bags in the freezer – regular, mini, double chocolate, the Andes Mint chips. and
Unsalted butter – 4 pounds worth – for baking the cookies the above chips go in.
[Maybe some this weekend! Yum, good reward for digging out from the snowstorm that’s supposed to strike NE Indiana]
Plastic food storage bags – every size, in both freezer and storage. And multiples of each.
And that’s all that I’m admitting to!
1. Potato chips and instant noodles. Which always surprises me when I look at them, because… I don’t eat potato chips, and I don’t remember the last time I ate instant noodles, either. Curious.
2. LeSportSac bags. Yup. They’re fake, of course (I think) but every time I go back to the Philippines, I seem to come back here to the US with a handful of them. O_O So, naturally, every time I need to go out someplace that requires, you know, a classy little black bag… I’m confronted by this wave of wildly coloured little baglets falling out of my closet at me.
…on the other hand, they’re are the perfect size for a nice large ball of sock yarn, a set of DPNs, my notions box, and my wallet, so it’s a good thing I don’t often go places that need classy black bags. ^_~
(It’s kind of like my yarn stash, now that I think about it. I have whole industrial-sized Rubbermaid bins of delicious woolies… but every time I decide that I need a solid colour, I discover anew that I don’t own any. O_O)
Carrots, big bags of carrots, accumulate in our fridge! Whoever goes shopping, get yet another one.
Many varieties of tea. My favorite (at the moment) is a lavender Earl Grey. I usually have a lot of soup cans too..
In my fridge is an overabundance of butternut squash. Why butternut squash, you say? Not too long ago I decided that I would start feeding my young daughter pureed vegetables rather than me buying the stuff in the jars/containers. For awhile it was a great idea until she decided to STOP eating baby food or baby-type (pureed) food. It sucks because I don’t normally eat butternut squash to begin with! What am I going to do with 1 big-a$$ thing of butternut squash? Believe me, 1 is one too many so it’s definitely an overabundance!
Swiss cheese.
For sandwiches, we like to buy Kraft deli sliced sharp cheddar and swiss cheese. We tend to go through the cheddar the fastest, so when it’s time to buy more, I forget that we haven’t finished off the swiss yet and buy more of both. So we’ll end up with several packages of swiss cheese in the fridge all at once.
Peanut butter. I keep bringing home, but the kids can’t take it to school! We had four jars in the pantry when I brought the fifth home. Oh, and Honey Nut Cherios too. Do you know the big jumbo boxes that cost almost ten bucks? Well I had 3 of those at one point! Jeeze. It saved on the grocery bill later though…
And don’t you hate it when you stop buying, because you know you had too much, and then you run out?!
Black shirts, which make up the majority of my wardrobe. Tomato soup– I have 4 boxes of organic tomato soup waiting in my cupboard. And Converse-type shoes. I really don’t want to admit how many pairs of Converse-type shoes I have, but it’s well over 10.
Chicken stock. I actually use it quite a bit but I am also always convinced that I’m running out. The result? I have about 4 gallons.
Maybe you could use some of those almonds to makes this:
http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/12/pear-crisps-with-vanilla-brown-butter/
Mustard Pickle. There’s a particular brand that can be hard to get here, so I tend to stock up. But really, who needs 9 jars of mustard pickle? Oh and 11 varieties of vinegar (possibly more)…
Oh boy – what mom doesn’t have this problem LOL
bread for one –
oh and Oatmeal! oatmeal oatmeal.
oh books for myself – I love books and at least twice this year I’ve purchased a duplicate 🙁
You’ve got white shirts, I’ve got tons of black shirts. T-shirts, to be specific. I seem to be helpless against the siren song of the black shirt. My next big decluttering challenge is to get rid of a bunch of clothing–I’ve got so much it no longer fits in my dresser and the closet’s in danger of overflowing. Some of this stuff has been with me since high school, so I’ve really got no excuse to keep it…
My problem is definitely with cold cereal. I stock up whenever it goes on sale, so I think I have about 6 different varieties in my pantry at the moment. Of course, if they ever ban cold cereal, I’m going to be sitting pretty, so I feel that I’m justified in having so much.
somehow I seem to have an overabundance of Italian Flavored Bread crumbs and Sweetened Condensed Milk. Go figure.
Bags. I have more bags, purses, backpacks, diaper bags than anyone I know. I love bags. And can always talk myself into a new one.
Tea and hand cream. Although not together!
Tea flavors of every kind: herbal and green, fruity and minty. Tea, tea, tea.
And hand cream, every where I turn. Of course none of them work. So if anyone has any recommendations, you can never have enough hand cream!
This is going to sound strange, but… henna.
There was a time when Lush was out of Caca Rouge (their red henna, which I use to slightly amp up my natural red and to cover my grey) for the longest time, so I bought up several years’ worth of it when it was back in stock. Most of it is stored in my freezer, where it resembles nothing so much as big bricks of hash.
I have an over abundance of butter and frozen pie crust. Although in my defense I was making chicken pot pie on a regular basis for awhile, hence the pie crusts…however I always seem to think that we are running out of butter and we never are.
You know, my collection comes from visiting the Renaissance Festival. Every time I go, I visit the various potters’ stalls and I pick out one mug. I have four at the moment and I use them all for tea. They were made for beer quaffers so they hold a good pint. 🙂
My thing is frozen mixed vegetables. There are a couple of casseroles I make that use them and I go the store and can never remember if I have enough at home, and pretty soon I end up with several bags of them stored up.
I have more then a few boxes of the lasagna noodles that you don’t have to boil first, and somehow ended up with 5 jars of mayo. (I had 6, but just opened one.)
i have several of these problem objects.
i design costumes, so i have between 9 and 13 (that i am aware of) 60″ flexible tape measures. every time i go to a rehearsal to measure the actors, i seem to forgot a tape and i run to CVS and buy another. i swear the things travel in herds and they migrate between my car and my apartment with one rarely ever making it into my bag.
there are other lesser overcrowded items but i have one that takes the cake worse than tapes….
i dye my very long hair at home, and it takes 2 boxes to cover it all. i always forget to use the 2nd package of conditioner so i now have 17 packets of conditioner in my cabinet, and i always get 2 new ones (and only one will be used) every time i need to redye!
The first time this happened to us was with mayonnaise when we first got married over 15 years ago. It has since happened so often that when we see something in huge quantities we just say, X is the new mayonnaise. X currently equals fish sauce, sesame oil and chili garlic paste. (My kitchen sounds much more exotic than it actually is.)
Canned soup is my nemesis. I always throw a few cans in the cart at the grocery store, just in case and I have a whole, whole lot of it. Oh and I totally hear ya on the bags of chicken breast. When I cleaned out the freezer last week, I had four bags. I cooked a bag on Sunday so now it is only three!! 🙂
I have about five different jars of ground nutmeg. Apparently, I’ll be making about twenty pumpkin pies at some point soon, but I never horded up on canned pumpkin when it was in season. Maybe I still have time to catch fifty cans on clearance at Trader Joe’s?
I also seem to have a problem with black pants… two pairs were makeshift-hemmed, one pair is part of a business suit, two more pairs are entirely different cuts but were purchased for different “going out” events… and I’m in the market for at least one more pair that I can wear with flats, because all of the above are too long for that, and somehow it’s easier to buy more than to have the existing ones hemmed at the cleaner’s.
The last addictive problem is that of Old Navy Flip Flops. I buy them in Summer, I buy them in Winter. I buy the Holiday ones. I have them in every color, yet I only ever wear the black ones… but they DO get worn ALL summer long… At least they’re only $2.50 when you buy two pairs at once (and I always do).
I do that with spices–I’ll need something for a recipe and not be able to remember if we have it…at one point I found four little jars of–wait for it–turmeric, of all things. I also do it with canned goods, beans in particular…
Shampoo and conditioner. For some reason I believe that I’m just about to run out of one or the other, so I’ll grab a bottle of one or the other. Invariably, I’ll wind up with several bottles of one and no bottles of the other. There’s never a happy medium.
Paper towels that match the colors in my kitchen! My dispenser is hung below my cupboards and I obsess that my paper towels match so whenever I see a pattern that goes with my decor I have to buy them…I have even run out of space in the cupboard and had to store extra out in the garage! Wow! I do have a problem!
I seem to always buy raw almonds at Trader Joes and I never really need them. I do snack on them but always have plenty
Slinkies! Last weekend I cleaned out my study closet and found six there plus another mini one lurking in my desk drawer. I don’t know where they’re coming from and I definitely don’t remember buying any (especially not seven of them!). And yet here they are. Perhaps I’m living on some unknown slinky migration route, or my apartment lies in their traditional mating grounds. Did I already have one and it accidentally got wet? I have no idea…
For me it is cream of mushroom soup and refried beans. I also always buy tuna fish and 8 ounce cans of Hunts tomato sauce every time I go to the store. You can never have too much, you know:) Non-food related, I used to buy way too much scrapbooking paper, but I cured that by buying yarn instead.
Butter, my DH is always sure we need butter.
We have way too much stuff in general.
I have way too much pasta. I will have to take it to the local food bank next week because I will never use it all before the magic date. I also have a stash of tea and coffee; but that will stay home with me.
Try using your evaporated milk in macaroni and cheese. It is very good and doesn’t bother lactose-intolerant tummies.
oh my gosh, where to start? It doesn’t help that I have 2 freezers and a pantry in my kitchen and one in my basement. I have way too many packs of chocolate chips (like 8). Cereal, I mean, I know my boys eat alot but…. 12 boxes. OH, and how about sodas – I went and counted and there are 14 twelve packs in my basement pantry. Now, to get started on the freezer, for some reason I have a ton of frozen blackberries and hmm, about 8 packs of mystery meat. NOw you know, it is always going to remain a mystery cause I refuse to thaw it out and cook it. LOL.
Beans, beans, beans. I’ll buy a bag of beans (or bag of bean soup, almost the same thing), thinking that I’ll have make a nice, healthful, vegetarian meal once a week. I never cook them – I hate soaking, I hate the quick-soak method, and regardless it takes forever. So I only eat them once a year (on New Year’s, when my “heritage” requires eating black-eyed peas) and I’ll still add a bag or two every now and then to the pantry.
Then there’s tea – I buy a box of interesting tea bags and get tired after one or two cups. Repeat.
I seem to have an obsession over drinks. I have both regrig. drawers and half the door filled with Diet Cokes, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Sprite, Diet Mugs, Diet cherry vanilla cokes, Atkins Vanilla Shakes, Atkins Choc. Shakes and Adkins Strawberry Shakes. Let’s see I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few. Should I take of photo??? LOL. Guess I’m afraid I’ll run out. And I don’t want just Diet cokes, gotta have a variety. Does not leave room for veggies though or much else.
Just one of my obsessions. Tehehehehe
Candles, like yarn, seem to grow in the dark in the closets. They do come in handy during a power outage, but I’m set for the next ten years!