September – a time of change
As the spring equinox approaches, where day and night are equal, weather patterns shift. From dry to wet in the tropics. From grey and rainy to blue sky sunshine in the southern parts of the country.
How is the weather changing where you are?
In southern Australia, where I live, the wattle is blooming, ornamental fruit trees are blossoming on the streets, and we are craving to bask in the early spring sunshine. These longer days of sunshine are a call to get outside and do things differently.
In the kitchen, it’s time to put away the slow cooker and dust off the barbecue and outside garden furniture.
Does everything in your pantry delight you?
I also use this time to clean out my dry pantry, fridge and freezer. I aim to ensure they are only stocked with things that delight me, and as my tastes shift to lighter foods in the warmer weather, I look to different ingredients.
One of the things I realised in cooking just for me and making sure that I don’t waste is having my pantry full of things that delight me.
It’s amazing when you do a pantry clean how many things there are that you haven’t used for years, bought for some trendy recipe, that you’ve long forgotten because you didn’t really like the taste of it.
If my pantries are full of things that delight me, it ensures that I don’t waste food and always show myself love and respect by cooking to my taste.
By understanding what flavours and tastes I like, I can ensure that everything that comes into my pantry delights me, making it easier for me to prepare meals that I really love.
By getting in touch with my Inner Cook, I found that I love the taste of Thailand, Morocco and hints of Mexico but more than anything, I love just the simple flavours of beautiful salts and peppers with simply cooked food.
In my pantry, I have seven different types of peppercorns: black, white, green, pink, Java long pepper, native Pepper berry and Szechuan pepper. To you, it may seem excessive, but they are the spices I use all the time.
Plus, I have 4 different salts, including my most loved Olsson’s smoked redgum salt. If I have these flavour friends in my pantry, my life in the kitchen is happy.
What are your must-have ingredients?
Is it mustard or a sauce or a spice? Knowing what delights you makes sorting your pantry easy. It also means you don’t waste and can save money by having less in your pantry. The same applies to your fridge and freezer, which I also consider pantries.
My 2 step approach to a pantry audit
You may find there are lots of things that are well past their use-by date. Somehow that creep into the best-organised pantries, fridges and freezers.
Step 1 is to take everything out and regroup those that are in-date by their taste profile, e.g. Thai spice, oils and sauce together. I keep mine in small baskets, so when I cook a Thai meal, I can easily find the relevant spices and seasonings.
Step 2 Empty the out-of-date ingredients into your compost or organic bin and put the empty containers in the appropriate bin (either recycle or kerbside collection).
Restock with small
When restocking your pantry, think about the size of things you buy. Look for small tins of beans, corn, chickpeas, small tins of tomato paste and coconut milk. They are now readily available in most supermarkets.
As a small household, I’ve found that it’s much more economical to use small tins with the quantity you need than opening a larger tin and having the excess sit in the fridge till it’s off and then gets wasted.
How much is your pantry worth?
If you think about the food you have in your cupboard, fridge, and freezer, how much would it cost you to restock it, $100, $200, or $500?
When I added up the value of food in my pantry, I was staggered at the amount of food that I was not using and realised that this was a very considerable amount of money I had tied up.
To liberate this investment, I now do a quarterly embargo on shopping so that I use up what I’ve got in my pantries (cupboards, fridge, and freezer) before I restock. It’s a chance to allow my creativity to run free, inventing meals from what I have in stock. Plus, this reduces my weekly shopping bill for a few weeks.
Shifting into spring
What are the foods that you’ve been missing during winter/the dry? For me, it’s rhubarb, avocados, celery and peas and my challenge in the next few weeks is to create seven different ways to use these beautiful vegetables while they’re in abundance.
What’s in season? check out the list below from the Adelaide Farmers Market.
Spring fruit: apples, avocados, cumquats, grapefruit, lemons, loquats, mandarins, blood oranges, Seville oranges, pears, rhubarb, strawberries, tangelos, tangerine
Spring vegetables: asparagus, bok choy, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, choy sum, garlic, kohlrabi, leeks, salad, spring onions, parsnip, peas, potato, pumpkin, silverbeet, spinach
What are your seven ways with your favourite spring fruit and vegetables?