Pantry Organization – The Creative Salad

The State of the Pantry

I’ve been exercising like a mad woman (well, sorta), I feel fantastic, but am still stuck at my pre pregnancy weight (i.e. twenty pounds higher than I’d like to be). Wah wah.

One thing that’s looking lighter around here though is our pantry.

Here’s what it looked like a year ago:

And the state of it today:

Oh, and here’s our baking cupboard:

While we have less food in the pantry, there’s WAY more foodstuffs in the fridge. (I love the summer produce season.)

In fact the fridge is stuffed to the gills with salad fixings and veggies, cooked quinoa, hard boiled eggs, nuts, stews, braised meats, grass fed beef hot dogs, handmade salad dressings…

Despite no dairy, gluten, nightshades, corn or chocolate in ~~our~~ my diet, we’re eating well around here!

Now to really up the exercise… as much as I love the yoga and walks, they don’t impact my weight the same way that running does. (Good thing I love, love, love my runs!) So I gotta prioritize and find the time to run more than once a week. Right now I feel like it may take a miracle. I’m going to aim for three runs a week and go from there.

Breaking Our Plastic Baggy Addiction

This year on Earth Day I resolved to curb our reliance on plastic baggies:

We started using plastic sandwich baggies several years ago when we joined Costco, where they are cheap and BPA-free, and found them to be incredibly convenient.

I tried to bury my feelings of guilt over the waste of natural resources and money; guilt over sending hundreds of baggies to a landfill where they’d take hundreds of years to break down.

Ugh. I feel a little sick just thinking about it.

Time for a change.

Now instead of reaching for a sandwich or snack baggy:

When we open our baggy drawer, we grab a LunchSkins Reusable Bag (BPA, pthalate, lead-free and dishwasher safe):

We also have glass Pyrex containers (with BPA-free lids) and bell jars topped with BPA-free Tattler reusable canning lids in the cupboard.

A friend recommended these stainless steel snack containers and I’ve been eyeing these Lunchbots containers to supplement our container storage (especially since we can’t bring glass containers to the pool and we plan to swim all summer long).

I hope to sew these washable container covers reminiscent of shower caps. (My mother-in-law has washable plastic ones like this that work great with leftovers, especially during the holidays.)

Do you have any tips or product suggestions for us? We’re excited to jump back on the plastic-free bandwagon again.

Replacing Those BPA-Laced Lids

One of the first tasks in my quest to organize our ~~life~~ house was to get the BPA out of our kitchen cupboards, something I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time.

Last fall we organized our pantry, put most of our dry goods into giant mason jars, and labeled them with liquid chalk pens:

We’ve loved and maintained this system. Unfortunately, regular canning lids contain BPA — that’s certainly not family and environmentally friendly! We needed to get rid of those lids and replace them with a BPA-free alternative.

Luckily we already owned just that: the plastic, BPA-free Tattler reusable lids, left over from canning applesauce this past fall. Time to get those lids on our bell jars.

Our daughter and I went through and tossed the BPA-laced lids,

replacing them with the Tattler ones:

A quick project that’s important for the health of our family.

Looking Almost as Organized

Time for a pantry update!

This fall I organized our pantry. To refresh your memory, here’s a shot from back in September before I whipped it into shape:

Here’s a view of it immediately after I cleaned and purged the pantry, got rid of the bulk foods baggies by organizing bulk items and spices in to jars, and labeled everything with chalk ink:

Here it is two months later after a big shop (so stuffed to the brim!) and not too disorganized:

There may be fewer items put in jars and neatly labeled, but overall it’s still organized and I find that finding items remains relatively easy. Success!

I had a feeling that since I promised to show you pictures of the pantry every few months the pressure would be on and I could keep it tidy. :)

As a bonus to this post, I thought it would be fun to give you a glimpse into our fridge, which truth be told is actually quite organized these days.

Top shelf: water, apple and grape juice, milk, sourdough bread (for David and Miss Leyba), goat cheese (behind) and leftover (really old) smoothie (whoops!).

Second shelf: eggs, juice boxes, leftover polenta, tofu, milk; cheese (blue, Monterrey jack, and cheddar), garlic, and ginger in the cheese drawer.

Third shelf: more eggs, yogurt, potatoes, yams beer (behind, for David), limes (behind, for squeezing into my water), veggie dogs (for David and the peanut; I haven’t been able to find gluten-free ones for me yet).

Crispers drawers: carrots, cauliflower, cucumber, celery, onions, lemons.

Can you tell I visited Costco this week?! (Hence the multitude of (mostly local) dairy products!) I think we’ll have to make a fritata to get through those eggs and I have plans for a veggie intensive cheddar mac and cheese with all that cauliflower (from an article called healthy comfort foods! Bring it!).

Nom nom.

What are your meal plans for the week? I need help. Easy, quick and vegetarian, please.

The Organized Pantry

Also known as the ONLY organized space in our house!

To learn more about this project, please read our posts Organizing the Pantry (gearing up for the project) and Pantry Organizing Supplies (including more info about those awesome liquid chalk pens we used to label everything).

To refresh your memory, here’s what our pantry looked like before:

Here’s what it looks like now:

Top row: teas for guests, ground flax seeds for smoothies, gluten-free flour, bulk raisins and quinoa, dried beans (garbonzo, black) and canned beans for when we’re in a pinch (pinto, black), tapioca flour and cornstarch for art projects.

Middle row: quinoa/corn pasta and Miss Leyba’s stash of mac and cheese, peanuts, split peas, lentils, corn meal, pistachios, grape juice, millet, brown and white basmati rice, sauerkraut, ketchup, apple cider vinegar, canned pumpkin, polenta, jam, wakame, sesame seeds, rice wrappers, balsamic vinegar.

Bottom row: every day teas, rice cakes, flax seed crackers, cheddar bunnies, chocolate graham crackers, bite sized peanut butter sandwich crackers, seasweed snacks, blue corn chips, raisins, dried plums, nori, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, slivered and sliced almonds, shredded coconut, capers, artichoke hearts, bouillon cubes, puffed cereals, granola, and spices.

Wow, what a difference! And, wow, do we have a lot of food in the house!

Now the challenge: keeping it this way! I may have to post monthly photos of our pantry just so I have incentive to keep it neat and tidy… you all will be watching! ;-)