Is your kitchen full of food all the time?

[Croissantsfordinner]

I was at a friend’s house last weekend and she opened a few shelves and fridge in front of me and noticed every single inch was stocked with lots of food - I mean lots! It made me realise that the only times when my fridge is full is when we get our bi-monthly grocery delivery and then we eat what’s in it and it gets emptied quickly. I do a weekly refill of fresh products but generally I don’t keep loads of stuff around, just enough to feed us for the next 3-4 days. So in my fridge, even when well stocked, you will only find 1 pack of meat (we don’t eat much of it anyway), 1 type of fish, some eggs, some cheese, plenty of veg and fruit and 3-4 condiments. And milk. That’s it. Cupboards are generally stocked with a few packs of pasta/rice, some canned tomatoes, coconut milk and a pack of porridge and one of cereal + some peanut butter, tea and coffee and 1 or 2 packs of snacks for DC. I don’t tend to store lots of snacks and other type of food unless I am having guests over.
I wonder if I am a bit unusual and most people are more like my friend?

I always restock my pantry before it gets empty. Something I took from my dm and she lived through the war. So although not "stuffed full" I could live from my current store of fresh tinned and frozen for 2 weeks easily without a shop. Peace of mind I guess

We don't have much food waste. Leftover cooked vegetables either get eaten the next day or go into the freezer as soup ingredients. Uncooked fruit and veg if there is any goes out for the birds/squirrels, or into the compost with the peelings. Bread goes into bread and butter pudding, or made into croutons, or into the freezer for the next time I want to make stuffing. Leftovers from meals go into the freezer for lunches or get eaten the next day. Old cheese gets used up in cooking or if its too past it it goes out for the birds/squirrels. The only things that get wasted are when we have been asked to get specific things for toddler grandson when he and his mum come to stay, like yoghurt or cream cheese, and then he doesn't eat them. I now don't buy anything that we won't use up if he doesn't eat it.

My husband and I take turns doing the weekly shop, but he does most of the cooking. Our cupboards are therefore full of things I thought looked good in the supermarket but aren’t things we eat on a regular basis. There’s probably a lot of out of date items there too, but getting time to clear them out is tricky. I hate how much we waste, but I’m getting better at not buying things that we won’t eat.

I have a pantry and a couple of freezers, always well stocked.... but I am consciously trying to eat things up now rather than add to it.

Like someone upthread I'd quite like to defrost the chest freezer in the garage but it always seems too full. I get something out to use up and it inevitably then makes more dishes and left overs to freeze!

I've moved away from trying to store in case of issues and I now try and grow / produce my own.... so I'm trying to be more skills based than hoarder based! Fruit & veg, mead, kombucha, even cheese.And foraging! I know these take seeds & raw materials etc, not to mention time and a garden, so I know it's not for everyone, but it's a shift in my thinking of being able to manage if food were to be scare for whatever reason or I couldn't get out.

I also compost all our food waste - so it's completely cyclical! Either that or the wildlife has it... birds & foxes in the garden!

Yes, I always have things like soup and pot noodles, rice tinned veg. Fridge and Freezer are never completely empty, but obviously food levels go down just before the big monthly shop.

My fridge is usually well stocked, but the kitchen drawers and freezer are rammed with food; I'm a stock piler, and also a fairly keen cook- it's very rare that I will read a recipe and not have most of the ingredients already in the pantry. I do sometimes feel guilty about the excessive food, but I am very good at avoiding waste.

As a child, our fridge was usually pretty empty apart from a tub of Happy Shopper marge, and the cupboards would have a selection of gungy-necked sauce bottles, a box of cereal if we were lucky, and a loaf of white bread. Meals were made with whatever my mum had in her purse to spend in Netto's that day, or if there wasn't any money, we just had the bread and sauce! We all survived, but that kind of food scarcity stays with you I think, and leaves a mark.