Last night we had Adrianne and Gordie over for supper and I was explaining rather sheepishly that my meal choices were made because I was trying to clean out the kitchen of random food items. I mean it wasn’t all canned mushrooms and jello (although I did make jello jigglers for the first time since I was 12 because who doesn’t have a box or two of that kicking around).

We ate salmon skewers (frozen salmon), grilled baby bok choy (newly purchased) and a cream cheese and cherry pie filling puffed pastry (two out of the three ingredients have been with us for awhile).

All this to say Adrianne told me that I was not the first to feel the need to clean out the pantry. Apparently the financial crisis has sparked an interest in what is being called Eating Down The Fridge.

So I decided this was worth looking into and was sure to satisfy my need to clear clutter and cook creatively at the same time. Googling the topic brought up many blogs and forums that were taking groups through this exercise and allowing them to share recipes, menus and experiences.

A Might Appetite, a blog on washingtonpost.com, was where I started and found my way to eG Forums where I got some great ideas to eat down my own fridge. And freezer. And cupboards.

Fat Guy from eG Forums says,

If you spend $100 a week on groceries, this experiment will put $100 back in your pocket quicker than you can say stimulus. If you’re home 50 weeks of the year and you perform this experiment once per quarter, you’ll reduce your grocery bill by 8%.

Sounds good to me. Let’s start with a random selection of what our kitchen holds at this exact moment:

unsweetened coconut flakes
canned bamboo shoots
dried chickpeas
3 packages of vanilla pudding
toasted carob powder
1 can of chunky light tuna
1 bag of frozen peas
dijon mustard
1 package of star anise
1 bag large marshmallows

This is about 1/10th of what is filling our kitchen. Kind of sad. So I’m going to try this experiment for a week and see how it goes but I think I need to put some rules on it so we don’t get scurvy or something.

The Rules

1. We can buy meat and veggies as long as the majority of the meal is made of current kitchen items.
2. We can buy ingredients for recipes as long as no more than 2 new ones are needs to complete the recipe.
3. We can buy staple perishables that we regularly use up including: coffee cream, soy milk, bran cereal and coffee beans.

I’ll be sharing some of the strange meals we eat and letting you know if we manage to eat down our fridge.