How a pantry makeover brought a new spark to our kitchen

We had been staring each other down for a while, but the time had come for action. I had had enough with its space-gobbling habits, and it was probably fed up with being ignored.

On Saturday, my pantry and I reconnected, on a deep and emotional level, and I will explain that phrasing.

Deep, because the inadequate pantry in my kitchen is not very wide, but is quite deep. It’s a great place to hide things you never want to see again, and sometimes seems it’s the place where food items go to die. Fortunately, it’s not for the perishables!

Emotional, because there’s nothing more satisfying than regaining control of a part of the house, and is there nothing more central to a home for many of us than the kitchen?

There is something important to add, though: we have more than one pantry. Years ago, ex- hausted with trying to make do with the wretched design of our kitchen, we converted a shelving unit in our small but industrious laundry room into another pantry.

How novel it was at the start to actually see the bottles and boxes of things we needed!

But, as time went by, human nature kicked in. Things piled up, things got jammed in, things wound up in different places.

And that brought on Saturday’s pantry patrol. It was a fullon family affair, with all of us sweeping in and removing every item. Everything went on the table, and it was quite a sight when it was done. I don’t think any of us realized how many dried goods we had accumulated.

Four bottles of barbecue sauce, for instance. Several packages of chocolate chips. Lots of cans of coconut milk, which makes those luscious curried soups possible, but more than we would need for months.

It all piled up because a bottle here or a can there gets picked up in regular grocery trips, and because we’ve literally lost sight of what we already had. We also fell out of the habit of keeping things tightly organized.

It took a little while to put like with like, but it wasn’t long before I was getting excited again. Finding dried apricots and dates, for instance, had me reaching for some oranges, and soon some wonderful muffins were coming out of the oven.

We had accumulated plenty of dried beans and seasonings, so the crockpot was pulled down and the house was filled with the aroma of an amazing soup, which had the added benefit of taking ingredients from the fridge and freezer.

One of the issues that bothered me was how often one ingredient looked like another, and so I would forget what I had, leaving us in the wasteful position of having a surplus of one and not enough of another key ingredient. I love my labeling machine, and I so put it to use. The repurposed peanut butter jars and other containers now have sharp, easy-to-see labels.

The pantry makeover took up a large part of my weekend, but it was time very well spent. In addition to coming up with some meal ideas, I now am equipped with the knowledge of what we do and do not have in the house. It’s a satisfying feeling.

Food security is an important thing to recognize, especially here on an island where we make all sorts of assumptions about weather and transportation. We tend to store and stockpile — not a bad thing — but if you have too much, you run the risk of reaching expiry dates and being unable to use what you have bought.

Jokingly, I could say we’re set for many weeks, so long as I can make meals out of cornstarch and dried fruit.

But there’s a serious side to food security — just as there is to food waste. Retaking control of our pantry was a time-consuming but necessary way for us to get a critical part of our house in order. Just like spring cleaning helps you get ready for summer, I find getting to back to basics in the pantry helps me get ready for winter.