I was briefly unemployed, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t go to the store until I had found a job. Luckily, it was only about a week. I was also lucky that I’m not far enough removed from college to consider a bowl of cereal and a slice of cheese to be a worthwhile dinner.

Here’s another e-mail, this one from Gary Burhop at Great Wine & Spirits (I’m only posting the ones that agreed to go public):
“Loved your lead in this morning…a source of competition around the empty-nester Burhop household.
I try to eat our freezer down twice a year…by late Spring (now) to consume the quail, ducks, pheasant and venison the hunting season always provides, and then again just before the holidays as I know in anticipation of the kids coming home we will just not be able to resist filling the freezer and pantry beyond any reasonable stock level.
So how am I doing? Let’s see. I inventoried, not one, but 5 partial loaves of bread - seems we buy a loaf of rye or pain at Fresh Market, use about half and freeze the rest. Ditto for a baguettes from La Baguette. Didn’t look but I’ll bet the freezer burn is awesome.
I have a Tupperware box of brown stock that I made before Thanksgiving and bison patties that I bought on an impulse. There are plenty of pork chops sliced from a whole boneless loin. There’s a flank steak, a couple of filets and some beef trimmings for soup or stew and a chunk of lamb from a leg I boned, but was too much for that meal, so I saved a bit for another time….
I said ‘Oops’ when I found a package of chicken leg quarters that were to be gumbo, but I never had time to make it. I found the venison roast and one squirelled-away package of tenderloin, too! And, behind the frozen waffles and box of filo dough Peggy bought 2 Christmas’ ago is a package of a dozen quail I thought we’d eaten. The pheasant is all gone, though, and the dove was stew for my lunches several weeks ago.
I can go on, but like you, I know we’ll have to make an effort to move this stuff on. Now if we can stay away from Sam’s Club even though Anna will be home for Easter weekend and I can resist the great holiday prices on ham, we have a chance.
I wish I knew who said it but “The definition of eternity is two people and a ham” is spot on. I can only eat so much bean soup….
Good luck. I look forward to your reports of progress.
Gary Burhop”

My grandfather was in on this although he mostly hoarded Coca-Cola - stacks of it. One of my uncles worked for the railroad and would bring him damaged canned goods that were safe but could not be sold. The pantry was full of cans with no labels. Rule was - 4 cans were dinner. Did not matter what was in them. He loved it although it could be pretty gruesome for the rest of us!

I think almost everyone has some level of food hoarding. Although I have only a normal-size fridge w/reezer and I generally rotate though the stock regularly, I find that my weakness is stocking up on food items when I travel. I have some truffle oil and strange sauces from a trip to Traders Joe’s a year ago - you know the story - looked so tempting in the store but can’t think how to use when you get home. (Anybody have a recipe for Red Mole?)

As far as coming up with recipes to use up your current inventory, have you looked at CookThink?
On this site - http://www.cookthink.com - you can enter an ingredient that you have on hand, indicate the type of cuisine you like and it will come up with a recipe for you.

Also Google Base recipe search allows you to input your ingredients and find a recipe that uses them - http://base.google.com/base/search?a_n0=recipes&a_y0=9&hl=en&gl=US

By the way, how many people in your household to feed from that overstocked pantry?

I get my hoarding tendencies honestly. When we helped my father prepare to move from his house into an efficiency apartment (and prepare for an estate sale at the same time), I found not one or two but no less than 12 jars of whole peppercorns. Interestingly, my father insisted on keeping 6 of these full jars as well as two partial jars. I teased him the he and my mother must have been preparing for a nuclear winter. His excuse was two fold - the Great Depression and my mother didn’t like to run out of things. He didn’t want to run out of whole peppercorns with all the cooking he would be doing. I believe he has cooked a total of 3 times in the year he has been in his apartment. My weakness is the clearance rack of the food section at the Williams Sonoma outlet. I also have some interesting jars from Viet Hoa market.

LOVED looking in your frig- my looks the same! can barely squeeze in another bottle of mustard without rearranging the whole shebang. and forget about the pantry! (2) so I do the clean out and use it routine too, but not often enough. We take coolers to New Orleans and St. Loius ( the Italian groceries and Trader Joes)
and return with MORE stuff. A grocery store in another city is like a museum stop for us. What FUN !

I think I have a depression mentality too, plus I love a good bargain. Those two things in combination help explain my packrat/hunting & gathering instincts. As one of my friends once told me, something she put together out of things she had on hand would have to include peanut butter, jelly & popcorn. I also confess to having several open jars of pickles & mustard, but I try not to have more than one jar of mayo or bottle of ketchup in use at a time. I also tend to stockpile drinks & several different kinds of bread, flavors of ice cream, & many varieties of frozen vegetables.

A couple of times a year I have a “clean out the freezer” week. I take stock of what’s in the freezer and creatively cook from there. I’m amazed at all the little odds and ends that end up in my freezer. You know - one pork chop or that cup of chopped tomatoes left over from another recipe. My family doesn’t seem to notice anything different in the daily menus, but I do have an emptier freezer at the end of the week! Off the Sams we go to start all over again.!

A note about cleaning out the freezer. I have a cousin who routinely cooks from scratch at home. One of her favorite things to do with leftover vegetable side dishes & casseroles is to let them cool down, then dump them into a large container she keeps in the freezer. When it’s full, she makes soup. It’s different every time & all the meats & vegetables that go into it are well seasoned. So it takes very little effort & just a bit of broth to round it out & turn it into vegetable soup or stew. Also a good budget stretcher for people with families.

Forgot to mention - thanks for the recipe links. I’ve used the ingredient search feature at All Recipes many times when I have odd collection of items to use. http://allrecipes.com/Search/Ingredients.aspx

Wow - 24 jars of pickles! After the wind storm, aka Hurricane Elvis, my favorite question to ask folks was - guess how many jars of mayo we had to throw out? Few got it right. There were 7 jars — Miracle Whip, Miracle Whip Light, Hellman’s, Hellman’s Light, a Latin lemonnaise, a lemonnaise and a spicy mayo. These days I am trying to keep the mayo to a minimum, both in my refrig and my stomach.

And while I really wasn’t surprised at the inventory of mayo we found when cleaning out the refrig., I was taken aback by the number of bottles of blueberry syrup! My partner loves pancakes and I figured out that if we put fresh blueberries & cinnamon in the batter and then used blueberry syrup, I was very happy. So the collection began, and the height of the refrig inventory of blueberry syrup made it to 5 bottles. I’ve since figured out that nothing surpasses good quality maple syrup. I guess the bottom line is that when we find something we like, we have a hard time holding ourselves back and the refrigerator suffers (along with our ability to quickly find anything in the refrig!).

Ms. Biggs-

I’m ready to see pics of that pantry now! lol…

Let’s get the creative juices flowing and post ways to use those leftovers. In the fridge at my home is a container of stuffing; cooked, unsauced penne; mom’s homemade pasta sauce; corned beef hash…. Hmmmm. After reading an article about rising food costs worldwide, we’re lucky to live in the United States and have food to eat. One man from Haiti said he can’t afford to feed his wife and four children since the price of pasta doubled to 57 cents per bag. The families’ only meal one day was two cans of corn grits. This puts things in perspective.