My No Spend Challenge 2022 - The Food Stash at the Start

Can I just start this off by saying - My name is Sue and I obviously have a food problem. 😄😆

Here is the food that I currently have in the Lodge, the cupboards, fridge and freezer, drawers, baskets, boxes, shelves and surfaces.  When you start looking for it you find it ... and then some!!

The top photo is the top half of my larder cupboard ...

... and this is the bottom half.

The little stack of tuna on the shelf on the left is actually Ginger's so I will give that to Alan later as Ginger always eats in his kitchen now.  It's safer for him to eat at the back of the table then the dogs can't pinch his food.

The fridge.

The top drawer is fruit and vegan cheeses and the bottom drawer is packed to the gunnels with vegetables and salad stuff.  It's imperative that I either eat or process the fridge stuff first as I really do not want to waste a single thing.

The door of the fridge is full of condiments, chocolate bars and a little bit of leftover Christmas alcohol ... gosh I will have to grit my teeth and drink the wine.  😉

The freezer is absolutely packed and includes things like Shepherdess pie bases, ready rolled pastry bargains, ice-cream, a loaf of bread and bags of frozen vegetables.  I will work on emptying this gradually but definintely in time to add bulk cooked items ready for when I get to basics.

The top of my little storage unit has the Flour Bin which is full of sweets, and a few half eaten Christmas leftover nibbles, thank goodness we have little dogs and not Great Danes, so everything is safely out of reach ... much to Suky's frustration. 😄

One of the wooden drawers hold polybags and zip-lock bags etc and the other ... a selection of chocolate bars, Deliciously Ella flapjacks and other Christmas treats.

The top two baskets of this unit hold my potatoes (they are not green, but the bag they are in is!) and some dried goods and more chocolate bars ... there's a theme developing here are you seeing it. 😂😃😄

The bottom two baskets hold biscuits ... mostly Christmas gifts ... some part baked rolls from Aldi and two large bags of crisps.  As there are such a lot of biscuits they have been put in here in careful Best Before order, so hopefully they will last me for the next six months.

On top of my little green chest next to the drawer unit is a shopping basket which has three large jars of Nescafe coffee in it.  These were bought back in November when it was on offer reduced from £7 to £4.50.  I always try and stock up when it's on offer at that sort of discount.  It will be interesting to see how long they last me, the jar on the worktop is just over half full as well so I should be okay for a couple of months at least.

I remembered after I started this post that actually in the green chest is some of my homemade marmalades so I got up and grabbed a photo.  It looks like eleven jars ... more than enough for a year I should think.

On the wall above the drawer unit and green chest are the wire shelves which hold some dried goods, and a jar of snack Biscoff biscuits that I take out when we go out for a coffee.  In the large enamel container there are some mini pots of jam from last years Advent calendar and in the smaller one some Deliciously Ella Caramel Cup snack packs.

Talking of dried goods, on the shelves above the worktop are my large jars of spaghetti, rice, pasta shapes and porridge oats.  The tiny shell pastas are usually added to soups and in the Bisto tin is ... Bisto gravy granules.  The little green King Monty tin has some sherbet lemons in it.

At the front are my salt and pepper pots, an ongoing joke as my black and white cat was called Pepper but this is the salt pot.  😸

Below the shelves are my drawers, the top one holds the cutlery and all my spices.  Over the course of this year I really want to whittle this collection down a bit, as I'm sure I don't use some of them enough to warrant replacing them.

On the worktop by the hob are the oil, salt pepper and cumin that I use regularly and a tin of Weetabix.  I have two slices and two crusts of bread and a bread roll that all need using up first and then I will start on the bread from the freezer.

As I was putting away my camera I noticed the Panettone and my little mug of candy canes, so the camera stayed out and they were photographed for posterity ...

I nearly got the camera away and then in the cupboard where it lives I spotted my little dish of sachets from cafes.  I always pick up leftovers rather than have them go into the bin ... I may be glad of these later in the year!!

And the thing that made me laugh the other night just as I was getting into bed was this!!

Two full boxes of Ten Acre cheese and onion crisps.  They really are the tastiest vegan cheese and onion crisps and since they stopped selling them in our local Booths and the company no longer selling them direct, I have been buying them off Amazon.  I usually only buy one box at a time but before Christmas the boxes of the family sized bags were reduced so I got one box of ten 135g bags and one box of twenty four 40g bags ...then I found 10 small bags that I already had, so these were never touched.  With a Best Before date of May this year there is no rush to eat them up.  Crisps in the bedroom ... now that's a new one even for me!! 😃🤣

And that is it.

Wow what a shocking amount of food I have in at the moment, especially the sweet, treat kinds of food.  It's going to be interesting to see how long this all lasts but I really do not have to worry about going hungry even with my £10 a week budget.  

I am being kind to myself  for once, since I have been in so much pain there has been a lot less cooking and a lot more sweet treats consumed on black days and nights, and my appetite has really diminished ... even though it appears my need to shop hasn't.   So I am not going to beat myself up even slightly for all this extravagance but I will be gradually working my way through everything that currently here supplemented with fresh fruits and vegetables, and hopefully over the course of this year the stocks will dwindle and the scales will tip in favour of healthier, more regularly bought fresh foods.

Any questions ask away.

Sue xx