Why I feel better when my fridge is empty

Here's my fridge, and it clearly isn't empty.  But, here's the thing - it's a lot emptier than it used to be, and the change has been a voluntary one.

I used to hoard food, thinking that somehow it made me thriftier, when in reality it made me crazier.  I was one of those women who debated saving the water their vegetables were steamed in to use later when making their own broth.  This saving food compulsion was born of a thrifty childhood, nurtured by some long, lean college years, and finally blossomed and bore a lot of fruit after David and I got married, had a child, and firmly slipped into a pretty low economic class.

Not only that, but our discovery of healthy eating (aka - skip the Ramen noodles every night and buy something labelled 'fruit' on occasion) led me to believe that I had to scrimp and save nutrients constantly.  Don't throw out bones, because bones have calcium and, um, 'good' stuff, whatever that means, and they should be boiled to extract it and the reduced liquid should be frozen...or something.  It was becoming an obsession.

I also noticed that the more I fell into this mentality, the more two things happened.  The first was that I was actually LESS likely to make and eat food.  Food had become a huge chore, requiring lengthly prep time and exhaustive research to be delicious.  I would make it, and then be loathe to toss a Tbsp of leftovers and instead let them molder away in the back of the fridge.  Half of the produce I bought, I tossed.  Half of the healthy stuff I made, required a ridiculous amount of time.  Not to mention space.  My fridge and freezer both were crammed with food.  Little labelled bags of stuff.  Can't throw out that half a calcified lemon, since it was organic and all, and cost the earth.

The second thing that happened is that we all lost out on the joy of eating, as well as the supposed financial benefits of doing so in a healthy way.  Who wanted to eat Mama's lentil casserole three days in a row?  No one, that's who, including Mama.  So the casserole sat there and Mama, exhausted from the two days of prep work it took to produce a healthy, entirely homemade lentil casserole, ordered a pizza.  A delicious melon, or some perfectly ripe apples, supposing I hadn't forgotten them and left them buried under mounds of food in the back of the fridge somewhere, got pushed aside again and again in favour of convenience and 'food planning'.  I couldn't give Sam an apple because those were the 'special' apples I was saving for a pie, which I couldn't make because we weren't buying piecrust anymore, just making it, and I was too tired to make piecrust.  So let the apples sit.

So what changed this?  To be honest, it's still changing, and the change is slow.  I still hoard food.  I still buy a bunch of 'excellent deals' at the grocery store and then throw them away.  I still save bits and pieces.  I have a peeled ginger root in my freezer as we speak.  Yesterday my husband threw out a pumpkin that I had been holding onto in cold storage since before Hallowe'en, and to be honest, if he hadn't thrown it out I wouldn't have.  I would have kept it.

But, I'm a lot better.  To start with, we've all noticed that if there is one food option, then when you're hungry that's what you'll eat.  If you look at that picture above, that big bowl on the second shelf is the roasted pepper soup I made yesterday - and we'll have it for lunch today.  Because that's what there is for lunch.  The top shelf holds some stuffed pasta shells, and David will take those to work for his supper today.  Because that's what there is for supper.  When I went to the store yesterday, I bought exactly what I needed for ONE intensive recipe - in my case, a roasted portabella mushroom soup.  I bought three onions and whipping cream - you can see my onions in one of the crisper drawers.  You know what else you can see in that drawer?  Nada.  There's nothing else there.  On purpose.

There's enough food in that fridge (and my freezer, and the fruit bowl on the counter, etc.) to feed us for a few days only.  Then I will have to go shopping again.  I have a loaf of bread on the counter, but only one, and then I will have to make more bread.  I have some homemade energy bars wrapped up, but only half a dozen, and then I will have to make more.  I have three apples, a kiwi, a banana and a cantaloup in my fruit bowl - this means that in about two days, I will need to buy more fruit.  These small, manageable amounts of food tend not to go to waste anymore.  If you only have three apples, and they're all visible, then you'll eat your three apples.  When they're done, you'll buy more apples.  Simple.

I've found myself not only saving on tossed food, and therefore money, but also on stress.  It's stressful to look in a fridge and have no idea what to prepare for a meal, and it's equally stressful, for me at least, to prepare this elaborate meal plan every week that I cannot hope to achieve.  I don't want to spend two hours every day in the kitchen, making food.  I like food, I want to eat food, I want to serve healthy and delicious food, but I don't want to use up my life preparing food.  I can tell you right now what we'll have in the next couple of days without a meal plan.  We'll have apple pancakes for a meal.  We'll have portabella mushroom soup.  We'll have a cheese souffle.  And then at some point in the next few days as I run low on fruit I will also pick up some vegetables and we'll do a stirfry, and then an omelette.  Then we'll be down on eggs and so...you get the idea.  I don't need a meal plan, I can look at the dozen items in my kitchen and tell you right now what you can expect to eat if you arrived for supper.