The Experiment Begins!

My mother told me the other day that she could not close the freezer door because I had too much food in it. Mind you, she was talking about the full-size, standalone freezer that we keep in the garage.

We are a house of five people (me, my parents, and my two teenage kids who live here half time) and yet we have FOUR full size refrigerators/freezers and numerous other smaller refrigeration devices scattered throughout the house.

Which begs the question... Why on earth do we have so many refrigerators/freezers? And more importantly, (my kids want to know) why is there so much food around and yet never anything to eat?

There are many explanations for this.

1. We are a first-generation Korean family. This is self-explanatory to anybody who is Korean or knows a first-generation Korean family. Korean food is loaded with garlic and oftentimes other smelly ingredients like fermented cabbage and salty seafood. No matter how tightly you seal up the container, the smell will seep through the impenetrable container and the walls of the refrigerator and result in funny tasting ice cubes. (According to my mother, this is a serious problem.) So we have a bahn-chahn (Korean side dish) refrigerator that is strategically located near the kitchen table. We also have a Kim chee refrigerator (which also houses giant bags of onions, green onions, and other smelly vegetables) in the garage.

2. I love to cook and not just one or two things. I love to try recipes from every culture, genre, and course. And you never know what mood will strike when so my pantry stocks ingredients from many countries. For example, noodles. Right now I have Italian spaghetti, Korean gook soo, Japanese soba, Thai rice noodles, not to mention macaroni, rice paper, and a few gluten-free, noodle-like items on my shelves.

3. I'm a bit of a shopaholic and hoarder. I hate running out of stuff and can't resist a good sale. Especially if it's at Costco. Hence I have giant jars of nutella, huge bags of ravioli (spinach AND the three-cheese kind), stacks and stacks of paper plates and other partyware. And I inherited these tendencies from my parents so there are a half dozen rice cookers in my garage along with 50 lb sacks of rice among other things.

4. I'm also a single mom who works full time, tries to keep pace with two active teenagers, and maintain a home and a social life. My love of cooking often gets pushed aside for fast food and packaged meals. And so the food accumulates.

And so I begin my grand experiment. For the next 44 days (from now until the end of the year), I am going to "shop" from and cook with the food currently in my refrigerators/pantry/garage. I'm still working on the rules for this experiment but the goal is to cut my food spending by 75% between now and January 1, 2011. This means I have to limit my grocery shopping (and eating out) to less than $40 a week and a monthly limit of $150. And less is better.

Today is day 1.