The topic of weeding out and getting rid of clutter has come up quite often since the year began. In a conversation with a sibling yesterday, Peter Walsh was mentioned. Peter Walsh writes books to address mental clutter, physical clutter and the psychology behind it. The comment was that this kind of clutter could probably be applied to food as well.
As you may have imagined, I went to the internet to look up Peter Walsh and watched a few videos. In one, he addresses clutter you hold onto because you might need it one day. He calls this kind of clutter, things you hold onto for your imagined future. If you saw my kitchen cabinets, my freezer and my basement stash, you could probably put me in this category. I am always scouring through cookbooks and looking for new and interesting recipes to try, I buy in bulk and I buy ahead but somehow I am always grocery shopping.
Later on that night, I caught myself thinking about going to the store to buy chard for a recipe I had my eye on earlier in the week. I thought for another moment and then waltzed over to my fridge where our weekly menu is hanging. Sausage Lentil Stew is the new creation preplanned and posted. I found the recipe and quickly realized that this was not the one needing chard but I had indeed bought escarole for this recipe which is sitting in my refrigerator just waiting to be used. The shopping trip was nixed and I found myself being very satisfied that I didn’t waste time shopping for something that I really didn’t have time for or need and would probably go bad before I actually found that recipe again.
