Broccoli-Hoarding, Salad-Dressing-Stashing FREAK

Today, I had cake for breakfast. And last night, I had pancakes for dinner. Why? Because I believe breakfast-for-dinner is the greatest thing EVER. But mostly because I wasn't in the mood for broccoli.

Let me elaborate. No job means no income. So naturally, I'm looking to make the money I have saved last as long as possible. One way I'm doing that is by trying to make meals out of what I already have in my kitchen. You know - those things that slowly make their way to the back of the pantry or the back of the fridge over time. The ones you know are there, but you're never in the mood to eat or cook with, so they just sit... and sit... and sit.

So over the past couple of days, I've been putting together an inventory of sorts, of all the food in my kitchen. And maaaan, the things I'm finding! Here are some of the more interesting ones, in no particular order.

- 4 half-eaten boxes of stale, Multi Grain Cheerios. I guess if things get really bad, I could use it instead of cat litter. No, that's silly. Then my bathroom would smell like Cheerios. Gross.

-2 jars of pickles, each with only one pickle left floating in the brine

-Enough dried cranberries to either cure a UTI or provide school snacks for a class of 15 for a month

- 5+ lbs. of freezer-burned chicken breasts, only about 1.5 lbs. of which was salvageable

-1 lonely, freezer-burned hamburger patty that turned a weird shade of brown several summers ago

-2 small jars of low-fat mayonnaise, one of which I never even opened and both of which expired in 2011 & 2012, respectively (Why did I even buy mayo?!? And twice!? I don't even like it!)

-9 bottles of salad dressing! Various kinds. Apparently, sometime in the months after I arrived in Sacramento, I must have made a resolution to eat more salads. One I clearly didn't keep. Because of the nine bottles, six expired in 2012! And get this: I found an unopened bottle of salad spritzer (apparently, this was a thing once) that had a "use by" date of June, 2010!!! Which means I moved from New York to California WITH AN EXPIRED BOTTLE OF SALAD DRESSING. There's no way to justify this. I'm just chalking this one up as a loss. Good Lord.

-1 half-used box of instant rice, still taped shut from the same NY-to-CA move. Another point in the loss column.

-And finally, my favorite: 8 bags of frozen, steam-able veggies, 1 box of frozen broccoli in "cheese sauce" and 6 single-serve packs of frozen broccoli and corn.

No, I don't particularly care for frozen vegetables, but here's the thing... On those nights when I'm exhausted and don't feel like cooking, I sometimes swing by the store and pick up something easy for dinner - a frozen pizza, a box of that super-gooey, super-bad-for-you mac & cheese or a can of SpaghettiOs (Shut up. They're awesome). But as I approach the register, I worry the cashier will judge me (which is dumb because the guy who usually rings me up at Target has more cats and fewer social skills than I do). Sooo I put some frozen veggies in my basket to make it look like I'm not a total fat kid. Inevitably, the pizza goes in my belly and the broccoli goes in the freezer where I don't have to eat it. Yep. That happens. I admit it.

The good news in all of this is that I'm learning about my habits and how much food I actually waste. But perhaps the biggest takeaway lies in one very important discovery: I have enough beer and sugar-free/fat-free instant pudding mix to survive a nuclear winter. So when the s*** hits the fan with Russia, you'll all be knocking on my door. Sorry if it smells like Cheerios.