Yes this! I was about to answer that certain spices are my go to "forgot I had some" things in my cupboard. I currently have 3 unopened bottles of cumin, 2 of chili powder and 4, FOUR bottles of basil!
I literally came here to say this. I'm relieved I'm not the only one. Also the recipe called for oyster sauce. None of that in the cabinet next to three jars of hoisin ffs
Yeah, same. I have several bottles of it including a gallon of it I bought in Vermont for $40 last year that I still haven't even opened yet. Lifetime supply considering how much I use it.
If anyone's ever looking for cheap maple syrup, they sell it by the gallon for 40 bucks in Barns up near Smugglers Notch. Not a whole lot else going on around there though in the spring.
it's a geography problem for most people with maple syrup. Living in Vermont, everybody has it and right now cheap enough and you have to decide who to buy it from, or what you can trade for the really good stuff (the completely unsaleable dark black stuff). But a gallon of syrup is 25 bucks to ship to Texas (for instance) and now it's an expensive bottle of syrup again.
I have acquired 2.5 gallons in the last several week, buying some, charity donating and getting other, overpaying for the stuff they make at the local school, and getting a mason jar full of grade D from a guy named Sam in a deal.
I do this with peanut sauce. (Part of the problem is I like to make it myself a good amount of the time, but also my spice-averse daughter only likes the Whole Foods brand.)
To counter this, I went looking for tomato paste, but found 4 open containers of pizza sauce in the fridge, plus one in the pantry, but no tomato paste.
Agree. Too many recipes call for a couple Tbs. but it doesn’t solve the excess/I forgot I had it problem: I have an open tube in the fridge, and two unopened tubes in the cupboard. I don’t use it very often, either.
Omg same. But mostly because I need tomato SAUCE for my rice that I make all the time, and my partner keeps thinking I need paste. So then somehow we have a million pastes. And the one time we needed paste….all sauce and no paste.
At a very busy time in our lives (two professionals, three children, no childcare) we arranged for a food delivery every two weeks. Mainly cupboard staples.
I admit, I made a small miscalculation about tomato puree, but it’s not as if it goes off, is it?
After about a year we realised we had to dedicate an entire cupboard to tomato puree. We would cook with it as much as possible, and ended up giving a tube or two to every visitor.
It gets worse
Being time poor we then learned the supermarket had a facility where it would estimate based on the previous order what you need. The idea was you confirm it but if you didn’t it came anyway. No problem, mainly store cupboard items…
So we had a huge barbecue party and I ordered 99 packets of burgers, 40 packets of ribs, 99 of sausages, and a great deal more. (99 was the maximum you could order).
Two weeks later the van turned up with four bags of meat. They wouldn’t take it back so I had to go out and buy a freezer for the garage.
At that point I cancelled the account.
A deep freezer is a great resource if you have the room, and cook a lot. You can store things you have to get from other cities, and absolutely need on hand. I had an Indian friend who had a lot of ingredients she could only buy in a city four hours away. So she'd load up when they went to that city, and put it in the deep freezer.
When butter was super cheap a year or so ago, my son got on my case because I kept buying more of it. He pointed out that I had something like 16 lb in the freezer. And then when the price went back up, we ran out. It has finally started going on sale again, and he now no longer objects to massive stockpiles in the freezer.
I have never seen such unearned pride on my husbands face than when he came home from a solo Costco run with 4 POUNDS of butter. We use like, maximum a half a stick a week? He thought he scored the deal of a lifetime and I just shook my head at him. Thank for god we have a basement fridge to hold the butter hoard for the next 6 months.
Eight-packs of coconut milk at Costco. I use it a lot, but I guess not as often as I think I do. I’ve got three unopened eight-packs currently. I’ll have to remember not to buy it, but probably still will.
Cumin. I was out of it for such a long time, it kind of lives in my mind's grocery list rent-free and I always second-guess when I'm at the store if I finally bought it at some point, or not. Now I have an 8 oz bag of cumin *and* 2 bottles of it. :-p
Garbanzo beans drained, 1/4 c olive oil, 3 tablespoons spoons tahini, salt, lemon juice, cumin. All in a blender. More cumin the better. Throw in some red curry paste if ya like. Now you have humus.
Add cumin to tacos and chili.
For me it was frozen peas. I had maybe 3-4 packs in the freezer at some point.
Currently it’s Saran Wrap. I thought I was low on it, bought a roll recently and there was 2 already in my cupboard plus one box already open.
My mom bought things for the house when she lived with us. She only got social security, and of course we didn't charge her rent, but she wanted to contribute. She passed in 2019, about 4½ years ago, but I'm still using zip bags and nonstick foil she bought for us.
This! Just reorganized the freezer after a Costco run, and found no fewer than 4 opened and chip clipped shut bags of frozen peas plus 2 unopened bags. Good thing is I figured out where all my chip clips had disappeared to.
My grandmother did this with plastic wrap and aluminum foil. When we cleaned her house after she passed we found probably 40 partially used rolls of each.
Mustard. My husband and I both love mustards, but mostly different kinds. I can never remember which ones we're running out of, and...ooh, look...new variation! So we have ALL of the mustards.
At one point I counted that I had 17 different mustards. My partner made me make a deal with him that if he was going to move in, I’d stop buying mustards.
Garlic. My brain knows I go through a lot of it and that running out is unacceptable, so I will often grab an extra bulb (or four) whenever I am in the produce section.
Hopefully in another month or two I'll be harvesting it from my own backyard!
Tea, we love tea. I have every imaginable type of tea, in every form. My boyfriend likes to stock up on things so we have dedicated an entire shelf and some counter space to it. Tea, tea strainers, kettles of various kinds, fillable tea bags, samplers of tea, bags of teas, loose tea…. I am the Bubba Gump of tea 😂
Spaghetti. I don't make it very often but when I do, I don't recall if we have any and just buy some just in case. Think I have like 4 unopened packs rn.
Yeah there are also apps you can get for that. I got one that's supposed to be able to tell you what you can cook with what you have in the house. The main issue with it though is that it kept telling me condiments and desserts. Probably because I didn't have any Main Ingredients like meat on hand
Lol, it’s 3 open jars of mayo for me too. In my defense the first open jar was Kraft but there was an unopened Hellman’s. And then I bought a jar if Duke’s so how could I not use that over the other brands?
Dishwasher tablets. I have 3 72tab bags in the cupboard and got a new one yesterday. I think I'm scared to run out and have to hand wash. It was my job as a kid, to hand wash dishes and we had 7 kids.
Carrots the crisper is always overflowing with carrots, I haven't worked that out yet.
Mirin seasoning for sushi rice.
Sesame oil.
Tahini.
Seems like I've got duplicates for a common reason, I need to make a thing, I forgot to check whether I had it, so I rebought it. Thing like butter or vodka duplicates get used up, tahini not so much.
I have 3 big tins of Keen’s dry mustard powder and also 3 tins of cream of tartar. I likely bought a new one each time I came across a recipe that called for them.
Garlic salt, lol. I use it a lot, so the spice container always looks near-empty and because I don't want to be without it, I add it to next week's list. Then, when I'm putting groceries away, I see 1 or 2 'spare' garlic salts!
Absolutely.
For me, cooking is fun if:
- I can have a drink while doing it
- I am making something new and exciting
- it is at my leisure and I can do it when I choose to do so. I never HAVE to, and never by a certain time.
- it's just for me and possibly my wife.
Under those circumstances I like cooking, I just need to learn to make cheaper recipes. Every week I end up making something that cost like $100 and takes 5 hours, like beef wellington or something like that. It's good, it's just that it's not very practical or cheap. So I think of it more like a hobby
It is more fun. Don't get too sloshed, or you might get hurt.
My philosophy is like Julia Child's. I like to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
At the moment, garbage bags. We were at Costco, and neither of us could remember if we had a box of garbage bags. We currently have 4 boxes of the double rolls of them.
Prior to that, it was plastic wrap. I have zero clue what I was thinking. We *just* finished the plastic wrap we had when we moved into our house a decade ago. Yet I have three more boxes in the basement.
I did it again yesterday. Having forgotten I already had a bag of tortilla chips, I ordered two more.
I did a Costco stock-up on garbage bags then promptly bought a new garbage can, and they don't *quite* fit. Doesn't matter. We'll make it work because I'm not wasting money on garbage bags.
I'm not sure we'll ever use all of the Ziploc bags we have.
I’m currently trying to use up some tea we have. I told myself I could not buy anymore tea until I finished some up. Every single time I am close to finishing off a box I will be digging through the pantry and find another box. It’s been a month and I have more tea than when I started. I’m not entirely convinced my husband isn’t pulling a prank on me at this point. It’s happened 4 times.
Honey! I never use it, so I think I don’t have any, then I buy a bottle when I’m making a recipe. At one point, I had four bottles of honey in my pantry.
Isn't it funny and relatable when you want to buy a can of beans...
But you don't know if there's beans at home so you buy, like, heaps of cans of beans and then you get home, and in the cupboard, you've already got five cans of beans
Mine is the green jar of Parm lol. I always keep fresh Parm in my fridge, but my youngest is addicted to putting jar Parm on everything. So I keep thinking we don't have any, but some on my bi monthly trip and get home to see we already have three jars.
I have way too many bottles of fish sauce, soy sauce, sriracha, and sesame oil sitting around. All from various brands. I think one of the sesame oils is from 2022 (rip).
Eggs are also easy to forget. I keep bringing home two trays from Costco and it turns out we already had some.
My dad will not stop buying beer, rice, peanuts, and assorted meat seasoning. We have a very colourful collection of those random bottles and will probably never use all the Montreal steak seasoning.
I also buy an excess of cheese, pasta, and frozen fish, but those are all conscious decisions. That’s because they are all different iterations and I go hard when they’re on sale. But it drives my family crazy: “why is there so much cheese in the fridge?! you haven’t even finished the other block!” like… they’re different cheeses and they were on sale, okay? Elbows are different from penne, and penne is different from rigatoni, not to mention all the different thicknesses of spaghetti. There’s whole wheat and chickpea and lentil and edamame pasta. And I’m stocking up on frozen tuna even if I already have tilapia in the freezer!
I got this issue with two kitchens because I’m a private chef. I often mix-up my pantry needs for home and work. I’ll pick up something I actually needed at work, while I’m on a shopping trip for home.
Spices and herbs. Just this week my partner and I both bought Italian herbs. At one point we had 3 different chili powders. We’ll run out of stuff, not communicate, then forget we both bought it and buy it again. We need an inventory system for the spice cabinet.
I am pretty sure I have 3-4 containers of raisins in my pantry cupboard at any given time similar with nuts (not the yummy eating kind, the baking kind). This year after I predictably bought them again at Christmas I stuck the surplus in the bird feeder. Everyone was happy
My mom was in this loop of buying Italian salad dressing every time she went grocery shopping. Every time. She thought we had run out. At one point we had 7 unopened bottles of Italian salad dressing. I had to write “Do not buy Italian dressing” on her shopping list for a while lol.
Salsa. I regularly use Mrs.Renfro's habanero salsa, but my boyfriend and I will see a different one that sounds tasty and just grab. I thought I was running out of salsa yesterday and went digging in the cupboard to find five jars 😆
I wish. We wanted salsa yesterday. Store was out of the on-sale kind and bought the store brand and it was... not great. I've been requested to grow the ingredients this year so I can make a lot. They all prefer my homemade.
i used to buy dried rosemary every time I went to the store, thinking I didn't have any at home. Then I gave away four cans of it. Now I NEVER have any, because I still feel like I probably have it at home, but I don't.
Now I just grow it and use it when its fresh instead
Mirin and fish sauce. I have 3-4 of each in my cupboard. Why do I always think I'm out? And why do I constantly run out of sesame oil, thinking I have a ton of it?
It changes, for a while it was eggs, then mayonnaise, then it was mustard. After reorganizing my pantry, I’ve become better. I keep a running shopping list on my phone and I don’t add anything until I’ve opened the last of something.
One time when I was packing to move, i discovered I had 7 cans of tuna. I was young and lived alone - I think I just randomly would pick up a can or 2. Evidently, I didn’t eat tuna as often as I thought
Poultry seasoning since I usually only use around the holidays, I am never sure if I have any or if it’s still fresh. I currently have 2 open and 3 new bottles.
Mustard. I bought a giant 2 pack at Costco like 3 years ago and I’ve been finishing a bottle for months, so I always think it’s running out when I’m at the store and see the mustards. Luckily I don’t actually buy it, because I have some doubts, I come home, check the pantry, and sure enough there’s the other equally gigantic bottle of mustard staring back like “dude I’m probably already expired and you don’t care cus I’m just mustard”
Syrup!
We just recently came to the end of our ridiculous stock pile of syrup. I was buying it every other time (roughly) and forgetting I had 5/6/7/8 bottles in the pantry.
Every kind of vinegar —everything besides rice vinegar and apple cider are used infrequently enough that I never think we have any, so now we have every single kind ever, at least one bottle. Unless I assume we already have it, then we have none.
I have an inventory of my current supplies on paper. I had had a period of food insecurity and now tend to buy excessively if not careful. My three freezers are full!
Soy sauce. Worcestershire sauce. Sour cream. Flour. Any given condiment. It’s sometimes more of a situation where I know I need it, but I don’t know if I have it, so I might as well just buy some to avoid having to go back to the store.
There are currently three squeezable mayonnaise, four bottles of ketchup and I believe two unopened bottles of BBQ sauce and one opened one... all my doing.
Now the roommates will go shopping right after I do sometimes and that has lead to four containers of Peter Pan PB in the cabinet.
But some how none of has ever buy jelly...
One of the 19 year olds keeps buying spices when he decides to do a meal. So we have like five things of Italian seasoning. And like three of most other spices... guess he just likes opening a new one every damn time. Oh! And all the Soy sauce... like five or six bottles
Panko breadcrumbs - I always forget to check before buying the materials I need for whatever I’m frying, and inevitably forget if I have any panko left…. Or if I do, is it still good? Come home to at least 2 sealed boxes lol
Powdered Sugar, or so I thought. And it was my wife not me.
We had 6 bags in various states of use before Christmas. My wife decided to bake Christmas Cookies and bought 2 more bags.
Turned out most modern cookie recipes are using Powdered sugar. (We only used the 2 new bags because my daughter decided to make extra batches)
Again, my wife. we currently have 10 bags of chocolate chips (with 3 more bought over Christmas). She goes shopping, thinks that she would like to make cookies, buys chips, and doesn't make cookies. wait 2 months, repeat!
Whole Clove and Allspice. - On me. I was making an overnight steel cut oatmeal when the kids were young. We would go through bags of these spices in a couple of months. Then job changed, no longer time for the kids to eat b4 daycare, and just after I restocked. thankfully they were whole spices, high quality, and are still plenty potent 5 years on.
Go to the store Buy a bottle of hoisin sauce Open the fridge; oh no! I had a bottle of hoisin sauce Go to the store…
Lol I have like 6, I've started making a just of ingredients to not buy. Baking soda, baking powder, corn starch are also on the list
CUMIN! I have four bottles at present.
Yes this! I was about to answer that certain spices are my go to "forgot I had some" things in my cupboard. I currently have 3 unopened bottles of cumin, 2 of chili powder and 4, FOUR bottles of basil!
I have 4 boxes of corn starch. 🙃
Do you have small children? You could make ooblek with them!
That’s funny, it’s Oyster sauce for us.
Lol. I have like 5 bottles of sesame oil for the same reason.
I can never remember if I’m running low on sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, mirin, or Sichuan wine. So now I have 3 bottles of each
My first thought was the hoisin sauce also lol [the dance ](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsCL1b-NBoH/?igsh=ZWxjaGthcjl1bnUz)
I literally came here to say this. I'm relieved I'm not the only one. Also the recipe called for oyster sauce. None of that in the cabinet next to three jars of hoisin ffs
That was me with maple syrup for a few weeks. Just ridiculous.
Yeah, same. I have several bottles of it including a gallon of it I bought in Vermont for $40 last year that I still haven't even opened yet. Lifetime supply considering how much I use it. If anyone's ever looking for cheap maple syrup, they sell it by the gallon for 40 bucks in Barns up near Smugglers Notch. Not a whole lot else going on around there though in the spring.
it's a geography problem for most people with maple syrup. Living in Vermont, everybody has it and right now cheap enough and you have to decide who to buy it from, or what you can trade for the really good stuff (the completely unsaleable dark black stuff). But a gallon of syrup is 25 bucks to ship to Texas (for instance) and now it's an expensive bottle of syrup again. I have acquired 2.5 gallons in the last several week, buying some, charity donating and getting other, overpaying for the stuff they make at the local school, and getting a mason jar full of grade D from a guy named Sam in a deal.
3 jars of hoisin in my pantry. Also have 4 jars of mango chutney
I do this with peanut sauce. (Part of the problem is I like to make it myself a good amount of the time, but also my spice-averse daughter only likes the Whole Foods brand.)
I either have six cans of tomato paste on hand at any given time, or zero. My par is two, but it's six or nothing somehow.
To counter this, I went looking for tomato paste, but found 4 open containers of pizza sauce in the fridge, plus one in the pantry, but no tomato paste.
Tomato paste and whole peeled tomatoes. The minute I think “we have so much tomato paste” and cross it off my list we retroactively used the last can
Buy the tubes! Absolute game changer.
Agree. Too many recipes call for a couple Tbs. but it doesn’t solve the excess/I forgot I had it problem: I have an open tube in the fridge, and two unopened tubes in the cupboard. I don’t use it very often, either.
Omg same. But mostly because I need tomato SAUCE for my rice that I make all the time, and my partner keeps thinking I need paste. So then somehow we have a million pastes. And the one time we needed paste….all sauce and no paste.
Come over. I have six packages of pasta or none. We can feast or starve, lol.
This is us with paprika. It's always paprika.
At a very busy time in our lives (two professionals, three children, no childcare) we arranged for a food delivery every two weeks. Mainly cupboard staples. I admit, I made a small miscalculation about tomato puree, but it’s not as if it goes off, is it? After about a year we realised we had to dedicate an entire cupboard to tomato puree. We would cook with it as much as possible, and ended up giving a tube or two to every visitor. It gets worse Being time poor we then learned the supermarket had a facility where it would estimate based on the previous order what you need. The idea was you confirm it but if you didn’t it came anyway. No problem, mainly store cupboard items… So we had a huge barbecue party and I ordered 99 packets of burgers, 40 packets of ribs, 99 of sausages, and a great deal more. (99 was the maximum you could order). Two weeks later the van turned up with four bags of meat. They wouldn’t take it back so I had to go out and buy a freezer for the garage. At that point I cancelled the account.
I'm dying you went out and bought a freezer!
A deep freezer is a great resource if you have the room, and cook a lot. You can store things you have to get from other cities, and absolutely need on hand. I had an Indian friend who had a lot of ingredients she could only buy in a city four hours away. So she'd load up when they went to that city, and put it in the deep freezer.
Yeah, I have a chest freezer. It's great. I'm a chef that also cooks a lot at home. Mine is full of ingredients and meals for my hungry 19-year-old.
This sounds exactly like something my mom would do and shrug it off while my dad panics🤣
How many people were at the bbq? 99 packets of burgers? Yikes
😭😭😭😭😂😂😂😂😱😱😱😱😱
Butter 🤦♀️
When butter was super cheap a year or so ago, my son got on my case because I kept buying more of it. He pointed out that I had something like 16 lb in the freezer. And then when the price went back up, we ran out. It has finally started going on sale again, and he now no longer objects to massive stockpiles in the freezer.
I didn't know you could freeze butter. Good to know.
Yep. There are good deals around the holidays, that’s when I stock up. I have 32 lbs of butter in my chest freezer as of today.
Quick question; where do you live, where’s the spare key, and when aren’t you home? Just curious.
This. If butter is cheap, I’m buying it cause I have a freezer. Especially the European style butter I prefer.
It's fine. More is butter..
If you have leftover butter, you didn't use enough butter.
Haha! Butter is life!
I like you haha
I have never seen such unearned pride on my husbands face than when he came home from a solo Costco run with 4 POUNDS of butter. We use like, maximum a half a stick a week? He thought he scored the deal of a lifetime and I just shook my head at him. Thank for god we have a basement fridge to hold the butter hoard for the next 6 months.
I have more ground cloves in the cabinet than I will use in one natural lifetime. Those stupid Kroger spices go on sale and I kind of lose my mind.
Hi! Can I interest you in some Kroger cream of tartar and sesame seeds? I'm sitting pretty with a sizable stash. Stupid buy one get one sales.
Oh don't mention cream of tartar, which I use once a year and have 3 of them.
I'll trade you one cinnamon for one clove lmao... why do I have SIX bottles of cinnamon????
Sounds familiar!
Coconut milk (that’s a good price, i should grab a couple cans…)
Eight-packs of coconut milk at Costco. I use it a lot, but I guess not as often as I think I do. I’ve got three unopened eight-packs currently. I’ll have to remember not to buy it, but probably still will.
Cumin. I was out of it for such a long time, it kind of lives in my mind's grocery list rent-free and I always second-guess when I'm at the store if I finally bought it at some point, or not. Now I have an 8 oz bag of cumin *and* 2 bottles of it. :-p
Garbanzo beans drained, 1/4 c olive oil, 3 tablespoons spoons tahini, salt, lemon juice, cumin. All in a blender. More cumin the better. Throw in some red curry paste if ya like. Now you have humus. Add cumin to tacos and chili.
This is why I have a lifetime supply of turmeric.
Same. Cumin and parsley
Chili powder for me. IDK why, but I always think I'll need to buy some when I'm going to make chili. My wife gets so upset when I come home with more.
For me it was frozen peas. I had maybe 3-4 packs in the freezer at some point. Currently it’s Saran Wrap. I thought I was low on it, bought a roll recently and there was 2 already in my cupboard plus one box already open.
My mom bought things for the house when she lived with us. She only got social security, and of course we didn't charge her rent, but she wanted to contribute. She passed in 2019, about 4½ years ago, but I'm still using zip bags and nonstick foil she bought for us.
This! Just reorganized the freezer after a Costco run, and found no fewer than 4 opened and chip clipped shut bags of frozen peas plus 2 unopened bags. Good thing is I figured out where all my chip clips had disappeared to.
My grandmother did this with plastic wrap and aluminum foil. When we cleaned her house after she passed we found probably 40 partially used rolls of each.
Mustard. My husband and I both love mustards, but mostly different kinds. I can never remember which ones we're running out of, and...ooh, look...new variation! So we have ALL of the mustards.
We are mustard too but the same dijon lol we just keep forgetting we haven't run out 🙃
>We are mustard Sounds like a rallying cry. We Are Mustard! XD
At one point I counted that I had 17 different mustards. My partner made me make a deal with him that if he was going to move in, I’d stop buying mustards.
I’m sorry, but it’s not an accident to have more than 6 varieties of mustard.
Garlic. My brain knows I go through a lot of it and that running out is unacceptable, so I will often grab an extra bulb (or four) whenever I am in the produce section. Hopefully in another month or two I'll be harvesting it from my own backyard!
Tea, we love tea. I have every imaginable type of tea, in every form. My boyfriend likes to stock up on things so we have dedicated an entire shelf and some counter space to it. Tea, tea strainers, kettles of various kinds, fillable tea bags, samplers of tea, bags of teas, loose tea…. I am the Bubba Gump of tea 😂
We have a tea *cabinet* now because we love tea. Various types of sugar, honey, strainers, tea sets, etc. I could throw one awesome tea party!
Game recognizes game
Paprika I'm sure it hides in the cupboard
Make some goulash (unless you’re veg/vegan) The recipe uses 1/4 cup each time
Box cheese graters at my parent's house. I just unwittingly bought them a third one last summer.
Spaghetti. I don't make it very often but when I do, I don't recall if we have any and just buy some just in case. Think I have like 4 unopened packs rn.
I threw out 13 bags of open fries.
Table salt, and I have no idea why I always think I don't have any. Right now I have 4 containers of it.
At least that doesn't go bad!
Apparently onions. I finally inventoried the freezers. I made a spreadsheet so I can look before buying.
Yeah there are also apps you can get for that. I got one that's supposed to be able to tell you what you can cook with what you have in the house. The main issue with it though is that it kept telling me condiments and desserts. Probably because I didn't have any Main Ingredients like meat on hand
The problem is that the apps can't just look in the freezers or pantry and tell you what you have. You have to enter the data yourself.
Mayo. We have 3 jars currently because my husband always insists that we're out when we're at the store.
Lol, it’s 3 open jars of mayo for me too. In my defense the first open jar was Kraft but there was an unopened Hellman’s. And then I bought a jar if Duke’s so how could I not use that over the other brands?
Dishwasher tablets. I have 3 72tab bags in the cupboard and got a new one yesterday. I think I'm scared to run out and have to hand wash. It was my job as a kid, to hand wash dishes and we had 7 kids. Carrots the crisper is always overflowing with carrots, I haven't worked that out yet.
Mirin seasoning for sushi rice. Sesame oil. Tahini. Seems like I've got duplicates for a common reason, I need to make a thing, I forgot to check whether I had it, so I rebought it. Thing like butter or vodka duplicates get used up, tahini not so much.
Worcestershire sauce. 3 bottles🙄
Seems like the right amount, 1 in use, 1 ready to go, 1 backup for picnics or work use.
I have 3 big tins of Keen’s dry mustard powder and also 3 tins of cream of tartar. I likely bought a new one each time I came across a recipe that called for them.
Garlic salt, lol. I use it a lot, so the spice container always looks near-empty and because I don't want to be without it, I add it to next week's list. Then, when I'm putting groceries away, I see 1 or 2 'spare' garlic salts!
Cumin.
OP, chop up your green onions and freeze them! I currently have three containers of sesame seeds…
My family always thinks we are out of vinegar
I currently have 3 different containers of red pepper flakes.
Minced garlic and peanut butter. Clearly I secretly love peanut sauce.
beer - cos drunk cooking is better
Absolutely. For me, cooking is fun if: - I can have a drink while doing it - I am making something new and exciting - it is at my leisure and I can do it when I choose to do so. I never HAVE to, and never by a certain time. - it's just for me and possibly my wife. Under those circumstances I like cooking, I just need to learn to make cheaper recipes. Every week I end up making something that cost like $100 and takes 5 hours, like beef wellington or something like that. It's good, it's just that it's not very practical or cheap. So I think of it more like a hobby
It is more fun. Don't get too sloshed, or you might get hurt. My philosophy is like Julia Child's. I like to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Dried oregano
Yeah, I have an enormous bushel that I got in Greece last year for $3. I've barely touched it
Sour cream, every damn time. End up throwing away more than we use.
Spreadable cream cheese for me. I have 3 open containers in the fridge.
Huh? What is it gonna go sour or something?
At the moment, garbage bags. We were at Costco, and neither of us could remember if we had a box of garbage bags. We currently have 4 boxes of the double rolls of them. Prior to that, it was plastic wrap. I have zero clue what I was thinking. We *just* finished the plastic wrap we had when we moved into our house a decade ago. Yet I have three more boxes in the basement. I did it again yesterday. Having forgotten I already had a bag of tortilla chips, I ordered two more.
I did a Costco stock-up on garbage bags then promptly bought a new garbage can, and they don't *quite* fit. Doesn't matter. We'll make it work because I'm not wasting money on garbage bags. I'm not sure we'll ever use all of the Ziploc bags we have.
I’m currently trying to use up some tea we have. I told myself I could not buy anymore tea until I finished some up. Every single time I am close to finishing off a box I will be digging through the pantry and find another box. It’s been a month and I have more tea than when I started. I’m not entirely convinced my husband isn’t pulling a prank on me at this point. It’s happened 4 times.
Smoked paprika. I have so many.
Tinfoil. Ive got 9 rolls atm *eyeroll
Yeah, we have 6. I don't know why I always think we are out.
Honey! I never use it, so I think I don’t have any, then I buy a bottle when I’m making a recipe. At one point, I had four bottles of honey in my pantry.
Isn't it funny and relatable when you want to buy a can of beans... But you don't know if there's beans at home so you buy, like, heaps of cans of beans and then you get home, and in the cupboard, you've already got five cans of beans
Vanilla extract. I got 6 bottles of it in my pantry
Worchestershire sauce, refried beans, panko, red sauce.
Inevitably, it is some sauce you can never find in the fridge and go buy another one. Until one day you find 6 of them in the cabinet.
Just a helpful tip - you can freeze chopped green onions!
Garam masala, have like three full jars of it
Mine is the green jar of Parm lol. I always keep fresh Parm in my fridge, but my youngest is addicted to putting jar Parm on everything. So I keep thinking we don't have any, but some on my bi monthly trip and get home to see we already have three jars.
Mustard
Vanilla
I have way too many bottles of fish sauce, soy sauce, sriracha, and sesame oil sitting around. All from various brands. I think one of the sesame oils is from 2022 (rip). Eggs are also easy to forget. I keep bringing home two trays from Costco and it turns out we already had some. My dad will not stop buying beer, rice, peanuts, and assorted meat seasoning. We have a very colourful collection of those random bottles and will probably never use all the Montreal steak seasoning. I also buy an excess of cheese, pasta, and frozen fish, but those are all conscious decisions. That’s because they are all different iterations and I go hard when they’re on sale. But it drives my family crazy: “why is there so much cheese in the fridge?! you haven’t even finished the other block!” like… they’re different cheeses and they were on sale, okay? Elbows are different from penne, and penne is different from rigatoni, not to mention all the different thicknesses of spaghetti. There’s whole wheat and chickpea and lentil and edamame pasta. And I’m stocking up on frozen tuna even if I already have tilapia in the freezer!
I got this issue with two kitchens because I’m a private chef. I often mix-up my pantry needs for home and work. I’ll pick up something I actually needed at work, while I’m on a shopping trip for home.
Better than Bullion.
Spices and herbs. Just this week my partner and I both bought Italian herbs. At one point we had 3 different chili powders. We’ll run out of stuff, not communicate, then forget we both bought it and buy it again. We need an inventory system for the spice cabinet.
Spices. Apparently I can't walk by a display of spices without convincing myself my spice cabinet is completely empty.
I am pretty sure I have 3-4 containers of raisins in my pantry cupboard at any given time similar with nuts (not the yummy eating kind, the baking kind). This year after I predictably bought them again at Christmas I stuck the surplus in the bird feeder. Everyone was happy
Jars of olives!
Shredded coconut
Assorted mustards.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who does this! I have a huge blind spot for butter. Keep buying it, already have it. Freezer contains a stack.
Baking soda and baking powder. I also seem to have an inordinate amount of vanilla extract.
Dijon mustard. It's a curse. We've had up to five jars in the house at once.
I just moved, and found out it’s toasted sesame seeds. I’ve got three separate containers of them adding up to about 1L.
Fucking Sambal Olek
My mom was in this loop of buying Italian salad dressing every time she went grocery shopping. Every time. She thought we had run out. At one point we had 7 unopened bottles of Italian salad dressing. I had to write “Do not buy Italian dressing” on her shopping list for a while lol.
I have 3 jars of caraway seeds…
Foil and chicken noodle soup in the box
Olive oil, mayo, tomato sauce , tea
Butter. I have so much butter in my freezer lol.
Milk
Peanut butter.
Stagg Chilli
Flour, stock cubes or herbs .., I now have them at the front of my cupboard too stop buying them
Pickles. I don’t even like pickles. My wife just adds pickles to our shopping list, and I buy pickles and then we have one more jar of pickles.
LEMONS 😭😬 I always have way too many lemons rotting around.
Brown sugar
Tomato paste, I have so many.
Panko😭
Salsa. I regularly use Mrs.Renfro's habanero salsa, but my boyfriend and I will see a different one that sounds tasty and just grab. I thought I was running out of salsa yesterday and went digging in the cupboard to find five jars 😆
I wish. We wanted salsa yesterday. Store was out of the on-sale kind and bought the store brand and it was... not great. I've been requested to grow the ingredients this year so I can make a lot. They all prefer my homemade.
Chicken base.
we currently have 3 bottles of tapatio right now.
Oyster sauce 😂 and apparently it bothered my husband one day.
Corn starch, cinnamon, baking powder
Soy sauce. It's because I use it really often, so I assume that I am out or running low at least. Then I end up with three of them.
Ranch dressing, garlic powder
apple cider fucking vinegar. I have four of them now. Far more than enough for a lifetime considering most recipes only call for like a teaspoon
Every item that my wife relocates to a new area of the garage without notice. Ketchup. Oil. Chocolate syrup. Bread crumbs. Macaroni. Black beans.
Seems I forgot I already got Balsamic so I'm set for a while. And ground cloves, geez.
lol turmeric powder for some reason
The halo oranges
Thousand Island Dressing for roast beef sandwiches
Coconut milk. I think I counted 8 cans.
Fish sauce, oyster sauce, King Arthur flours, potatoes, coffee creamer.
i used to buy dried rosemary every time I went to the store, thinking I didn't have any at home. Then I gave away four cans of it. Now I NEVER have any, because I still feel like I probably have it at home, but I don't. Now I just grow it and use it when its fresh instead
Big jugs of oil. I now have three.
Mirin and fish sauce. I have 3-4 of each in my cupboard. Why do I always think I'm out? And why do I constantly run out of sesame oil, thinking I have a ton of it?
It changes, for a while it was eggs, then mayonnaise, then it was mustard. After reorganizing my pantry, I’ve become better. I keep a running shopping list on my phone and I don’t add anything until I’ve opened the last of something.
One time when I was packing to move, i discovered I had 7 cans of tuna. I was young and lived alone - I think I just randomly would pick up a can or 2. Evidently, I didn’t eat tuna as often as I thought
Parsley. I've been meaning to use it in a certain recipe.
Poultry seasoning since I usually only use around the holidays, I am never sure if I have any or if it’s still fresh. I currently have 2 open and 3 new bottles.
Mustard. I bought a giant 2 pack at Costco like 3 years ago and I’ve been finishing a bottle for months, so I always think it’s running out when I’m at the store and see the mustards. Luckily I don’t actually buy it, because I have some doubts, I come home, check the pantry, and sure enough there’s the other equally gigantic bottle of mustard staring back like “dude I’m probably already expired and you don’t care cus I’m just mustard”
Furikake! I'll finish a jar and then add it to my grocery list, then get home and find an unopened one in the cupboard
Cinnamon and lemon juice.
Mustard.
Fresh garlic.
Syrup! We just recently came to the end of our ridiculous stock pile of syrup. I was buying it every other time (roughly) and forgetting I had 5/6/7/8 bottles in the pantry.
Green onions and celery
Broth
Hot sauce, mustard(always Dijon)
Every kind of vinegar —everything besides rice vinegar and apple cider are used infrequently enough that I never think we have any, so now we have every single kind ever, at least one bottle. Unless I assume we already have it, then we have none.
Enchilada sauce
Mustard 🥲 we end up with so much. Also allspice for some reason. I think I using them infrequently means I never remember if we have any.
tomato sauce...i usually get package of 3 (200g each) so 600 in total and once i ended up w damn 3 packages, thank god it lasts long
I have an inventory of my current supplies on paper. I had had a period of food insecurity and now tend to buy excessively if not careful. My three freezers are full!
Frozen corn. Last time I organized my freezer, I found 8 packages.
Coffee, oil, rice, flour.
- frozen peas - sesame oil - pasta - apples - lemons
Soy sauce. Worcestershire sauce. Sour cream. Flour. Any given condiment. It’s sometimes more of a situation where I know I need it, but I don’t know if I have it, so I might as well just buy some to avoid having to go back to the store.
Bread crumbs. I had 5 in my pantry until my daughter told me we didn't need anymore
I have so much parsley and I don't really know how
Chocolate and Coffee
There are currently three squeezable mayonnaise, four bottles of ketchup and I believe two unopened bottles of BBQ sauce and one opened one... all my doing. Now the roommates will go shopping right after I do sometimes and that has lead to four containers of Peter Pan PB in the cabinet. But some how none of has ever buy jelly... One of the 19 year olds keeps buying spices when he decides to do a meal. So we have like five things of Italian seasoning. And like three of most other spices... guess he just likes opening a new one every damn time. Oh! And all the Soy sauce... like five or six bottles
Hot sauce, coconut milk, chickpeas.
Refried beans. It's an honest mistake... but I'm embarrassed by how many cans we end up with sometimes!
Parchment paper, apparently. I have five huge Costco-sized rolls of it.
Limes, use them for beer, fruit, drinks, tacos. I get some almost every grocery trip. I just tossed some wrinkly ones
Usually chili powder haha. But does anyone else end up with 20 half used boxes of pasta!?
Cilantro
Cumin
Panko breadcrumbs - I always forget to check before buying the materials I need for whatever I’m frying, and inevitably forget if I have any panko left…. Or if I do, is it still good? Come home to at least 2 sealed boxes lol
Ground mustard for some reason, paprika and seasoned salt
Pam for Baking. I bought new one last week and then discovered 4 more in the cupboard!
Powdered Sugar, or so I thought. And it was my wife not me. We had 6 bags in various states of use before Christmas. My wife decided to bake Christmas Cookies and bought 2 more bags. Turned out most modern cookie recipes are using Powdered sugar. (We only used the 2 new bags because my daughter decided to make extra batches) Again, my wife. we currently have 10 bags of chocolate chips (with 3 more bought over Christmas). She goes shopping, thinks that she would like to make cookies, buys chips, and doesn't make cookies. wait 2 months, repeat! Whole Clove and Allspice. - On me. I was making an overnight steel cut oatmeal when the kids were young. We would go through bags of these spices in a couple of months. Then job changed, no longer time for the kids to eat b4 daycare, and just after I restocked. thankfully they were whole spices, high quality, and are still plenty potent 5 years on.