My plan is working. It is now “Day 4” of “Operation Attrition”.
The Girl has been in London since Tuesday, and the refrigerator is beginning to get a bit lean… Most of the fresh stuff is winnowed down. Just a few lumps of fresh-ish pineapple and melon in the plastic buckets, and some not-quite-ready-to-wilt green stuff in the crisper.
i’ve made a dent in the yogurt, tortillas and spreadable cheeses. Oh, and the open bottles of wine? That’s being cleared tonight. By the end of the weekend? The visible shelf space will exceed that which is occupied.
In the freezer quadrant, i’ve made a dent in some of the frozen vegetarian meal-like-substances. It’s only been four days, and i’ve focused on bashing my way through the fresh stuff. Before it gets fuzzy.
i love it when a plan comes together…
The Girl will be studying in London for another month. For the past two years, i have avoided grocery shopping, which i despise. Her contribution, as a citizen of the household, has been to take on the responsibility for stocking the fridge, freezer and pantry*. It’s worked out well.
It is time to clean out the fridge. Rotate stock in the pantry. Yes, this is my excuse. THIS is the reason i shall be able to avoid going to the grocery store for the entire month.
Not that she’s going to feel guilty when she comes home and finds the cupboards bare. Or my sunken cheeks, pleading eyes and potentially** shriveled carcass… Passive aggressive much?
image found here
* i still buy beer, wine and booze as needed…. Priorities, folks…
** Sadly, i could wander the desert for a month, subsisting on cactus fluids, rodent hulls and scorpion meat and STILL not be emaciated. The joys of being a chubby…
Trailer Park Refugee 
I have heard that scorpion meat is very nutritious! And green stuff is highly over-rated.
i eat green cheeses on purpose. it can’t really be that bad…
Good luck! Please don’t starve to death. Or become malnutritioned. I’ve tried subsisting on chocolate – no good and I think the same goes for alcohol.
i shall not starve to death… she’s probably more worried that i’ll forget to take care of her cat… there will be chocolate. i can buy that at gas stations!
I’m glad you said there will be chocolate. If I try to deny myself that God-given gift, I end up eating everything else in the house in an attempt to fill that void. It isn’t pretty…
people who know me? provide chocolate as needed. it’s both for my preservation and theirs… there will ALWAYS be chocolate!
From what I’ve heard, if you can’t tell if it’s cake or meat, throw it out.
welcome to the park, murr! and yes, if it’s unidentifiable? it gets tossed! no worries…
I am going to FedEx you one of my chocolate cakes (see The Daily Tale #4 Chocolate Fever.)
Oh, baby! chocolate frosted cake… [swoons]
Sometimes you just have to get to the back of the shelf.
We are looking at the freezers and the space available within them and wondering where we are going to stow the produce that is starting to come out of the garden. I blanched the first batch of asparagus this morning. And so the cycle continues.
i really just want to scrub the insides of the fridge! and rotate stock in the pantry. i believe in ‘just in time’ inventory — which works ok for someone like me who doesn’t ‘grow my own’.
The price you pay for handing her the shopping reins is having to have to eat yucky veggie crapola. Come back to meat! Meat is your friend! A big pork chop is calling out to you.
“A big pork chop is calling out to you.”
that BETTER be a euphemism, buddy…
I hope it’s not 😉
hey, who’s side are you on here?!?
Isn’t it funny how modernity has turned a task essential to our basic survival into something to be regarded with distaste and shunned?
We are the opposite of “just in timers”. As the world’s humanity grows increasingly restless and things continue to go “wrong”, I’ve suggested that we stock up a little against the coming apocalypse. We now have a decent supply of basics (rice, flour) and canned goods on the shelves in the basement. Probably could do with a little stock rotation there, I suppose.
i have a 72 hour bug-out stash, but no long term provisions. this is NOT a place to hunker down… i still go to the local market, though. entirely different experience. cheese, veggies and fruit, locally made bread. and even hugs for the flower seller lady when she’s having an obviously bad day. this is how it’s supposed to work. screw the megachains…
I once went a whole month on just Guinness and mashed tatties with chives. I put on 4lb in weight. Now, I merely buy larger shirts.
Mashed tatties and chives…. yummmmmm
i can live on yogurt and fruit. with beer, of course. covers the basics, and i generally lose weight on that diet. tatties and chives? might use that as the name of my next band…
I like to send my kids into the store for me. They are still young enough not to mind. and – dude – you are totally NOT a chubby!
thanks, dear… i need to re-lose that pesky disappearing/reappearing 30. i should just name it, get it a social security number, and start claiming it on my taxes as my prodigal fat module…
and wait til your critters get their drivers licenses! that’s gold! can you say “designated driver”?
I know a woman who won’t grocery shop until all the toilet paper is gone. Then she buys as much as will fit in the car. I can’t say who it is, but she lives in my house. Did I mention I do all the grocery shopping in my house?
i will go to the warehouse club monthly to buy pet supplies. sometimes i will fill the car with other “stuff”, including paper products, oversized boxes of cereal and vitamins, and 8 packs of toothpaste. because you NEED that shit, man. You NEED it. i can shop for stuff i need… (she sounds quite lovely, by the way! you should marry her!)
Oh my how I hate to grocery shop. That hatred is compounded because I actually work in the grocery industry. augh!
With that said, we could live for MONTHS on the samples that we accumulate, but I give most of them away.
if i worked in the grocery industry? i’d go insane(er). as it is, they ‘upscaled’ the local grocery – it now has a starbucks, an industrial-warehouse sized deli/bakery, and they sell furniture and housewares… i can’t go in there without breaking into a cold sweat. i have switched to the smaller place, with limited selections, because i hate the big place…
Babe , you are no chubby. I should know. I’m president of the Pennsylvania chapter.
I am in love with the idea of someone grocery shopping for me. It might even be worth letting the little monsters live with me. I’ll rethink the old “change the locks as soon as they leave for college” idea.
I hope you don’t starve. Any old tuna fish cans in back of the pantry?
i DID the “move and change the locks” gig… they are resourceful. they found me pretty quickly, and staked out space in the new digs… both have bounced back home, The Boy for a short stint, The Girl for a little longer. i swear, if she hadn’t been doing all of the shopping and cooking, i’d have whined about it a lot more… she’s been a good roomie.
I, um… must admit that in truth, I love to grocery shop. Yes, it must come form being the son of a grocer. I practically grew up in grocery stores. So I love to check the prices and peruse the aisles. That being said, not shopping for a month sounds like a great way to lose some weight. I’m always up for losing some weight, because it always comes back. Stupid fat. Just when you get rid of some of it and feel like it’s safe to eat a carbohydrate, BLAM, you’re fat again. And I wouldn’t even mind being a little chubby if it weren’t for the diabetes. No, I’m supposed to be bone thin. Fat hungry or dead, that’s what my program is. Right now I’m on the fat part again. Comes from going on vacation. Should just call it fatification. Time to starve.
i’d say you’re weird, but i suspect i’m in the minority here. grocery shopping (like all shopping) makes me stressy and sweaty. i can buy yogurt and fruit and beer and cheese and party food. but i never really think about it…
i did it well, i guess, when the kids were young. i managed to feed them reasonably healthy meals, and no one starved. i just hate it…
vacation, however, is when you get a ‘go cup’ full of bacon from the breakfast buffet!
On the way to work, I got stuck behind a van that delivers groceries to your home. I gave it some serious thought. Food, delivered to my door. Like Netflix! Genius.
this is a good plan… and perhaps an advantage to living in a metropolis, as opposed to a podunkopolis. if they could only figure out how to deliver it through your computer/television/Wii? that’d be awesomeness…