Food, glorious food.

I love food. I like to cook it, I like to eat it and I even like to shop for it. So much so that I never, ever let Abraham go shopping without me. I've heard so many people say they can't stand supermarket shopping but, to be honest, I would spend all day at the grocery store given half a chance. It's just such a huge building full of potential.
I also love to hear about how others manage and organise their households and lives. It fascinates me! So with that, I thought I'd share a few of the things we do.

My kitchen cupboards, like the rest of our house, are not meticulously organised
I keep my grains and baking ingredients in separate (mostly) Tupperware containers but they're not labelled, so really I am the only person who can find anything quickly. I haven't found a way to label them yet which won't damage them (they were my Nanas). Everything else pretty much stays in the packaging it comes in and is put in the allocated, though not always logical, spot. I'm thinking there might be a better way to do this but I'm unsure quite what it is and how I could do it without spending much money on more containers.

Also, I remember watching an episode of 'The money man' once where he said that you save more money by using up nearly all of the food in your cupboards each week rather than stocking up on things and designing meals purely around what you feel like. Do you think that's true? What's your style? Are you one who empties the cupboard each and every week? Or are you like my old neighbours and have two pantries because if you ever see something on sale you buy three?
I like to think I am somewhere in the middle. I try to always have one more than we need that week of each of the items we go through regularly (soy milk, margarine, bread, tomato sauce, baked beans etc..) but otherwise try to use up ingredients we have in the house.
I shop (once a week, despite the urge to go every day) to a fairly precise list derived from what is needed to cook the meals on the weekly menu. I decide on seven meals each week so that, even though they are not assigned to certain days, we have enough ingredients to eat well every single night. Any meals we don't use, due to takeaways or dinner with friends etc, get carried over to the next week.
This seems to work fairly well and, as far as I can tell, is the most economical way for us.

So there you have it. My name is Rhiannon and I'm a grocery-aholic.
Also, when did my life get so exciting that I would want to be blogging about my pantry?