One of the drawbacks – the simple kind – to this situation, is what do you do with the food?
Many of us have stocked up, but a lot of people are not practiced in how that works. How much is too much? What if the milk goes sour? Will the cereal go stale? (Yes, someone asked me about that – no, not if stored in an airtight container.)
I dig into my background as a mom who spent many years stretching the dollar and a daughter whose parents navigated the Great Depression.
Recipes, folks. Recipes. A lot of terrific Southern cooking has its roots in food that was connived, adjusted, and stretched to make a dollar snap with how hard it had worked. Beans. Greens. Soup stock. And I’m purposely leaving out a lot of examples.
One of the greats here, up North, in France – all over really, is bread pudding. Devised as a way to used up stale-not-moldy bread, bread pudding has many kinds and innovations. It can be made from plain bread. From croissants. From cinnamon buns or raisin bread. Basically broken bread pieces with a custard poured over it, bread pudding is comfort food, soul food, and frugality combined.
Can’t get out to buy dessert? Need to use up that milk before it sours? (although there are uses for soured milk, too) Got some of that bread in the cupboard that no one is going to eat up? Whip up a bread pudding and save the bread from the garbage while you sate the tummies in the dining room.
Here’s a link to a recipe for that good-looking bread pudding pictured above: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/7177/bread-pudding-ii/
Enjoy !
