The weirdest and least important question ever. Probably.

[tickyul]

I'm single and I have a pretty limited supply of stuff in the fridge.

I very rarely have to throw anything out......don't really buy much fruits and veggies, not too hot on either.

[rodentraiser]

When I lived in my truck for a couple of years, I had to shop for food almost every day. Once I moved into a permanent home, it took me months and months to buy more than a couple things at a time. Now I'm on food stamps and added to that, I recently started "cooking", which I had never really done. Most of the food I ate before was frozen pizzas, frozen dinners, that sort of thing. A lot of stuff went into the cupboard, like macaroni and cheese and Hamburger Helper boxes and my fridge was almost always empty while the freezer was packed. The only spice I owned was salt.

Now that I've started actually cooking food, I find I have to figure out my meals according to what I can buy (or vice versa). For example, if I get a couple pounds of chicken breasts, I figure to use them for salads, chicken fingers, and sandwiches. So I have to figure in so much bread (which is also used for tuna melts and grilled cheese), so much lettuce for so many salads, etc. So what's happening now is around the beginning of the month, my fridge and freezer both are packed to the gills because I now shop once (at about 4 to 5 stores so I can follow the sales) and I buy for the entire month (and by the way, I am only shopping and cooking for one).

By the end of the month, my fridge and freezer are practically empty. However, I am finding I now have some food leftover to be used into the next month where before I used to run out around the 30th. Plus I am losing some weight. Not a lot, but even a little is better than nothing. So I plan to keep cooking and not go back to the fast food/frozen food way of life. And for now it's going to be a full fridge/empty fridge thing, although I think I will eventually learn to spread my purchases out over the month. This bringing home food that isn't ready made is still somewhat new to me.

[Mightyqueen801]

I don't have much in my refrigerator, either. I have my half-and-half for coffee and the usual condiments, some eggs. But I have empty drawers and shelves, too. I have a too-big fridge that was there, and fairly new, when I bought the condo. I'm not a person who runs out and does a huge shopping trip and comes home with bags and bags of crap to stuff in the cabinets and the refrigerator. Did that when I was married and my kid was small. I just can't stand carrying all those bags and making all those back-and-forth trips from the car, so I just buy what I need a few days at a time. There's absolutely no reason to do a huge shopping trip when you live alone.

I work and have a long commute, so I don't eat either breakfast or lunch at home. Sometimes I buy stuff and carry my lunch, but that is time-consuming and usually falls by the wayside until I get ambitious--or too broke--again.

But, as someone said, it was a TV show. You might as well ask why every shopper has a brown bag with at least one loaf of Italian bread sticking out of the top, unwrapped. Or how an entire church congregation happens to all have great voices and are able to sing on key.

[Chava61]

Originally Posted by pimbolo

I'm stating right up front that this is a totally unimportant question, so don't just answer it to tell me that it is.

Whenever I watch television, it shows people who have refrigerators and pantries crammed with food. Now I eat very little and I have never had either a full refrigerator or pantry because the food would just all spoil and I'd have to throw it out. What the heck is in those refrigerators and pantries? For example, I see a lot of milk, fruit, vegetables, and meat. All of that stuff goes bad relatively quickly. Do you guys with packed refrigerators really eat an entire refrigerator full of food before it spoils?

I'm only asking because today I went shopping and the way I do it is I buy food, then eat it, then shop when I have NO food remaining. So, when I go shopping, my refrigerator is completely and totally empty. But I'm sort of thinking that most people would consider that to be weird.

My fridge is like yours which usually isn't stuffed. The only things that are pretty constant are condiments like ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, etc. On the other hand, when I visit my mother or either of my siblings I see that their refrigerators are stuffed just like the ones you see on TV.

[gypsychic]

Originally Posted by pimbolo

I don't use condiments or eat salads (I eat vegetables, just not salads), so I have no dressing or ketchup or mayo or stuff like that in my fridge. I'd love to be able to stock a fridge for a month, like MTSilvertip, but I sorta feel silly vacuum-sealing everything. I guess I'd do it if I didn't live near a store, but since I do it's not too big a deal to just shop every two or three days. (It just takes me ten minutes to shop, since I'll just pick up some meat and vegetables.) But, yeah, today when I went shopping my fridge was completely empty.

There is NOTHING weird about this. Many European cultures are like this; in fact they have teeny tiny fridges, but buy just what they need for one or two days. I grew up in a "Latin village" in Florida, and my Spanish father would just go to small markets nearby and get what we needed for dinner or whatever for a day or two. If stores are nearby and you are not cooking for a huge herd, there is never a need to "stock up." Better to buy what you need and use it up, than to buy extra and throw it out.