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Here at the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—though we love to try new dishes, your post doesn’t have to be a recipe. If you want, you could simply snap a few shots of your garden, farmer’s market or the produce department of your local supermarket to show readers where you buy your fresh food.

My point is that we’re pretty relaxed over here, and posts like that are as welcome as menus and recipes.

When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the broccoli button (the big one above or smaller option at the bottom) to paste at the top of your post. It ties us together visually.

Then fill in the boxes of Simply Linked to join the fun!

Food on Fridays with Ann

When we bought our house, I realized it didn’t have a pantry. We bought it anyway, resolving we’d be fine dedicating two or three cabinets to food storage and tucking extra cereal boxes or soup cans in the basement—after all, taking the stairs a few more times each day would burn more calories. It would force us into a healthier lifestyle, right?

Well, trudging downstairs for ingredients got old pretty quick. Before long I got lazy and started sending the kids down, avoiding the trip whenever possible.

Two years ago we installed shelves in the laundry room and transferred a few food items there from the basement; but you have to slip through the bathroom to get to our laundry room. I’ve never asked, but I’m sure our guests have been puzzled—even disgusted—watching us head straight for the bathroom to retrieve a bag of chips.

Well, we saved our pennies and hired a handyman to remove a couple of cabinets and a kitchen desk to make room for some kitchen storage. In that space, he hung drywall, installed deep shelving, hung sliding doors, and now?

We have a pantry. A real kitchen pantry.

I collected food from the basement, the laundry room shelf, the cabinets where I had been stuffing boxes and bags and cans. Now it’s all in one place.

I discovered cans of tiny shrimp I intended to use for dip, several canisters of old-fashioned oats, numerous bags and partial bags of egg noodles, seven cake mixes, and seven cans of evaporated milk.

Seven cake mixes!

Seven cans of evaporated milk!

I made an angel food cake the day the pantry was installed, to celebrate. And one of my daughters is making another cake even as I write. So we’re down to a reasonable number of cake mixes.

But seven cans of evaporated milk is a bit too much. To systematically use it up, I did a quick search for recipes listing evaporated milk as a key ingredient and plan to make these in the next few weeks:

• Quiche Lorraine
• macaroni and cheese
• corn chowder
• Pumpkin pie (I’ve made this recipe)

We’re downright inspired, and it’s all because of my new pantry.