It’s easy to lose track of ingredients and items in your kitchen, especially those that look similar, so Food52’s Amanda Hesser suggests keeping an overhead projector pen in your kitchen and always keep labelling them and add dates too.
We can’t tell the difference between AP flour and pastry flour without a label. And I certainly couldn’t identify every type of rice we have. Amanda keeps a wet-erase marker on hand for easy labelmaking — when the black barley is gone, the name on the container will just wash away. You don’t have to label every single ingredient in your pantry if you don’t want to. I am encouraging you to date things, though. Knowing how fresh your pantry items are is always a good thing.
One of our previous suggestions has been to buy uniform storage containers and some sticky notes and a pen to label all your ingredients, but Hesser’s method one less item and lets you write in a much bigger size than what a sticky note will let you.
Pantry Organisation [Food52]
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One response to “Keep An Overhead Projector Pen In The Kitchen To Label And Date Ingredients”
I do this with meat that I put into the freezer. I use a Sharpie to write the date of purchase on it. Then, when I go to thaw it out, I know how many days it can be left in the fridge (in case I change my mind on dinner plans) without it going past the original used by date. If there’s 7 days between the purchase date and the used by date, and I pull it out of the freezer on Sunday, I just remember I have until Saturday/Sunday to use it.