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Cooking Without Shopping

Original Source: http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com
Author: Kim Severson
Original Publication Date: February 19, 2010

Say all the grocery stores shut down. Do you have enough food in the pantry to last a week? The fine folks at eGullet believe you do.

Starting Sunday, eGullet is starting a project called “A Week Without Shopping.” People are encouraged to eat only what’s already in the house, posting their progress, of course.

“The premise is that most middle-class Americans have enough crap in their cupboards and freezers to survive for ages without taking on any new ingredients,” said Steven Shaw, the co-founder of eGullet and author of “Asian Dining Rules” (William Morrow, 2008).

It’s a challenge that combines cooking and economics. Mr. Shaw calculates that if he skips a week of grocery shopping four times a year, he would save 8 to 10 percent on his grocery bill.

He came up with the idea after his own grocery shopping habit was interrupted. Almost every Sunday for years, he has schlepped from the East Side to the West to grocery shop at Fairway with his mother. Recently, he had to cancel. He thought maybe he’d just go on Monday, but he looked around the kitchen and realized the freezer was full and the cabinets had “enough pasta that if we had a nuclear war we could survive,” he said.

Mr. Shaw will recreate his week of not shopping starting Sunday. He’ll chronicle his adventures with pictures of dishes that come from his freezer and with a few recipes. Anyone who wants to join him are welcome.

“As the week goes on, we are going to show that most middle-class Americans are so over-provisioned that they are carrying this great wasted inventory,” he said. “We want to show you could cut your grocery budget in a most radical way and not really suffer.”

He fully acknowledges this idea will repel the rarefied group of people who shop daily and design their menus by the whims of the market. And the rules are a little soft.

“We’re not like P.E.T.A. We don’t have a doctrinaire projects.”

Kids can get lunch at school and people can go out for meals. And by all means, no one should get hurt.

“If you have an infant who needs milk, O.K., but just don’t do that $150 weekly shopping,” he said.

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