It’s not the only stuff. I bought some cooking oil, onion
soup mix, alfredo sauce, cream of chicken soup and all kinds of toiletries,
among other things. You never know when a post is not going to have something
really important, like dental floss. As it turns out, Turkey has plenty of
stuff, even Listerine fluoride mouthwash, but that’s OK.
What I need to get a grip on, though, is how quickly or
slowly I am using the stuff so that I can make sure I run dry at the end of two
years. This is sometimes tough, because (especially food-wise), it’s easy to go
on kicks. I drained an alfredo jar in a month once already, but pulled back
when I realized I have 18 months left and only five more jars. Fortunately, the commissary has more of that,
as well as other important stuff like peanut butter and grits.
I’m not really worried about running out of stuff. I’m more concerned
that I am not using up some of what I brought quickly enough. Case in point:
laundry detergent. I brought two large things of laundry detergent with me, plus
leftovers from Guangzhou. I’ve realized that I’m now six months into my post.
That means, in a perfectly planned world, I would have used up a quarter of the
stuff I brought. Not even close.
That, though, doesn’t spoil and can be drug along to the
next post. What cannot be salvaged for another assignment is food. And boy, I’m
going to have to start cooking (and baking) to make a dent in some of what I
have on my shelves.
My mental dilemma, of course, is, that while I have had the bag
of chocolate chip sitting there for six months, if I use it, I no longer have
any chocolate chips. Do I want to be in that situation? Of course not. Everyone
needs a bag of chocolate chips around, just in case.
Ditto with the cream of chicken soup. I love to cook with
it. I brought six cans. I’ve used one in six months, so I should be OK to use
another, right? Mentally, it’s just not that easy. What happens if, in February
2018, I really need three cans? If I keep up this pace, I won’t have three cans
left.
It’s so much harder than it should be.
Powdered sugar is hard to come by. I brought a bag. Powdered
sugar makes wonderful icing. Honestly, I don’t know what else you do with it. I
made a cake recently for the Marines and couldn’t bring myself to use my
powdered sugar. It would have taken ALL I had, leaving me with none. And I do
use powdered sugar. I’ve made sugar cookies three times so far. You can’t ice
them with anything else, and of course sugar cookies need icing. So how could I
possibly use the rest of the entire bag in one shot? I solved this problem by
buying a can of icing at the commissary last month and using half of it
instead, which is why I just bought another cake mix.
I just discovered that I have two 10-pound bags of flour.
For some reason, I thought these were grits. I’d put them, along with the
grits, into the fridge to stave off any bugs. They were in the bottom drawer
and all wrapped up in plastic bags from Target, so I basically stuffed them in
there as soon as my shipment arrived and forgot about them. All this time I
thought there were a bunch of those round containers of grits, but when I
opened the drawer to get a new canister of grits, turns out, the bulk of the
drawer is flour.
There’s no valid reason for me to have 20 pounds of flour.
They sell flour in Turkey just fine. Lord knows I know, because, not realizing
I had so much already, I’ve bought it here twice. Flour’s the main ingredient
for my weekend pancakes, so I keep it in stock. I just don’t know how many cups
of flour (how much I use in a week), there are in 20 pounds of the powdered stuff.
The best option seems to be to start baking, especially
since I also have a bunch of Crisco and brown sugar. The commissary also had
some Christmas chocolate chips on sale (red and green, I guess they’re
chocolate of some sort) as well as Nestle Crunch baking bits. I’m going to
separate the red chips from the green ones and then use each pile with the
Nestle bits with each and make cookies for Valentines’ Day and St. Patrick’s
Day.
The Marines will love me.
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