This is somewhat incredible, somewhat insane, and all the while totally freaking unimaginable. When I think of pantries, I think of little five-by-two feet closets full of the basic necessities, just enough to survive for a week. When I lived on Guam, my pantry was full of Oreos, a couple of boxes of cereal, and an overload of Gatorade. Our collection of canned goods was far too sparse for me to live up to my nickname “Canned Goods.” I think the main reason for having more beverages than food in my pantry was because the constant, year-round heat made me more thirsty than hungry.
When I visited my brother in South Korea, he had absolutely no pantry at all. His refrigerator was full of nothing but kimchi. Just down the street from his apartment was a chain full of grocery stores, and when it came time to make dinner, he and his wife would buy the food right then and there.
When I moved to America in 2004, I thought I was going to starve. Going from fish to meat, from rice to beans, from sushi to enchiladas was more difficult than I could have ever imagined. What made matters worse was knowing that for the first couple of months, while in the process of house hunting, my mom, brother, and I would have to live at my grandparents’ house, located fifteen minutes away from a very small, but quaint grocery store and a little less than an hour from an actual city. But then I discovered their pantry.
Just recently I took a trip back to my grandparents’ house only to discover that now their pantry has gone from overstocked to when’s the end of the world coming.
If you cannot tell, there is hardly enough room for more canned goods. I’d go into great description as to what food is in each can (or better yet, each row), but I’m assuming their labels will suffice. I should also add that this is just one of three pantries in the house. This one is located in the laundry room, just down the hall from their newly reconstructed master suite. The second one is in an old garage just off the side of the room my mom and I slept in during our stay. In that garage, there are hundreds of jars of homemade jelly that my grandma gives to my aunts. It is also complete with homemade beef jerky, cans of apple, orange, pineapple, and grape juice, a refrigerator full of Pepsi and Budweiser, and two freezers containing frozen snacks and microwavable food. The third pantry is located in their four-car garage on the side of the house. In it, there is one gigantic freezer that holds fresh meat straight from my grandfather’s slaughtered cows.
This is from the same pantry as the one shown above. Because this is in the laundry room, only three out of the four walls are covered with groceries. The remaining wall houses the washer and dryer.
When I speak of his pantires, I typically refer to them as Stores 1, 2, and 3. Whenever my mom grabs a can of beans or a bottle of ketchup, I charge her a reasonable sum. I often wonder how much money I’d make if they were real stores, and people really did purchase everything from each pantry. I bet I’d make enough money for, count them, THREE Vegas vacations. THREE!
Filed under: Food, Stories
