Things that are staples in other houses, but not yours.

In My Humble Opinion
21

Neither of us drinks coffee, either, so there’s never been any in the house. I drink tea, my wife doesn’t.

Now that we make enough money that we don’t have to eat hamburger, we never buy it.

My wife is lactose intolerant, so she doesn’t eat dairy very often at all. We don’t use margarine, either. I drink 2% milk, mostly in tea, and eat butter.

We have a bag of flour, but I can’t think of the last time we used any for anything.

We never eat macaroni and cheese, either, except once in a great while, I like to make a pot of the Kraft kind and add a can of tomatoes to it, because it tastes great. But I don’t like it without the tomatoes.

There’s never any booze here. Well, there’s half a bottle of brandy that we bought about five years ago to have Brandy Alexanders on NYE, but I got so sick on three of them that I have re-vowed never to drink again. But we don’t know anyone who would want some brandy if they came over, so it’s going to sit there until I eventually pour it down the drain. If you come over, you can have a Coke, though. We never run out of Coke.

22

Other than a smoked pork chop and pizza toppings, I have no meat in my freezer. We have cold cuts in the fridge for quick sandwiches.

In my cupboards I have all the staples required for cooking, rice, pasta, bread mixes, canola oil, olive oil, seasonings, cereal (hot & coal), etc…

I buy meat and vegetables daily. The wife and I found that stocking up on either locks us into cooking things we might not want, so we look up recipes and buy the required meat and vegetables. Unlike auntie em we do cook almost daily. Friday and Saturday our two oldest boys cook dinner and they ask for money to go get whatever they need as well. It probably doesn’t hurt that there’s a supermarket a 100 yards away.

23

Your dad must be related to my mother in law. She used to buy the store brand breakfast cereal because her kids hated it and wouldn’t eat it, thereby making it last much, much longer. :dubious:

We don’t have biscuits, cookies, chips (crisps). Sometimes I have to remember to buy tomato sauce (or ketchup) for when people come over for a bbq as neither of us eats it. Mayonnaise is another thing that we only stock when other people are around.

24

No cereal.

The other interesting thing I noticed the other day is we have almost no instant-drinkable alcohol. That is, no beer or wine…we have lots of liquers and mixers, and I just made some sangria and stuck it in the fridge…but everything else has to be mixed first. When I have people over I have to remember to pick up beer or wine, depending on who’s coming.

25

I don’t have very many prepared foods, either. I keep a few Lean Cuisines in the freezer, for my really lazy days, and some canned soup. Other than that, I don’t really believe in them.

I don’t have coffee.

That reminds me–I don’t have a coffee maker, or a toaster, or an electric can opener. No tea kettle either, although I drink gallons of tea. I make it in a saucepan on the stove.

I go for long periods without keeping milk around. I don’t eat cereal very often, so I rarely have that, either.

I don’t keep snack foods in the house. I have had more than one guest who complained about this. No chips, no candy, no popcorn, no cookies. I usually have only a box of granola bars, a sack of prunes, and some tangelos. Needless to say, nobody wants to sit around and snack on prunes. (Well, nobody but me, apparently.) Sometimes I have a box of popsicles.

Currently, there’s no alcohol of any kind in the house. I used to keep Bombay Sapphire, Ketel One, and some wine around, but I got out of the habit of drinking a few years ago.

I rarely buy juice of any kind.

For years, I never bought bread, but I’ve started doing it again, though most loaves turn into mold colonies.

26

P.S. to the OP–why not suggest to your father that you stop buying groceries altogether? After all, they’re just going to be eaten.

27

Staples. In my house these are a tasty but rather chewy snack, high in iron.

28

Boldface, there was a Muppets episode where Bunsen Honeydew proudly announced he’s invented the world’s first edible paperclips. “They’re delicious, nutritious, and nickel-plated!”.

Huh. I keep lots of things we don’t eat very often, but I’m a food hoarder. We don’t have coffee, I think. We do have bazillion types of tea.

29

Huh, there’s nothing new under the sun. I shall go into the garden and eat worms. In fact, worms are a staple in my house, which does tend to stain the paper somewhat.

30

Flour & sugar.

31

Prepared foods. We don’t have pasta sauce, frozen meals, or anything. And we don’t have any snack foods.
In our freezer there are a lot of bread products and meat. That’s about it.

32

This is the inevitable conclusion to that line of thinking.

33

The only prepared foods I have are the ones I made and froze myself* and stuff like perogies because I’m too lazy to make a bunch myself. Sometimes I will buy the frozen kiev, but not usually.

We don’t have anything cheese slices or cheese whiz or anything resemblng spaghetti-o’s. No hot dogs and we rarely eat kraft dinner. Most people with kids seem to have these things.

*I do big batches when I cook, so I always have more spaghetti sauce/lasagna/chili/soup than we can eat in a couple of sittings, so I freeze all the excess for lazy or rushed days when I don’t feel like or don’t have the time to cook.

34

I don’t have any flour. My oven has been used to roast pumpkin seeds and reheat some frozen lasagna, and that’s it. No need for flour.

I don’t have eggs.

Bread is an on and off thing for me. I don’t eat sandwiches on a regular basis, so I only buy it when I’ll be in the mood for toast or bread as a snack.

35

Artificial sweetener. And I really felt bad about it when we had a group that included some diabetics over for breakfast, and I couldn’t offer any for their coffee. I don’t drink coffee, my husband drinks his coffee black and we don’t entertain much.

36

I have creative but not administrative control over the kitchen. It pains me. We’re lucky to have eggs, milk and bread all together at the same time. For some reason no one in the house will store flour properly (in a ZipLoc bag in the freezer is SO not proper!)

I come from the pasta, rice, beans, spices (my spicerack here is empty, and everytime I buy new they disappear) coffee, tea, granulated and confectioner’s sugar, dried milk, canned evaporated milk, cocoa, etc., etc., etc. on hand at all times kind of family.

Ah, to have my own house!

37

No bread or pasta. Once in a while we have whole wheat pitas but no one likes bread or pasta, really.

No red meat.

No sphagetti sauce.

No junk food whatsoever. My parents have been health food nazis since the 80s.

Our peanut butter is about 5 years old now but my parents insist on holding on to it.

Only a very little bit of coffee my father brought back from India…we’re mostly tea drinkers.

No filleted fish…my parents go to Chinatown and pick them out of tanks. Yikes!

38

No milk – neither of us drinks it. We have eggs, but they’re kinda old, I’m going to get new ones the next time I’m at the store.

Not exactly a staple, but a common item nonetheless – no mayo! Iiiick!

39

I’m pretty sure the oil in it went rancid about 4 1/2 years ago! You might as well chuck it without even opening up the lid to smell it, because peanut butter with rancid oil smells… well, you don’t wanna know!

40

The only regular in my fridge is milk. Nothing else - that’s enough for tea in the morning. Anything I want to eat, I buy during the day.