Saturday, March 26, 2011

Building a Pantry Part 2

Since I started with the basics in part 1, I figured that would a great place to start with part 2. Now I listed what I felt were basic items that would keep you alive, but by themselves don't do anything for your taste buds.

We will start with Grain:
Red and White Wheat
Rice
Corn
Oats
Rye
Millet
Quinoa
Barley
Buckwheat
There may be more grains out there but this is a good list to get you thinking in the direction of what would be a good selection to have to help offer variety.

Salt:
Table salt
Sea Salt
Pickeling salt
Salt substitutes

Milk:
Powdered
Evaporated
Sweetened condensed
Shelf stable (like the almond milk)
There are many more options for milk but these seem to be the most common for pantry use.

Oil:
Olive
Canola
Vegetable
Corn
Soybean
Safflower
Peanut
Crisco
Lard
Don't keep large quantites on hand because oil does go rancid. This is an item that you will want to rotate out of the pantry more frequently.

Beans:
Dry
Canned
Kidney
Navy
Black
White
Red
Great Northern
Lentils
Peas (even though they aren't beans I thought I should add them here)
Beans offer a great source of fiber to any diet. There is also a huge variety to choose from, I only gave a few options here.

Water (Beverages)
This can include bottled water, juice, soda, any thing liquid that you drink or cook with. I know I hate wanting something and having to run to the store for it. It is always better to have it on hand.

Now speaking of having it on hand. If you know that you eat 4 cans of beans in a month and they go on sale every other month, then you need to buy 8 cans while they are on sale. This is how you save money and start to save money. Because if you only buy 1 can on sale and the rest at full price your really not saving anything. And if your in the middle of making dinner and realize you don't have it, then you have to make an unexpected trip to the store. We all know that you never just buy the one thing you went to the store for. So more money spent. It gets to be a vicious circle.

Even if all you can get is one extra of an item to add to the pantry you are still doing a great job. It is an extra thing that you will need at a future time. And you got it at a discounted price, while you were already shopping. This is how the pantry grows. Like I said before, if you can afford to buy 100 items at a time that is wonderful, also. There have been times when one item was all I could do and there have been times when 100 things went into the cart. It all depends on what you can afford and how big you want you pantry to be.

I have a family of 5, so my pantry is bigger then say a newlywed couple but way smaller then a family of 18. Plus, it all depends on you comfort level. I like having a couple cans of whatever on the shelf. That way if the monsters want a fend for yourself night there is plenty for them to choose from.

I hope that this list has helped you to see that there is a great variety of food available to fill your pantry with. The items listed will make great food and will nourish the body, but alone I don't think they help the soul. So I will continue with the expanded list in part 3.

Gotta Run,
Yart

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