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Thread: What's in your pantry?

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    What's in your pantry?

    I'm building a pantry - not the physical holder of foods, but the actual food in it.

    Just before the pandemic started I was baking our own bread. But after March, >poof< I could no longer get flour; I was buying it on an as needed basis. Luckily we could still get bread from the store. But, man, two years ago things were weird!

    But since then, I've given a lot of thought to building a store of food to last six months or so. I had some discussions with my mom, because I remember her canning a lot. And I remember her canning a lot because we kids were drafted into the prep. I remember peeling carrots, chopping green beans into 1-1/2" pieces, etc. So, I asked her - why did you do that? I thought for sure I was going to get a reason like "food security" or we were gathering in the harvest to last through the winter months. But what she said instead shocked me. (remember this was two years ago) She said that inflation was so bad in the 70s that every time she went to the grocery store prices were higher and higher, so she turned to canning to alleviate that issue.

    I didn't think anything about inflation until this year. And frankly, after my last grocery shopping trip I noticed a lot of things have almost doubled in price. At my local ALDI's I was getting butter for 2.99 - it's now 3.58; eggs were 1.27 doz, now 2.07, and all the produce is up. Some things didn't go up yet like sugar, flour, canned soups, coffee. So, I bought a flat of canned beans, a little extra coffee, and a few bags of rice (which was also up in price).

    I'm not doing this out of fear, but out of prudence and being a wise steward. Since 2 years ago I've had some leeway in my grocery budget for building a pantry storehouse, and I've done quite a bit.

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    One thing I've started doing again is baking sourdough (fermented rise) bread. This is a new thing for me as I've always made yeasted bread.

    I figured out that basically, about one pound of flour makes about one smallish loaf of bread. DH and I go through one loaf a week. So I did some looking online for great deals on flour and found a 50 pound bag for about 0.11 an ounce. I bit the bullet and bought it. I dry canned the flour into half gallon canning jars and now have flour to make approximately 45 loaves of bread.

    Dry canning: holding the temp of the contents in jars sans lids, at just over 200F for 90 minutes. Take out of the oven, pop the boiled and still hot canning lid on and fingertighten the ring to the jar. This kills any critters that may in your flour.

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    Funny that you brought this up, H.F.

    I was just thinking this morning that I should "stock up" on Flour and Sugar - While I've never made bread from scratch, I'm sure there are tons of YouTube videos that can show me how.

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    We spent some time up at our cabin this past weekend. We went to an Amish store that I've been meaning visit. They have herbs and spices - good quality - for so little $$. I saw mustard seed - 10X more for the same price I bought a little jar of McCormicks. I did buy some thyme - a 1/4 pint (volume size) for under $2.00. SCORE!!!!!! I'll be planning to buy more spices and herbs from this store in the future.

    I also found canning lids! Hallelujah!!!! I usually get them from Menards but they don't always have them in stock. And I admit, I have carefully reused some of my old lids.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Romans828 View Post
    Funny that you brought this up, H.F.

    I was just thinking this morning that I should "stock up" on Flour and Sugar - While I've never made bread from scratch, I'm sure there are tons of YouTube videos that can show me how.
    You can a) buy and freeze yeast - and it will still be good. Or you can b) make a sourdough starter and make bread without yeast.

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    Sharing a part of my pantry. I'm still getting this organized, especially to layer in the canned goods so they don't topple over.

    What's in your pantry?-image0-3-jpg

    and for the life of me, even though the picture is the right way on my computer, it's sideways here.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Highly Favoured View Post
    Sharing a part of my pantry. I'm still getting this organized, especially to layer in the canned goods so they don't topple over.

    What's in your pantry?-image0-3-jpg

    and for the life of me, even though the picture is the right way on my computer, it's sideways here.
    It's showing that way to everybody, I'd guess.

  12. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Highly Favoured View Post
    Sharing a part of my pantry. I'm still getting this organized, especially to layer in the canned goods so they don't topple over.

    What's in your pantry?-image0-3-jpg
    I've always tried to keep it at least a month's worth of basic food in my pantry, things like noodles, pasta, rice and canned veggies, beans and meats. Of course there's some sweets like cookies, extra dog food and can't forget to keep an adequate supply of bottled water also.

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    Quote Originally Posted by krystian View Post
    I've always tried to keep it at least a month's worth of basic food in my pantry, things like noodles, pasta, rice and canned veggies, beans and meats. Of course there's some sweets like cookies, extra dog food and can't forget to keep an adequate supply of bottled water also.
    Absolutely smart to keep food for our pets. I'm working on that, too. During the pandemic, I couldn't get my cats' food which they loved and would eat with no issue, and I had to change them over. They aren't that finnicky, but being old, and needing specialized food, has made me aware that there could be issues for them as well.

    I am working on what I call a crisis box. This is the box of stuff for when your mental energy is tasked, you feel overwhelmed, or whatever. So I asked Scott, when you don't feel well, what are the foods you really want to eat. He said: chips and macaroni and cheese. For me, it would be chocolate, crackers, hard candy, instant puddings and hot chocolate in the winter. Other people might have soda and popcorn.

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    I picked up an extra bag of Flour, but there was not one bag of Sugar to be found at Kroger this morning!

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