I think most of us have it. A large, unwieldy pantry full of strange cans of food we should have never purchased (but they were on sale!), bags of pasta products half-used, spices gathering and breeding in dark corners, bits of chips hanging out in bags not opened in a few weeks (or perhaps months) and half-used cereal boxes clogging up the taller shelves. Interspersed among these items is the 'real' food. Food we use and replenish on a weekly or monthly basis.
But, if you're like me, in shopping for the 'real' food, inevitably a lot of 'extra' food gets purchased and shelved, never to be used again. Much like the 10 cans of Manwich Sauce that was apparently a good buy a while ago...but we don't actually eat Manwiches. Never have, so I'm not sure why I bought them. Grocery stores can become bewildering places, especially when two crying children are involved..
I'd love to have an efficient pantry, one that would be of use in case of an emergency, but also practical for every day things. Something not too complicated and preferably neatly labeled. Less canned goods and more staples. Preferably, more free space in general. However, I lack both the time, energy and money to toss out what I currently have and replace it with better things.
So, this month, I haven't bought any new groceries except for milk, eggs and cheese. I'm forcing myself to cook with what I have, down to the last dregs of cans, even if it means Manwich Sauce over spaghetti. Everything needs to be eaten. I have a bit of meat in the freezer, 6 pork chops and a bag of chicken breasts. Additionally, I have a 5lb bag of dried pinto beans for when that source of protein runs out. I have plenty of frozen and canned vegetables and an ungodly amount of frozed hamburger and hotdog buns. While our fresh produce intake will suffer temporarily, I don't believe that it will harm us in the long run. Besides, eventually having an organized pantry plus workable (read: cookable) emergency food supply is well worth it.
Here is the current state of my pantry:
That middle shelf is mostly cleared out because I started this project July 1st, and we've already eaten our way through a bit of it, though some friends visited from California and gave me an excellent excuse to eat out instead.
So, I'll be posting updates on this. I'll also be posting what I want my emergency supply to look like, because I think it's important that everyone have at least a couple weeks of food they could get by on. I like the 3-month number because, in my opinion, if after 3 months if you still can't get food...you may want to start moving on to greener pastures. Whatever that may look like.
Additionally, this is my background. I do Continuity Planning for a large company, and love most aspects of disaster planning. I'd like to do some freelance work to help people prepare their families to make sure their lives would continue as normal as possible should something happen to their circumstances. However, I need to get all the bits and pieces I've collected along the way to help US organized, accessible, and workable in every day life.
Given that it's over 100 degrees outside today, I'm not using the oven. Rather we're having a chicken pasta salad for dinner with some tomato soup. The tomato soup is of the canned variety, and the chicken pasta is a mishmash of pantry/freezer ingredients.
- 1 chicken breast, cooked with lemon pepper and cubed (Ham, turkey, tuna, etc... whatever would have worked equally well, in my opinion)
- Handful of bowtie pasta, cooked according to directions
- 1/2 cup of mayo
- around 2 TBS of apple cider vinegar
- The remainder of a bag of slivered almonds
- Handful of cranberries
- Salt, pepper, more lemon pepper, some basil and whatever else struck my fancy.
I mixed all this up and put it in the fridge for a few hours, we'll see how good it is tonight. :)
I have milk in the fridge, so I'll make the soup according to normal, but eventually I'll use evaporated milk as well.
If anyone out there has experience with this, share some recipes!
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