A well stocked pantry is crucial to keeping food costs under control, since instead of shopping for your menu plan, you shop to refill your pantry, and you can keep a stock of basic supplies on hand at all times (in whatever quantities appropriate for you). Most of what I’ll share below doesn’t need refrigeration, but I what I call my pantry includes staples in my fridge or freezer. Everyone will stock different things, depending on their tastes, but I said a while ago I’d post a list of what we like to keep our pantry stocked with, so here you go!
Flours – whole wheat, rye (I use this for sourdough starter), white, coarse cornmeal, fine cornmeal, teff (currently trying it out, but don’t know if I’ll replace it when we finish it), tapioca flour; nut flours – almond, walnut, hazelnut, pecan
Sweeteners – sucanat, honey, agave nectar, white sugar/brown sugar and powdered sugar (for baking for others)
Fats – coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, cold pressed vegetable oils, butter
Nuts – peanuts, cashews, walnuts, sunflower seeds, whatever else is on sale when I shop; dried fruit – usually raisins
Misc. -yeast, arrowroot flour, cornstarch, potato starch, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla, vinegars – Bragg’s apple cider vingear (acv), regular acv, white vinegar, wine vinegar, dried unsweetened coconut
Spices – salt (regular, sea salt, celtic coarse, Real salt, kosher, and canning), Bragg’s amino acids, tamari/soy sauce, large variety of other spices – important to adding variety to food, especially ‘boring’ foods like beans and grains, miso
Grains:
- rolled oats, steel cut oats, quick oats, whole oats (for grinding into oat flour)
- hard white wheat (for grinding into whole wheat flour)
- popcorn, yellow corn (which I hardly use and has been around a while – won’t get this again)
- buckwheat
- millet
- brown rice (white rice stays for storage purposes a lot longer but nutritionally it’s valueless so I don’t bother with it)
- quinoa and amaranth (not always, but when I can)
- barley
- flax seeds
- sesame seeds
Beans:
- kidney, red, pinto, black, large and baby limas, Northern, navy, black-eyed peas, pink, chickpeas, misc.
- brown lentils, green split peas, yellow split peas
Canned goods:
- tomatoes (diced, sauce, paste, whole)
- peas
- corn
- green beans
- pumpkin
- tuna, sardines, gefilte fish, salmon
- fruit – pineapple, mandarin oranges, cranberry sauce; home dehydrated fruit
- evaporated milk
- home canned foods – chili, meat sauce, beef stew, beef chunks, turkey, broth, fruits, beans
Eggs, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, hard cheese
Peanut butter, jelly, jams (homemade), pectin
Tea bags – mostly herbal, small amount of regular black – very low right now, bulk herbs for tea mixes
Miso, mustard, mayonnaise
As far as fruits and veggies that aren’t preserved, I’ve written before about keeping those items in a cool area of the house: potatoes, yams, onions, garlic, ginger, carrots, beets, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, cabbage. We try to have at least the first few on that list on hand all the time, the others get added in when I do vegetable shopping and last until they run out. I don’t rush to restock those. Frozen vegetables usually include peas, corn, limas, green beans, and carrots. As far as fruit, we get whatever is on sale and seasonal at that time: what keeps well out of the fridge are apples, pears, and citrus (oranges, grapefruits). We also usually get a lot of bananas when they’re cheap.
What I have on hand will change depending on what the sales are, but these are the basics off the top of my head (yes, I could get up and look but then I’d end up cleaning my kitchen instead of coming back here to finish this post!). I shop according to price, so if potatoes suddenly became very pricey, I’d get a lot less of that and a lot more of something else.
Avivah
