Step by Step: Start Where You Are, Part 2

  Start where you are. Use what you have.  Do what you can. ~ Arthur Ashe

Building Your Pantry

At this moment, I think I have enough foodstuffs in the house to feed us a varied diet for three to six months.  I'm slowly building my storage back up to a year's worth of foodstuffs, but I've had a few setbacks in recent years.  At one point we had enough food in the house that we could have gone nearly a year without buying more than fresh produce and dairy.   Then 2020 happened and retirement and family needs arose, and I supplied those from my own pantry and recently I've been keeping a child in my home and shopping only when it's really necessary.

So now I start again.  One of the hardest things to do is to clear your head, let go of the ideals you've seen online and on Pinterest and in vlogs and look at where you are at this moment without thinking of what you don't have to accomplish those goals.

Over the years, I've made mistakes.  I've bought foods that we never used because someone said they were a good pantry staple.  I've bought things on sale that I thought would be a good addition that weren't.   I've had to learn exactly what our pantry should look like for us.  It's been a process!  It's taken years.  It's taken experience.  Experience is a wonderful teacher!  

Do you want to build up a pantry?   

Here's a really important question: Do you have the means to build up a pantry?  Can you afford to spend from your current food budget to supply that pantry?  

The easiest way to begin a stockpile is to buy canned goods.  You can purchase fruits, vegetables, meats.  But I urge you again to buy what you normally use!

If you can only buy a can for this week and one to go into the pantry, then do it.   Watch for sales.  Watch for items with clearance stickers.  TIP: Watch those expiration dates on the cans.  If something is going to expire in a month and you typically only use one can every two weeks, then don't buy 12 cans!  Buy two or three at most.  Most canned goods are good beyond their best by date, but a few will not taste half so good after a few months or a year. 

That said I've got tomato products right now that I bought last summer on clearance that expired that same month.  I bought two cases and to date not one can has lost a bit of flavor.  There are all sorts of things to look for like bulging, rust, leaking.  If you note any of these things then don't eat it!  Here are some guidelines I've read that I think might be helpful to you. 

Food Expiration Dates: Everything to Know - The Krazy Coupon Lady

How Long Does Food Last? Guide to Shelf Life & Expiration (eatbydate.com)

Long Term Food Storage Staples That Last Forever (tasteofhome.com)

Begin by purchasing a little extra here and a little bit there and building it up SLOWLY.  Look for bargains on things you KNOW you and your family like right now and forget about all those lists of foods that everyone says you OUGHT to have because they say so.  If your family loathes collard greens, then canned collard greens are going to be useless in your pantry.  It doesn't matter one whit that they are a great source of calcium and Vitamins K, C and A, as well as a great source of Folate.  They will be utterly worthless because your family isn't going to eat them! 

So do the sensible thing.  Look at what your family is eating right now and determine which of those things translate well to a pantry.  Do they love pasta?  Stock up on pasta.  Begin with buying one or two boxes, or if you'd typically eat that in a week, buy four when it's on sale.  Do you use tomatoes?  Tomato Sauce?  Canned Green Beans?  Do they like boxed mac and cheese?  Buy four next time it's on sale.  Sales on such items tend to be cyclical and generally you'll find these items are on sale often enough that you don't quite use all you have on hand between sales.

Set a small portion of money aside specifically to be used for building your pantry.  If you have a low food budget allowance just now then consider taking just 10% and using that to buy items meant specifically for the pantry, not for eating in the week or month just ahead.  Consider this a 'savings'.    Just as you'd set money aside to pay upcoming annual fees, you're building up your pantry to see you through the days ahead.

If you have a very low budget then you must learn to make it a habit to buy one for now and one for later if you possibly can.  Obviously, you cannot buy two of every item on your grocery list, but you can look at what you normally use and double up on that one item.

As your pantry grows...What do you do then?  Do you have space to store food?

Look at the space you live in.  Do you have room in your current kitchen to add extra things?  Empty space in a cabinet can be filled space.  Start by filling empty spaces in your kitchen cabinets.  

When we moved here it wasn't a lack of space that hindered me.  I had cabinets enough to hold foods but there wasn't a pantry where I could concentrate the stockpile I was building.  One day it occurred to me that I had a section of lower cabinets on one wall that could be transformed into a space to store foods.  I took everything from that cabinet, filled it up with foods and consolidated and decluttered the stuff I'd removed into another cabinet.  

Over time, I filled that new food space up!  It was awkward.  It wasn't ideal.  I had limited shelves and the cabinets were very deep and hard to reach all the way to the back.  There was a lot of wasted space.  But it was space!  I was able to utilize the height of the cabinet by laying a sheet of cardboard over the top of cans and stacking the next lot of cans on top of that.  I learned to place items in one long deep row, from the door to the back wall.  

It wasn't ideal.  Sometimes things got lost.  But I soon learned to create a form of organization that worked for me at that time.  It was a simple enough system that Katie often volunteered to put those grocery items away for me on grocery day.  She'd sit down on the floor, and she'd stack cans and boxes in their proper area.  And that was my beginning of a pantry here.

 Do you have a blank wall?  Can you put a small bookcase on that wall?  Instant pantry.  One home I rented had a line of cabinet doors on the back door entry interior wall.  The owners had finished out the space between studs and put in shelves.  Those shelves were the exact depth of one can of food.  You could stack two cans in the width between the shelves.  It was amazing how much food those three cabinets could accommodate.

Do you have a closet with space in it?  Ideally your storage area will be in a dry, dark place.  That's why I'm suggesting cabinets and closets.  But what if you haven't got those?

Do you have an empty bin with a snap on lid? Can you put that in an out of the way place?  You can stack them one atop the other.  Just don't fill them so they are so heavy you can't lift them!

Food grade buckets with gamma lids are inexpensive enough to purchase one at a time.  I bought my buckets for $5 each at Tractor Supply.  I bought Gamma lids in a 6-pack from Amazon for less than $40.  Amazon has single lids for $12.  For less than $20 you can add one gamma bucket a month to help create your pantry. Shop around.  I know many people stress about food grade quality buckets.  Obviously, you don't want a bucket or bin that has had chemicals stored in them.  But if foods are stored in their original packaging, most will be fine stored in a plastic bucket and rotated out as you use them and bring in new.  

Those five buckets and lids we purchased were bought over a two- or three-month period.  One bucket nicely holds 25 pounds of flour or sugar.  You can stack them against a wall one atop the other.  You can put them in a broom closet.  You can slide them under a table or work bench in the kitchen.  You can put them in the laundry room.  Or behind a door, or in a coat closet.   LOOK at the space you have.  Is it being utilized?  

 Do you have a freezer?  Is it full?

Do you know, looking back, I realized that when we first married, I didn't really properly utilize the space in my little kitchen.  I could have done better.  But you know what I did maximalize?  The space inside my little refrigerator freezer.  We had seven people in the family and got paid every two weeks. I had to buy things all in one go.  When we started out, I didn't even have a deep freezer!  Yet we kept a bit more than two weeks' worth of foods frozen in that small freezer, with enough space reserved to stack a few ice trays for ice!

Meat is one of the most expensive items we will buy. I wasn't about to let it spoil!

One of the ways I saved on meat is that I have always searched out the best sales and clearance priced meats and stocked up. Always.  

I know some people feel a bit squeamish about meat that has been marked down.  Let me tell you something.  It's usually just as good as any other meat in the counter.  I did say usually...You have to use your eyes to learn to judge what color is just a matter of UV ray exposure and loss of fluid and what is actual spoilage.  You have to use your nose!  If meat is spoiled, you'll know it by how it smells.  Look at the packaging.  Is it damaged?  I don't buy packages of meat that have visible tears in the packaging.  I'm not talking about packaging that has gotten a little loose from sitting in the counter and possibly leaking.  You can ask the butcher to wrap that meat better.  

I don't know of one store that will sell meat that is legitimately spoiled.   There are stores with better meat counters than others.  Look for cleanliness.  Look for well wrapped packages.  Look for butchers willing to share with you how best to cook a cut that you're unfamiliar with, but which is being sold at a great price.  Learn which stores have consistently good meats that are marked down simply because the sale by date is pending.  And if you find once you get a package home that the food is truly spoiled, return it.  The store will often give you your money back and/or sometimes will allow you to exchange for another of the same item.

Once you get that meat home it's up to you to use it right away or freeze it.  If wrapped and stored properly it will not lose a bit of its quality.  

If freezer space is limited then understand that the flatter you can make a package of food, the more you can store in the freezer.  Unlike a refrigerator the freezer likes to be fully packed.  Yes, you do need a bit of air space for the fan to blow but the bulk of that interior can be filled up!  When I was stocking my little freezer, I reserved the bigger cuts of meat for cooking right away.  If I had a whole chicken, a ham, or a chuck roast, then I would store those in the refrigerator.  Once cooked, I'd slice the meat and then store that.  Flat packs of ground meat, slices of meats, bags of chili or spaghetti sauce or soup, were all frozen flat, one stacked atop the other.  I used the door shelves to hold containers of other items.  I removed excess packaging if at all possible and used freezer bags so that I could eliminate the space eaten up by packaging.

We eventually bought a small chest freezer and used that for nearly 20 years.  Then we passed that along to Katie and bought a larger chest freezer.  Just this year, I purchased a huge upright freezer.  We gave our larger chest freezer to Sam and Bess to use for storing their deer meat.

How much work can you put into building a pantry?   This is where you must be truly aware of how much time you have.  If you're working a full-time job and have children at home, your time is at a premium.  But with a bit of time, you can build your pantry without shopping.  How?

Does a neighbor have a fruit tree full of fruit that they aren't picking?  Ask if you might have the fruit or some of it.  And then do the kind thing and return the favor of their generosity by making them a fruit crisp, a jar of jelly and giving it to them as a thank you gift.  

Making jelly is not hard.  It takes a little bit of extra time.  You can store it in the fridge of the freezer if you don't know how to can but check out videos online.  You really don't need special equipment to put up a few jars of jelly. 

Foraging is a good way to add to the pantry.  I used to pick wild blackberries and blueberries every single year and store them in the freezer.  Mama and Granny went to pick muscadines and wild grapes.  We picked wild plums to make jelly with, too.  

If you spy a fruit tree on an abandoned piece of property do try to get permission before you take the fruits, but know this, too.  There are a lot of fruits that just grow wild and are edible.  

And consider that you can also dehydrate fruits.  

I'll mention foraging for mushrooms here as well but tell you that I have no expertise in this area.  But if you do...then go for it.

Hunting.  The original organically grown meats are often close at hand.  We have herds of deer here that roam the place and the deer population must be controlled.  It isn't 'free' exactly, as we choose to pay for processing by a legitimate butcher, but you can certainly acquire quality meat for a lower price than you'll pay at the grocery.  

You do not have to use a butcher, but we've not yet added butchery to our skillset.  Also available: duck, wild boar, turkey, rabbit, quail, dove and in some areas, elk, moose, bear.  Fishing is a great way to get 'free' protein for the table, too.  Just make sure you have the required state licenses before you go hunting or fishing.  Otherwise, you'll have to pay a fine and will be charged with breaking state law.

There's a couple of other way to stock the pantry.  

Gifts.  If someone asks what you'd like to have for a birthday or holiday gift, then suggest a gift card to a grocery and explain that you want to build up a pantry.  Or ask for a specific food. Mama has always given pecans as part of her Christmas gift to all of the family.  We have gotten a case of citrus fruit or apples from family members.  Two of our workplaces used to give us a ham and a turkey each year for the holidays.  We made good use of those items!

Windfalls.  If you have a financial windfall, a refund, or are given a cash bonus, consider using that to start/stock your pantry.  Every single year when the kids were home, we'd take a portion of the tax refund and stock up on shelf stable items for summer breakfasts and lunches for the children.  It was a huge help.  After we got the chest freezer, we would buy sandwich meats and loaves of bread to freeze.  

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