30 Days to better Preparedness. Day 7. The Pantry.

 When I first started stocking up I filled my cupboards and a little wine cellar that we had in our house at that time.  To do it I gave up my weekly coffee and cake which was around $8.   I then used that money to stock up the best I could buying half price specials, which doubled my money,

This gave me an enormous amount of supplies after a year!  I did buy long lasting, useful things that we use.  But eventually I knew I now needed a plan to rotate this all into regular use.

I began to group things and figure out how much I had and what I needed to do next.  (Early days!)

In the kitchen pantry my cupboard was full and I felt pretty happy with the food I had on hand until I cleaned it all out and decided to remove all non food items.  I had a few appliances and odd things in there.  After doing this and organising it suddenly I realised I have much less food than I thought!   

Now is the time to review how much food you actually have on hand and if you actually have the things you need.   Pretend you could not leave the house for two weeks or bring food in.   We have our emergency meals in the freezer.   Lets forget about them and focus on living out of our pantry.

It is reasonably simple to work out how much you need to store of each item.   Cath has excellent videos on these subjects over at The Cheapskates Club like this one here How much do you need?   There is a whole series on good pantry building advice.   

Depending on where you are with your supplies set a target.  I began with a goal of needing to buy nothing for one month.   So we use 3 litres of milk a week.  If my goal was one months supply then I need to store 3 litres x 4 weeks = 12 cartons.   If you start with the top basics in your house and know you have those then you can add items that are more supplementary like spices, sauces etc. 

Think of the basics you need very day and make sure you have those.  

Next work out meals you can make from just stored goods.   If you have a garden you can include the ingredients you can pick.  If you have other sources you can include those like I can include eggs.  But if you only have a pantry then stick with what is in there.   We want to be able to make actual meals.

Make a list of meals you can make from what you have.   You may find there are certain things you could make if only you had one more ingredient!   Write that ingredient on your shopping list and add this meal to the meals you can make.

An example for me is I can make Tuna Mornay entirely from the pantry and it is delicious.   I would use one long life milk,  one scoop of my homemade chicken soup mix (one packet of dry chicken noodles soup is the same) one tin of corn, one tin of tuna.   So I have a meal.  I can fancy that up as my freezer container cheese and my pantry has breadcrumbs if I want to make a topping as well.

I keep a lot of pasta and gluten free pasta, jars of pasta sauce etc.   Because I have herbs in the garden and various veggies I know I can come up with different meals based on these ingredients.    I keep long life cream so I could do a creamy version.  I have eggs so I could make a Carbonara.  

I do consider other areas like laundry part of our pantry but today lets just consider our food pantry and try and honestly asses our ability to live on what we have stored. 

I hope this exercise gives you a list of meals you can make,  ideas of what you need to add and an indication of how many weeks you would be ok for the basics you use every day. 

Don't get overwhelmed.  Set a small target like two weeks if you are just starting out.  Have enough of each of your basics for two weeks.   If you are more stocked up then make longer periods your goal. 

Aussie ladies please be ready for the truckies strike.  

My opportunity was to use my day to make some fruit cakes.

Stored in an air tight tin these keep at least 12 months.   You can find the recipe here.   Two of these will be Christmas gifts.

Also I added wind protection to some of my new fruit trees.   I just try to make some progress in the garden each day.  

How are your pantry supplies?   What are some meals you make from what is on hand?  Do you have any suggestions for wonderful ingredients that make a basic meal really good?   

This is probably too much work for one day but make a start and write down a shopping list and a plan!  xxx