Nothing is as essential to being self-sufficient as food production and storage of food. Today I’m going to touch on some ideas for stocking the basic must have pantry. My goal in my pantry stocking is to have enough of the staples put up so that in the case of emergency I am set at least for a few months…or if my older boys all descend at once I have plenty of food at least for a week or two!
When I designed our house 15 years ago our boys 4, 6, and 8 and I knew that in the teenage years I would need some major food storage capacity. My pantry is good size but you don’t need a designated room for food storage. For many garden vegetables a cool garage is great. Spare bedrooms, hall closets, many different places can be use for food.
I think food storage is a matter of priorities. I have heard from many people that they just don’t have the room for keeping extra food. Yet their closets are overflowing with never worn clothing, or cabinets full of appliances they seldom if ever use. I don’t have a problem with these things but I would not give up perfectly good storage to keep them when I could keep an extra bag of wheat in there.
When I started our pantry from scratch I took the time to keep a journal for a couple of months of what we ate. I did not want to purchase a lot of things that I would seldom use. I came up with a basic list of ‘must haves’ at all times from that journal and then fleshed the pantry out from there when I added new recipes and needed new ingredients.
Here is my list of staples. With this I know that now matter what happens I will have something for dinner or in case of prolonged power outage or outbreak of sickness I know we will not go hungry.
Home Canned…
- Canned tomatoes, sauce, and paste (soup base, base for most pasta sauce)
- Jams and Jellies
- Fruit Sauces, apricot, peach, and apple
- Fruit Syrups (we eat a lot of pancakes and waffles)
- Vegetable Stock
Bulk Grains (purchased in 25# and 50#)
- Wheat (both white and red for fresh whole wheat flour)
- Oat Groats (for grinding into flour)
- Barley
- Rolled Oats (cookies, oatmeal, crisps, bread)
- Cracked Wheat (breads)
- Spelt (flour for bread)
- Quinoa (cereal and bread)
- Rye
- Corn (for cornmeal)
- Brown Rice
Oils
- Olive Oil (breads and cooking)
- Canola Oil (breads)
- Sesame Oil (Asian/Indian cooking)
Baking Supplies
- Baking powder
- Baking soda
- Yeast
- Salt
- Molasses
- Sugar
- Brown Sugar
- Egg Replacer
- Vanilla
- Spices especially cinnamon
Dried Beans and Nuts
- Lentils
- Yellow and green split peas
- Navy
- Small white
- Black
- Garbanzo
- Kidney
- Walnuts (snacking, breads, trail mix)
- Almonds (snacking, trail mix)
- Cashews (cashew milk, trail mix)
- Peanuts (trail mix)
Misc.
- Raisins (granola, pie, cinnamon rolls, bread, trail mix)
- Canned Pineapple (smoothies and pizza)
- Coconut Milk (smoothies and chilled pumpkin soup)
- Rice Milk
- Wild Rice
- Tea (mama needs her tea)
- Honey (baking, granola, tea)
- Popcorn
- Nutritional yeast (vegan sauces, popcorn, toast)
- Mustard (beans, salads, sandwiches)
- Shredded coconut (breads and granola)
- Dried cranberries (trail mix, granola, snacks)
- Various dried whole wheat pastas
- Cocoa Powder
- Balsamic Vinegar (dressings and flavorings)
- Peanut Butter
- Cornstarch (thickener)
Frozen
- Peas, corn, green beans, pureed pumpkin and squash, spinach
- Freezer jams
- Ice Cream (husband’s indulgence)
- Roasted Peppers (breads and pizza)
Water
- Enough for each person to drink and cook with for 1 month (this takes some planning and some room)
This looks like a long list but for us these are the things, along with fresh vegetables and fruits, are what I have come to know are the basics for what I cook. With the exception of my bulk grains most don’t take up much room even when purchased in larger than usual quantities. I also try to store in glass as much as possible. It is easy to clean and doesn’t leach chemicals over long storage periods…not that I’m sure that Tupperware does but just in case.
A few tips for getting started stocking you pantry…
- Buy in quantity when you find a good sale.
- Look at the dates when possible and buy the freshest.
- Don’t buy more than you can reasonably use before its past its prime.
- Make sure you have a spot to properly store (example cool dry dark for grains)
- Don’t over buy if that means kicking spouse out of bed to use it for storage! Moderation in everything…
- Rotate your pantry…put the items you just bought at the back of the shelf and use the oldest first.
- Check things like flours and grains for moth or mice infestation…take care of promptly before they get into the rest. Better yet store in varmint proof containers.
- Start slow…take the time to know what you really need and use.
Remember to just smile when your friends and family tease you about being Noah stocking up for the flood…cause you know who’s doorstep they’ll be standing on when the next disaster hits!
So do you have any tips on food storage…what’s in your pantry?
Come back Monday when we can talk about how to store in glass, where to find it…and how to paint on it!
Kim can also be found at the inadvertent farmer where she raises organic fruits, veggies, critters, kids…and a camel!
Not Dabbling In Normal 
That’s a great list! Thanks Kim.
Do you freeze your grains to kill any larva before putting them into storage? I have food grade 5 gallon buckets I would love to store flours and such in, but read that one should freeze these things for a few days prior to storage. I do not have the freezer space for a 50# bag of flour, even if only for a few days.
Allison I have heard you can do this but I have been storing grains for 25 years and have never had a problem…well except for a mouse incident! I just put them directly into my storage containers…sometimes I just store them in the bags on my pantry floor until a storage container comes available.
I must admit I don’t store any flour as I grind it fresh each time.
I’ve been wanting to paint on my jars like this. I have a mish-mash of saved jars that used to contain, peanut butter, salsa, pickles, etc (all saved and given to me by friends & family).
I have a similarly stocked pantry. Mostly staples, no processed items and lots of homecanned goodies and winter squshes & potaotes.
With only 2 of us living here I often buy in bulk and share with my sister (she has a family of 6). Finishing off 50# of wheat would take us years. I only keep a few kinds of beans around at once. We eat them up and buy a different kind of bean. This limits anything going bad.
One major staple in my pantry is ghee (which I make from homemade raw milk butter). We use this instead of canola oil and other oils (except olive which we keep around). Since I make my own butter each week, this means I have a constant supply of fresh butter oil.
We don’t store water, but we have rain barrels and live near a lake. We keep a good water filter in the house (it’s a backpacking one that you can use to filter stream/lake water). this way we know that we’ll always have drinkable water without storing large quanities in the house.
We also keep some frozen raw milk in the freezer. Our farm gives us our winter allotment this way. And of course usually there’s venison and other game in the freezer.
I love the painted jars! I’m so excited about my new pantry. We moved over the summer into an old farmhouse and are doing lots of renovations. One thing my husband is building into the basement for me is a food storage room. My freezer is in there as well as lots of shelves for storing home canned goods, containers of flour, sugar and other ‘spare’ staples that I don’t keep upstairs in the kitchen. I look forward to any other tips I can get.
Our list is similar to yours…and we try not to say much to folks about it…my doorstep isn’t that big…
I never froze our whole grains either…just straight into containers for us…
Thanks for the reply. We do occasionally get pantry moths but never actually in the food so I think I will just give it a go. We go through a lot of flour, prob close to 40# or so a month here baking our own breads, etc. Lots of littles means lots of sandwiches as its easy on mama. lol
I’m starting to store food, but I have been wondering – do home-canned jars withstand freezing? We had a bad ice storm here in Kentucky last winter that knocked out our power and heat for days. If a jar of food froze, would it break the airtight seal?
Allison we’ve had moths too but only in flour. I now keep moth traps in the pantry ‘just in case’ Kim
Laura I searched the web and this is what I found on your dilemma…
“Freezing does not cause food spoilage unless the seal is damaged or the jar is broken. These often happen as the food expands during freezing. Frozen foods, however, may be less palatable than properly stored canned food. In an unheated storage place, protect canned foods by wrapping the jars in paper or covering them with a blanket.”
Just make sure on opening any jar that you feel that pull and hear the seal break or pop when you open it. Also you can go through your pantry and push down on all the lids to check for seal.
Hope that helps, Kim
Thanks Kim, I’ll keep that in mind if the power ever goes out again here. There is nothing like a nice shelf of home canned food!
If you have a water heater, it probably has 35-80 gallons of drinking water in it at all times. Just be sure you know how to get the water out of it, and that the spigot hasn’t corroded shut!
My best pantry tip is to buy a box of china markers (also known as grease pencils). They write on glass (and assorted other things) and wipe off with a scrub (but not with a quick swipe of a cloth).
Having grease pencils handy makes SURE I label things when I put them away – I’m always thinking “oh, I’ll remember what that is and when I put it away”. Yeah, right.
I have a grease pencil in a magnetic basket that sticks to the fridge in the kitchen, so when I put something in a jar, I just grab the pencil, write on the jar and/or the lid, and voila – I know what it is and what the date is!
I good hard smudge with the thumb will erase a mistake, too. 🙂