Planning a From-Scratch Pantry

By which I mean a pantry stocked (to whatever extent) with food you can use to make homemade meals, snacks, and deserts. I’ll also discuss planning what you need to can and dry for your pantry.

Getting Started

• Track current usage
  What are you eating? Is it from scratch? If not, do you have a recipe? What ingredients do you need?
  

• Frequently made recipes
  What do you like to eat? You should keep ingredients for a batch or two of family favorites in the pantry. I'd keep enough for 2 of each meal, in case you don't get to the store to restock before you want it again.
  
  
• Create a sample one-month menu/ grocery list.
  
  Example: pet supplies. I know we need about 18lbs cat food, 2 14-lb bags of litter, and about 4 bags of treats. I can get everything in one trip – and since it’s to the large pet store, that makes it a time-saver as well. This will last two months (sometimes more) for our two cats.
  
  Example: Vegetables. During winter, I like to serve a can of veggies with dinner. So, 5 nights x 14oz cans = (5 nights x 30 weeks) in pints (16oz each) = 150 pints of assorted veggies, add 10% for extra coverage - 145. I’ll take that and round it off so that I run full batches of 8 pints – so, 144 pints of assorted vegetables is what I’ll need, if I can everything myself. Note that this doesn't allow for fresh veggies, which is always preferred. I'm still learning how to estimate what we need, so the first few times/years it will be a learning process.
  
  Example: I’ve had to change from getting groceries weekly, to monthly. I knew the change was coming and kept track of what we use each week, and used that to estimate what we’ll need for the month. I mentioned the cat supplies and veggies above; I also know that I like serve meals in a pattern – two nights are leftovers, one night based on beef, one night meatless, three or four nights based on chicken. Times that by four and I know what to buy for the month. When sales come I do make exceptions and stock up as much as our small freezer will let me.
  
  
• Expand the list to cover 12 months, allowing for seasonal variations - lighter foods in summer's heat, more soups and savory meals to fight back winter's cold.
  
  
• Make your own convenience foods.
  
  Example: I cook much more chili in the winter. I have other recipes I only make in winter, or fall, because they suit the weather. Chili is easy to make; a few rounds of 7 quarts each should be plenty for the winter. I like chili-mac for lunches sometimes, so I may also can some half-pints for that. This is also something where I can make a canner full, and then make more when that runs out.
  
  Example: Healthy quick meals can be prepped by making and canning soups, chilis, and meatballs. Home-canned meat can be used as a basis for quick meals, and increase your use of local pastured beef – for me, this is seasonal, with spring being the hardest time to get any. Also, if your freezer is full you could can the sale meats.
  

Drying Foods

• Benefits: Food dried in season retains nutrients and flavor throughout the winter, and takes up a fraction of the storage space. This is especially nice when you have limited storage space. Some foods also take less of your time to store this way.
  
  Example:Tomatoes and greens can be rinsed, patted dry, and sliced quickly before placing in the dehydrator. Then, you just take out the dried food when it's ready.
  
  
• Soups (as well as other recipes) can be made ahead in dried form, rehydrated & cooked. I have at least two recipes I’m going to try –I will dehydrate all ingredients, package them together, and see how they come out after simply putting the dry mix in the slow-cooker with water or broth. If it works (I believe it will), I‘ll have wonderful, homemade, dinners for the times I forget to thaw food or plan ahead. Those are the days where I’m drinking my coffee before work and go “Eek! What are we eating tonight?” Dump things in slow cooker, add broth or water, turn on. Come home, stir well, serve. That sounds nice, yes? You can also look for "Gift in a Jar" or "Dinner in a Jar" type recipes, and use these the same way.
  
  
• Unique candies – candied and dried fruits & fruit leathers. We made candied watermelon rinds one summer. Delicious!
  

Independance Day Week 10

1. Plant something – nothing yet.

2. Harvest something – Nothing.

3. Preserve something – Dried watermelon chunks, saving rinds. Bought strawberries on sale; made strawberry jam. Dried fresh basil from farmers market.

4. Reduce waste – Regular recycling and eating of leftovers.

5. Preparation and Storage – nothing.

6. Build Community Food Systems – Farmers market.

7. Eat the Food – Steamed squash for dinner, sliced cucumbers are now a staple snack. Watermelon. Lots of sliced tomatoes. Ate some of the stew I had canned - delicious! Note to self, 1 qt stew feeds two people.

8. Crafting – Crocheting socks. Lots of crochet. Starting to work through sewing pile. Doing bit-at-a-time restorations of the treadle base the Sphinx is in.

Watermelons galore...

I've been seized by a compulsion to buy fresh watermelon every week. Despite the fact that we don't finish it that fast!

So, what can I do with all that melon?

I can make Watermelon Juice.

I can make dried Watermelon - remember Jolly Ranchers? They taste like that - Yum! Also, I'm using the rinds to make Candied Watermelon Rinds. (I can't find that recipe online: I got it from Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook.)

What can't be used for those is cubed and snacked on.

I can also make Watermelon Jelly - I just found this, and haven't tried it yet; the recipe is towards the bottom of the page.

Watermelons are a good source of:

1. Potassium
2. Lycopene
   
3. Vitamins A, B6, and C

I'm off to dice another watermelon :)

Scents of Basil

Basil - sweet, lemon, and purple - perfumed the air as I returned with my haul: Cucumbers, zucchini, more squash, an onion, Blackberry Butter for yogurt and sandwiches, hand-milled whole wheat bread (in the center), hodgepodge mini-tomatoes to delight my salads for the week. And of course, watermelons off to the side...

Pantry Planning

I tend to cook from the pantry. As part of eating locally, and eating homemade food, I'm attempting to plan for several months worth of food stored - aiming to be able to store what we need between harvests. Jellies, preserves, soups and other convenience meals, meat stock; lots of tomatoes, veggies, and meats. I looked at how we eat, and wrote up a basic plan for canning.

Then I looked at the available storage. I set aside the previous plan as ‘goals for another year’ and started over – we simply don’t have the space. I am glad I did all that planning, as it gives me a basis for the scaled-back plans. The new focus will be homemade convenience foods – instant-ready or dried ingredients (canned chicken is ready much faster than frozen!), pre-made dinners (the beef stew, for example), and a couple small items I like to have and can’t always find. For example, I really like my mushroom stew but I’m the only one who eats it. By canning some in 8-oz jars, I’ll have single-size servings when I want some. Items like the canned chicken can be refreshed when our stocks are low, and the store has a sale. That will save us space as well as money.

Even this may stretch our small pantry space, but I can handle the new plans better (35 quarts, a dozen pints, & the jellies) than the old ones (49 quarts and 150 or so pints, plus jellies).

For veggies, I will be using my knowledge of what’s in season (or could be kept in a root cellar), along with what’s available to purchase. The goal is to cook seasonally as much as possible, rather than using store-canned or shipped-in (out of season) food all the time.

For both plans, the number of jars is determined by what we'll eat, compared with what fits in the canner. If we're going to use a 28-oz can of diced tomatoes every week (not unusual during the winter), then we'll need 1 quart (about 24oz) per week. For eight months x 4 weeks = 32 quarts. The canner will hold 7 quarts, so 32 divided by 7= 4 (28) to 5 (35) canner loads. I'd rather make more that I expect to need, and if the canner is running anyway it may as well be full. So I'd plan for 35 quarts.

I'll discuss drying foods in another post.

New canning plan:
canned chicken, 7 quarts, refresh as needed
jellies, 8oz jars, aiming for 24 or so of mixed varieties
beef soup, 7 quarts, can be varied with additions when served
broths, chicken/beef/bison, about 8 pints each
mushroom soup – 1 batch of 8 oz jars
spaghetti sauce, 6ea. 8oz jars
seasoned diced tomatoes, 6ea. 8oz jars
7 quarts meatballs in sauce
Canned kidney beans, 7 quarts, refresh as needed
Canned blackeye peas, 7 quarts, refresh as needed
Preserves, pints, about 4 each strawberry, raspberry, blackberry

Strawberrys galore

*Tink* *tink* *tink*

The sounds of a job well done, as the cans cool on the table.

Over the holiday weekend, I canned 12 8oz jars of Strawberry Jelly, 6 8oz jars of Strawberry Topping, and 4 pint jars of Strawberry Preserves. There is also about 6 cups of sliced frozen berries for smoothies, and we still had some for shortcakes. For the Jelly, 14.5 cups crushed strawberries made enough juice for 3 batches of jelly. I have no idea how many I started with, other than 2 large trays (maybe 18 of those clamshells at the store?).

I've learned that water-bath canning isn't quite as hard as it seems, and that regular pectin takes a LOT of sugar to set the jellies.I've also discovered things ~not~ to do. Like, say, add the sugar with the pectin instead of later: It keeps the jelly from setting. So, I now have 6 jars of Strawberry Topping (aka, liquid Strawberry Jelly). Two are going to my grandparents - Grandpa will enjoy them!


Jam, jelly, preserves- Jam is crushed berries, Jelly is berry juice, and Preserves are whole berries in their own juice. The Strawberry Preserves have me thinking of Shortcake in January, the Raspberry Preserves of chocolate-raspberry cake :) Either could also be used for pancake topping. I try and think of what I can do with them as I make them - no point in canning something we won't use, and this will (hopefully) avoid blank moments when I'm looking for things to make!