When we first joined our CSA we were often perplexed by the items that showed up in our weekly produce pickup. What does one do with 5 pounds of swiss chard, we asked ourselves, and what is a kohlrabi? A quick internet search would turn up a recipe that, while delicious, required us to go to the store and pick up more ingredients. We would then use half of said ingredients and, since we had no idea what to do with this stuff otherwise, it would either get tossed or go into the cabinet-that-time-forgot.
Eventually we learned to combine seasonal produce with a set stock of basic ingredients to form an almost-infinite variety of recipes. Having a pantry of basic ingredients means that you can buy rhubarb to make muffins without having to look up a recipe and go to the store to buy extra ingredients. It also means you can save money by stocking up on pantry items when there are sales. Having a well-stcoked pantry in our proverbial back pocket means we can cope with the oddball vegetables much more easily. (Except kohlrabi, which still has us mystified.) In the last installment of the How-to-Eat-Local series I talked about meal planning and recipe formulation, this time we’ll be talking about setting up a pantry of go-to ingredients to round out those recipes.
First, get organized. Get your pantry off to a good start by investing in good storage containers. We recently upgraded from quart-size plastic yogurt containers to quart-size mason jars for storing most of our pantry ingredients. Now we can see each item and easily find what we want without having to read labels. (In all fairness, when we started I couldn’t tell brown rice from green lentils so the labels were probably necessary anyway.)
Labeling each container with a super-fancy pen-on-masking-tape label is helpful for identifying ingredients that you can’t tell apart on sight (couscous vs. bulgar, for example). You can also save yourself some time down the road by writing cooking instructions on the label. (No matter how many times I cook rice, just rice, I still can’t remember how much water, for how long, etc.)
Second, what to stock? Deciding what to stock in your pantry may be tricky at first. It took us years to settle on a list of items to keep stocked at all times. One way to tackle this to to start cooking with whole ingredients. When you find a recipe that you love, especially one that can be adapted to seasonal produce, keep the basic ingredients on hand. Over time you’ll start to see a pattern in what you use.
Another way to tackle this is to see what ingredients are available in bulk at your food co-op or natural food store which brings us to…
Third, keep it cheap. To save money, find a food co-op or a natural food store that sells items in bulk. Buying in bulk is almost always cheaper than buying the same thing packaged in a pretty box or bag. Some stores will even let you bring your own container to fill so you save one more plastic bag from a landfill. Once you’ve settled on a list of items to keep on hand, you can save some serious cash by restocking your pantry when your bulk supplier has a sale.
Once you’ve settled on the items that you want to keep on hand, shopping will be a breeze. Just check which containers are empty or which items are missing. We keep a list inside the cabinet that serves as our main pantry so it’s easy to track what we need to buy. I have aspirations of one day making a whiteboard with each item written in permanent marker. When you run out or run low, just cross it off with a whiteboard marker. One day, one day.
Fourth, right but what do you keep on hand. Alright, here’s what’s on our current list:
Grains: rolled oats, steel cut oats, quinoa, short brown rice, long brown rice, arborio rice, bulgar, couscous, popcorn, and pasta
Legumes: black beans, navy beans, black eyes peas, red beans, kidney beans, lentils, and split peas
Baking: Whole wheat flour, white all-purpose flour, whole wheat pastry flour, sugar, brown sugar (we make it ourselves with sugar and molasses), baking soda, baking powder, yeast, cocoa, salt, and cornmeal
Other dry goods: raisins, cranberries, walnuts, chocolate chips, honey, molasses, and vegetable bouillon
Wet items: white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, vegetable oil, lemon juice, bourbon, milk, and butter
I just picked up this book from the library. How appropriate given my recent post about pantry stocking. I haven’t quite finished the book but so far I’m really liking it.
We spent this past weekend brewing up our first batch of beer for the year along with friends. We went with an all-grain recipe of Matt’s making, Prairie Dog Pale ale, named after our own prairie dog Zeus. It’s a 60-minute (-esque) Rye-PA that promises to be delicious.
We are frequently accused of being hippies. (And, yes, I mean ‘accused’.) Somehow the label never feels quite right. Now, I’m the first to admit that I have hippie leanings – my High School nickname was Ringo for a reason, after all – but the image that is conjured by “hippie”, especially the “dirty tree-hugging hippie” our accusers usually have in mind, just doesn’t seem to fit. For starters we bathe on a regular (usually daily) basis so we’re not exactly a “dirty hippies”. We also belong to a fairly conservative Christian church so no goddesses or Earth Mothers for us. Or free love. Or illegal drugs. And although we do care about the environment and protecting resources, most of our “conservation” efforts are equally motivated by thrift. (It just so happens that being an unabashed cheapskate is also good for the environment.)