The kitchen pantry, that store of food stuffs off the kitchen, from which delicious meals are made, or if you are like many who have forgotten the value and ability to cook real meals, where the sad collection of kitchen gadgets crouches , covered in dust and slowly mouldering.
There are very few people who use their pantries correctly, some doing a half job, getting mediocre results, and some ignoring its value all together. Noting ventured, nothing gained.
No doubt there will be plenty of people to disagree with me, but I believe I know how a kitchen pantry should work, and it isn’t rocket science.
The kitchen pantry is a place for a small store of food, perhaps three weeks worth. Perhaps less.
It is kept close to or in the kitchen, to allow the person cooking easy access to the ingredients with which they wish to make their meals.
As the pantry runs low, it is refilled from the main food stores, the root cellar, etc.
These stores should contain enough to ensure food for at least a year, although longer is prudent. There is often two or three areas within this storage, to account for different optimum storage conditions.
As the main food stores (sometimes called “deep stores”) are used, they are refilled by buying in food to replace that used, or from the garden.
The magic with this arrangement is that it makes the cost of living go down overall.
How can having a long term store of food make the cost of living go down?
Simply put, by having more food stored waiting, you don’t have to buy food every week; you can instead shop the specials almost exclusively.
Now of course, this doesn’t work if you let your food storage dwindle to nearly nothing before you go shopping ( an act that makes things far, far more expensive than they need to be), but with surprisingly little discipline and a touch of determination, this can make your budget stretch much further than you would think.
The deep storage can also give you a better idea over all, of your family’s annual food intake, something that proves very useful in planning your financial state, and for addressing minor health issues before they become much more major.
How do I set up such a store?
If you are lucky enough to live in an older house, there may be a room that was designed especially for this, if so, you just have to identify it, clean it out and put the shelving, that invariably someone “kindly” removed, back in. Then add food, and you are done.
For the rest of us, there’s slightly more thinking involved.
Firstly you need to find a room that you can clear out, that doesn’t get too hot in summer, or dip below freezing in winter. This can be a shed or garage; both are fine, as long as they can be closed securely and locked.
If the room has a window, put foil over the window to reflect heat back outside, or get some form of blinds. You don’t want your neighbours eyeing your stash (some get judgemental, some get jealous and some just get covetous. You don’t want to have to deal with that).
Clean the room out well; this is your best opportunity to get all the muck you can out. Take it. Trust me you will regret skimping on this step.
If the room is on a raised foundation, get someone to eyeball the joists and foundation. Food is heavy and you don’t really want to deal with broken foundations or fallen through floors.
Unless the previous step indicates that the room is a no-go for this venture, Lay some heavy plywood down, as an over floor. This does two things, one it protects the real floor from the legs of the shelving that you are going to put in shortly, and two it helps spread the weight out over more of the floor. Spreading the weight out, means that less strain has to go though any given structural member, thus reducing the potential for damage even further.
You might like to seal the surface of your plywood. A couple of coats of varnish will do for this, as this isn’t a show room. This step is ultimately a just in case step. It makes cleaning up any spills easier. You will want to keep this room as clean as you can from here in out.
Shelving! It is time to add shelving. If you can get it, shelving units with a slight slope on the shelves helps, as it will make it easier to use your food in the order that they were stocked in.
For humidity loving foods, have closed containers in which you can put them, to keep them away from the general storage condition. Plastic rubbish bins work well; just make sure they are well cleaned first.
A small table can be a welcome addition for repackaging bulk foods.
Add food. To start with, this is most easily done slowly, however make sure while you are doing this that you are adding more than you are taking out each week.
Start cooking real meals, more cheaply than buying them. You will notice a definite improvement in the health of your family, and your wallet.
Tips:
- Cleanliness: It is critically important to keep this room clean. Clean up any spills immediately. You don’t want vermin moving in for a free feed.
- Use FIFO Ordering: That means using the oldest of whatever food you are pulling for your main pantry. Common sense does apply, if it was packaged badly and has gone off, dispose of it. Consider re-packaging those units that haven’t gone bad. But use the oldest good of any product.
- Consider repackaging foods that come in cardboard or flimsy plastic. Rodents can chew through these, and even moths can get into places that you’d swear they couldn’t. You want thick durable plastic or glass.
