Good afternoon!
Coming in late this morning as I wanted to take advantage of another beautiful day in the Ozarks. Was even getting a bit sticky in the house so I conceded to turning on the AC after breakfast. I remember when Bob would be gone for twenty-one days and I seldom turned on the AC this late in the year unless I were cleaning and the house would be too sticky. Hopefully, this will be the final week of this.
I should have posted last week but I was looking for a starting point. There is so much to consider when planning for winter. Before I continue, I'm going to leave Leisa's video on Pantry Preparedness where she talks about having one month to a winter-ready pantry. Some points for you to consider as you go through my posts. They will run for the next four Wednesdays, with the fourth one posting on October 1st.
Assessing the pantry.
The first thing you need to do is clean everything in your pantry. Check for loose seals on jars, bulging tin canned food, and bugs invading your dry goods. Dust the shelves and wipe down everything with a damp cloth. Sanitation really is a thing, folks.
My #1 TIP for dry good storage:
Never ever store dry goods in their packaging. Unless it came in a jar. I also don't recommend plastic - unless you're storing in Gamma Lid buckets. Glass jars. When properly sealed, NOTHING is getting into your food. Regardless of where you live, critters can potentially be a problem. Even the common house fly. There are some good videos on YouTube for proper storage of pastas and grains. For me, I run almost everything in those categories through my oven for dry canning/ sealing. That includes my oats. I buy a year's supply from the overstock market then spend the next few days getting them sealed into sanitized jars.
Once everything is clean, make sure to pull everything to the front of the shelf. Next, think about how much of each item you need to get your family through the winter then start your shopping list. Think about the types of meals you regularly prepare. Do you have favorites you rotate through? Shop for those first. If you can't get everything right away, that's okay. This is to give you a list of what you need to acquire preferably over the next two months, to get you through the winter. From there you can add to the shelf until you are where you want to be.
Watch for sales! This is the time to be stocking up.
When I began planning for Bob's retirement last year, I kept a close eye on sales and always slid money back when I could so I'd be ready. One week, our local small town market had pasta 10/$10, Italian sausage 2/$5 and my preference of spaghetti sauce on sale for $2.50 a jar (normally almost $4 a jar!!)
I buy a particular brand because I reuse their jars to store baking supplies that don't have to be sealed, per say. Did it crimp the budget a little bit that week, but I was more focused on what we needed, as opposed to stuff we DIDN'T need right at that moment. We had plenty of groceries in the house. We weren't going to starve.
I'll be talking about Preparing for Retirement in another series.
Now that your pantry is clean and tidy. You have a list of where you want to go. Remember, ONLY stock the foods your family will eat. Think in terms of meals. Here's an example from our pantry:
To make a batch of Chili, 1 each of the following
15 oz. can tomato sauce
14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes
28 oz. can Keystone ground beef
6 oz. can tomato paste
28 oz. can Bush's Baked Beans
30.5 oz. can Brooks Chili Mix
Everything is stacked together on the shelf so when I send Bob to the pantry for Chili fixin's, everything is stacked together. He doesn't have to hunt the pantry over and possibly coming back upstairs without something. I do the same thing for my Chicken Pot Pie
1 each of:
12.5 oz. can Chunk Chicken
15 oz. can mixed vegetables
10.5 oz. can cream of chicken soup.
I learned this method from Tiffany Spaulding - craft organizer extraordinaire. Her concept is to "Keep Things Together You Will Use Together". The system really works. Once you put your pantry in 'meal' order, you could send the seven-year-old down to grocery shop from the pantry and know they'll come back with everything you need.
That's it for this week. Next Wednesday we'll talk about other areas of your pantry. Dehydrating, Canning, Freeze Drying and additional purchases.
In the meantime,
Be safe, Be prepared, Be Blessed!
~ Kelly
