Ever pulled an item out of your pantry and discovered that it was WAY past its expiration date and you were afraid to use it? I have – and it’s not only frustrating, but it’s a total waste of money. And while stockpiling items in your pantry is great, it only works well if you’ve got a plan to actually use those items. Here’s how to build a pantry stockpile so that items don’t go to waste.
This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my full disclosure policy for details.
One of the problems with building up a good pantry stockpile is that if you’re not careful you can let items expire. However, I recently came across a cookbook that solves this problem.
How To Build A Pantry Stockpile & Actually USE It!
It’s called The 100-Day Pantry: 100 Quick and Easy Gourmet Meals by Jan Jackson. In this cookbook you’ll find recipes that are made totally from canned goods and a few dried herbs and veggies. However, if you’re like me and don’t keep dried veggies around, you can easily substitute fresh. For example, there are several recipes that call for dried celery but I’d just use fresh celery instead.
Her premise is that everyone should have a well-stocked pantry with enough ingredients to get you through a crisis. And goodness knows there have been a few lately: extreme weather making it difficult to get to the store, the pandemic when it was hard for anyone to get out, job loss, illness, new baby, you name it. Knowing you’ve got supplies on hand to feed your family even when you can’t get to the grocery store is literally edible insurance.
Her suggestion is to go through the cookbook and first try several recipes that look appealing to you. Make them, try them out on your family, and see which ones are keepers that you’d be happy repeating. And then start small and buy enough of just those ingredients to make several meals.
By doing this, you solve the problem of having lots of unrelated ingredients in your pantry with no clear plan on how to use them.
A few of the recipes that I’m going to try include:
- Asian Chicken Soup
- Chicken Capri
- Chicken Macaroni Stew
Can you tell that we eat a lot of chicken at my house?
Pick Food Your Family Actually LIKES To Eat!
The great thing with this cookbook is that if there is a particular meat your family doesn’t like you’ve still got plenty of options. For example, I have no clue where on Earth I’d ever find canned beef (probably because I haven’t looked for it) so I pretty much skimmed through all of those recipes. But I found lots of good recipes with chicken, pork, tuna, shrimp, and salmon (all canned, of course)
Here are some more things I liked about the cookbook:
- all of the recipes are super simple – in fact your kids can make a lot of them
- it’s a good way to make sure that you actually use the items you purchase instead of letting them sit on the shelf till they’re not fit to eat
- there are great tips for organizing your pantry (she has two very clear approaches you can choose from)
She also walks you through how to determine how many of each item you need to purchase depending on how many meals times you want to serve the same recipe. This is helpful for anyone who sometimes gets confused by math and numbers (hey, no judgement!)
This cookbook would be a great companion to the Food Pantry Inventory planner that I’ve created.
This book is one of a series of books on Family Preparedness.
Be Prepared While Being Smart With Your Money
Too often we buy groceries to go in a stockpile and we haven’t thought about what particular meals we would use them for. We end up purchasing odds and ends that we think we need, but that unless combined with other purchases may not be enough to create a complete meal.
In other words, just buying groceries willy-nilly with no plan may not do you any good when a real emergency arises.
And unless you’ve got a plan to actually use the items you purchase for your pantry stockpile, you’re just wasting money…and fooling yourself into thinking you’re prepared.
Be smart with your food stockpiling. Make sure you know how you’d use every item you purchase so that you’re ready in an emergency while being smart with your money.
More to help you in the kitchen:
I’m a retired educator, mom of three adult children, cancer warrior, sandwich generation member, and lover of life!
I help older women create & live a life they love through radical self acceptance, unapologetic goal pursuit, and relishing the joys of home.
56 Things To Get Rid Of That You’ll Never Miss – And 12 Places To Donate Them To