Home: April 2007 Archives

Anne from Cooking with Anne did a post on her pantry staples. Those things she wouldn't be without. Some of you might even remember the post I did on keeping my pantry stocked. I think I may have Bettina's syndrome and her idea of an emergency shelf. Any way - Anne's list is a great list. I keep most of those things on hand also. You never know when you might have last minute guests or need to make the budget stretch for another few days or a week. Here you can find my standard pantry and cupboard items that I pretty much have on hand all of the time. Open my cabinets and plunder around and you'll find all sorts of things. My make-do and make-it-last list is different. Part of me is the ingrained be preparedness of growing up with a grandmother who canned and prepared a lot of summer produce. The other part of me thinks about FEMA's emergency preparedness recommendations and takes heed. I probably wouldn't go to as great a lengths if I still lived in Georgia but with us living so close to D.C. and seeing how grocery stores empty out in bad weather I can imagine if we went into a state of emergency there would be NOTHING to be had in the stores around here. We live in the rural country side. We figure if something major happened the cities would most likely evacuate to us. We base this on the fact there is an underground shelter a few miles away that is intended to house important members of Congress and supposedly the Vice President. There may seem like a lot on my list but there are six of us here much of the time. FEMA recommends that we be ready with an emergency food and water supply just in case a disaster should occur. (Do you know you need to store 1 gallon of drinking water per person per day? For us we would need to store at least 18 gallons of potable water. That is alot of water. Nursing mothers, babies, elderly and sick people need to consume more. Plus water for other needs.) Here are things I try to keep on my shelves -just in case. I do rotate out flour, meals and the like so that it is not more than a month old. When I empty a bag I use the reserve bag then replish that with a new bag. Baking Goods -Flour -baking soda -baking powder -powdered milk/buttermilk -Crisco and/or Lard -Vanilla Extract (real vanilla, my mother brings it back when she goes on her fall cruise to the Bahamas or I buy it at Costco for a fair price in a large bottle) -Yeast (one of the small 3 pack strips) With these items I can make, biscuits, pancakes, waffles, muffins or any number of quick breads that do not require yeast. Pancakes and waffles are excellent for both breakfast and supper. My kids find it a real treat especially during the cold weather months to have pancakes for supper. They also are huge fans of cornbread. Can Goods (at least 2 - 4 cans each) -Green Beans -Whole Kernel Corn -Tomatoes -Light and Dark Kidney Beans -black beans -Pintos -Turnips -Carrots -Peas (Sauers only!) -Tuna -Chicken -Peaches -Pineapple -Cranberry -Fruit Cocktail Jarred Goods -Spaghetti Sauce -Jarred Salsa - (there is a lime and garlic and a black bean and white corn salsa that is Walmart brand that is great to pour over chicken and bake or to add to rice and serve as a mexican style rice, or layer with hamburger, tortillas and cheese for a casserole. Condiments -Mayonnaise -Ketchup -Yellow Mustard -Specialty Mustards -Soy Sauce -Worcestershire Sauce (with ketchup, mustard, worcestershire and spices I can make BBQ sauce, tomato gravy, etc.) You never know when a can of vegetables will come in handy. Either to stretch a meal or to add to a soup or stew to make it go just a little bit farther. I have a selection of other things we like on hand at most times as well. Soups and crackers and other things the kids like both canned and dried. Gracie is a big fan of romein soup. She has been known to survive a week or more on that stuff for supper every night. Not that I don't cook. There are days when I know she won't touch anything I have cooked because she doesn't like it. I also keep the canned beans because they do not need hours to cook like the dried ones do. Dry Goods Beans and Peas (dried limas, yellow and green split pea, black beans, kidney beans, black eyed peas, white beans, navybeans, pintos, etc.) Rice (risotto, basmati, jasmine, japanese rice for sushi, etc.) Cornmeal (yellow and white) Pasta (several varieties) CousCous Barley Grits (in the winter my kids want grits every morning, especially Gracie) This includes things that are prepackaged like a quick mac and cheese, dirty rice, spanish rice, red beans and rice, yellow rice, etc. Things that will not go bad even if they sit on the shelf six months or more. They also require no special storage just a closed dry place. Many things I buy when I have a good coupon or the store has a buy one get one sale like pickles, olives, sauces, carnation milk, eagle brand condensed milk etc. I can't even list everything out there on those shelves. I do keep check of things and rotate them out before dates expire. A supply of seasonings -Mrs. Dash -Pepper -Salt -Garlic Powder -Chilli Powder -Onion Powder -Cinnamon I have a stockpile of tiny little jars and bottles of spices. I am sure alot of us do. Buying even the tiniest of spices available for just one recipe we are left with a nearly full jar of something we don't use often. You name it I probably have it. This list above was just the basics. With onion and garlic powder it makes up for not having fresh onion and garlic to season things with. Chilli powder is a quick kick-em-up. I also keep a jar of local honey, air tight pouches of tea bags, and an extra small can of coffee. I buy peanut oil for the fryer in the 2 gallon container. Peanut oil keeps well, it has a very high burn temp and things will cook without being greasey. A 5lb bag of sugar will last us almost a year. I use it for baking for the holidays and for birthday cakes. Sometimes I may need to buy two bags depending on how heavy my baking will be especially at Christmas. If we were to lose power for a couple days or longer I have the wood stove we can cook on. During the cold months when I burn the stove daily I practice and challenge myself to see what I can cook, what I can learn to cook and how to regulate the heat to cook all sorts of things. The kids laugh at me and make fun but they always gobble up whatever it is I have prepared. Especially pancakes and sausage. (see previous post). I also have a couple gallons of fresh water. I probably should think about setting in a few more -just in case. 6 people for 3 days is 18 gallons of water. That is so much water! I also keep my tank filled on my truck. I encourage Colby not to let her tank get below half full. I keep the tractor and cans filled with diesel as well. I keep first aid boxes upstairs and down also in our car and trucks. We also have a medicine cabinet and drawer in the bathroom filled with all sorts of things. When I buy over the counter medicines for the kids I usually buy the Walmart brand where you get two bottles for less than one of the name brand. We have plenty of bandaids and the like. I also keep a bottle of alcohol and peroxide. I have witch hazel as well. Back in Georgia I kept it in the fridge. Here I don't. I don't know why. Perhaps too many hands going in and out of my fridge all of the time. If we had to I know we could do fine for a good while without feeling like we are doing without because I also have a deep freezer I keep stocked with premade meals, extra meats bought on sale, etc. If I needed to preserve things in my freezer I do have a supply of jars and a large pressure canner. I have a small supply of pickling lime, pickling salt, vinegar and whatnot on hand most of the time as well. For his big Christmas gift Steve's parents gave him a large generator. If we had to use it we could power our refrigerator and/or freezer for a while until we could eat what was stored in there. A few years ago Steve picked up one of those radios that you wind up and it generates its own electricity to run on for two or three hours at a time. We also tend to have extra batteries due to the kids having several items that require batteries. We have not set out to be prepared for a disaster. A disaster is the last thing on my mind. But I do think about it sometimes. You know, just in case. We seem to be pretty well set on the home front if we had to be. We also have a few spirits on hand. You know, the kind used for snake bites. (Hahaha!) How about you? Do you keep a standard stock of staples for your family? Do you keep a emergency supply in your pantry?

I did! What I had planned to do before my mother came at Christmas has been done in this past month. I painted the baseboards and the window frames in my kitchen. Finally! Sometimes I cook on the woodstove. Why waste electricity?
Look at those pretty white baseboards! Not only did I do the painting but I have managed to also complete one set of curtains for my windows. See the unpainted things that never got painted at Christmas?
Looky there! Curtains! These curtains are a project I have worried over for almost two years. Yes, two entire years. I flipped flopped on the curtain/no curtain issue many times not wanting to put up a curtain that would close in the room and block out the wonderful sunlight this room gets all day long. I purchased this fabric online a month or two after we moved into this house. It was always earmarked for curtains. Either in my kitchen or my bedroom. The kitchen won. It is a great toile print of a barnyard scene with an old red bard and rooster. Although I had ordered 10 yards of the fabric there was not enough for two windows of this size and the smaller window at the end of the kitchen. Nice. Because this print is out of stock. It is a two year old print that has long been gone. I have wanted in some way to have gingham in the kitchen but I didn't want to go overboard and look like a barn dance in here. So I thought about it alot. I looked through thousands of patterns for curtains and draperies. It wasn't until recently that I was inspired by a designer kitchen advertisement to make the curtains you now see. Not too much gingham. The perfect matching crimson. Nice fabric for draperies. The first set I made I lined them. The lining blocked out too much of the sunlight. I do not want this kitchen to be dim. I like it flooded in natural sunlight. So I ripped out the lining and remade the curtains without it. I like the look of the yellow walls, red accents and white trim in this room. The appliances are stainless steel with black trim. I have begun to add black and cast iron things to the room to flesh it out. The heavy black cast iron is a great contrast to the more feminine white ceramic pieces and china in the room. I never planned to paint those cabinets white. It was sort of a last chance to have a nice looking kitchen without the expense of new cabinets. These are just too good of shape to toss for the sake of cosmetic wants. I never planned to paint the walls yellow. I never had a color in mind but yellow just wasn't one of my choices. One day I saw a yellow cloth given as a gift in something when Steven was born. My brain said paint the kitchen that color. And so we did. Last July. The black granite of the countertops was simply what was available without a special order. The price was right. The white cabinets and black countertops deemed the black hardware the wiser choice. I chose them online based solely on price. I think they work. With the brick red floors I already had a lot of red accents. The rugs and towels, the wall plates, the roosters and painted sign. As things began to come together I realized the little sofa was red with yellow(ish) and black plaid stripes. It just works without any conscious effort on my part. Eveything is really beginning to come together after alot of hard work. I am really beginning to see and feel the room as a part of the house and not as an addition without much thought to the rest of the house. This has been a long time in coming. I started painting the cabinets (3 coats of primer 2 coats of paint) and continued on when Steven was just a newborn. I have progressed over the past year slowly. Very slow. My infant grew into a giggly baby and then into a busy toddler and now a non-stop very active little boy. Meaning it took me this long because instead of painting from the bottom up I painted from the top down. Little people under three feet tall do not listen to you when you tell them not to touch the wet paint on the baseboards. I suppose you already knew that. I should have. Speaking of which ... Steven, 14 months old His smile pretty much says it all.