Building a successful pantry

  Healthy cooking can be hard on the fly when you don't have a recipe planned - or your recipe didn't turn out.  So you turn to your pantry and you still have junk food.  It's hard to replace, so do so slowly.  A lot of people will tell you to throw out all the "bad for you" foods and replenish with all healthy foods, but who has that kind of money?!  Make some decisions.  Do you have a lot of box mixes?  Take stock of what's in them, look at the ingredients, when you're starting out "good enough" is good enough!  If you're chock full of hamburger helper, you may want to look at your spice cabinet to create the spice pack instead of using what's in there.  It won't taste the same - I guarantee that, but it will be far better for you.  Take a look at ingredients in the boxes you have, I bet you can make something very similar.  Take notes, write down what you did so when it's successful you have just made your very own recipe.  Next time, just pick up a box of noodles and maybe a new spice.  Create your own spice mixes for your favorite box meals - it'll save you time, be more healthy, and in the long run save you money.
  Let's look inside my pantry, shall we?

Top shelf: cereals, box stock, oatmeal, chocolate chips, Nesquick (home made requires the blender - what?!  It's a rare treat even with the size), brewer's yeast, formula (just in case), crackers, and pinto beans.  Only one Nesquick container actually has any in it, the rest are premixed hot cereals.

Second shelf:  sugars, flours, beans, garlic, egg replacer, trail mix fixings, Abuelita, bread crumbs, baking chips, rices.  Yes, I have that many different kinds.  Sugars: unrefined and coconut, flours: all purpose, whole wheat, rye, rice, corn meal, self rising, polenta; beans: garbanzo, black, split peas, lentils, red lentils; rices: white, brown, basmati, rissoto/arborio.  Have I mentioned me and carbs are besties?

Third shelf: liquids.  Sweet Jiminy the liquids.  I may have every kind of vinegar available on the US market and some from Germany as well.  Oils include olive, peanut, safflower, and sesame.  Shortening, onions get stashed here if there's room, cooking sprays, soy sauce, tamari, bragg's, vanilla, ketchup, curry ketchup (it's the bomb!), lemon juice, lime juice, curry sauce (unopened at this point), and more friggin' Abuelita.  I kept forgetting we already had some.

Fourth shelf: that mailing box - lunch stuff; fruit snacks, fruit pouches, sweets.  chips, soy milk, any liquids that don't fit in the above shelf (currently tapitio and lime juice), canned tomato products and beans, pizza sauce base.

Floor: cat food, trash bags, that's really soda back there for guests, baking soda, big bottles of white vinegar, vegetable oil, and dish soap, boxes of juice boxes, and more chips.  That pink thing?  An apron.


  Dry goods go a long way and are a lot less expensive than the precooked canned or frozen counterparts.  I'm not talking about going crazy here, I get it, making your own enchilada sauce can be a stretch when starting (or you may just be guilty of loving and not giving up your favorite brand).  Look at beans, most will double in volume on cooking.  A can of precooked beans can be as cheap as $.74, you're getting about 14oz which includes the liquid.  You can buy a bag of dried beans for around $1 a pound.  For the not so math savvy, one pound is 16oz.  For $.23 more you're not just getting 2oz though, you're getting more than triple the beans.  15oz precooked, drained beans is about 1 1/2c, one pound cooked will yield 6 cups of drained beans!  I hear your complaints of "I don't have time," and I counter with slow cooker.  Put the beans you'll need in the slow cooker before you head out the door and like magic you'll have cooked beans when you come home.  Some people say you need to soak the beans overnight first.  I'll be honest, I almost never do this.  I forget.  Most beans are forgiving and it's no big deal.  Small beans are not!  Black, navy, and even great white northern beans really benefit from soaking.  Nothing like a hard bean to ruin a meal.  Grains are one of the biggest money savers.  Take the time to premix if you need to.  Make your own pancake mix, brownie or cake mix, bread mix, what not.  The only one I always have on hand is pancake mix, everything else we use various recipes for so it doesn't make sense to have them premixed.  You can pick up a 25 pound bag of flour at Costco for under $8.  It's ConAgra, which morally I have issues with.  You have to make the decision if every purchase has to be moral.  Bulk flour at Sprouts is also an option, but I can't find information on where it's from, so I figure I might as well know where my dollars are going instead of assuming where they are not.  We use flour like crazy, I buy 25 pounds every 2-3 months.  I'm looking at cuts to buy the organic flour, and I'm getting there!

  A note on things not tasting the same:  you'll get so used to healthy cooking that you won't look at boxed foods the same.  More than that - they won't taste the same.  My husband who is against this whole thing in our house recently commented that he didn't want the junk food in the boxes because it doesn't taste good to him, there's a place for it and that's when he's in the field!  SCORE!!!