Saturday, September 7, 2013

What's in your pantry?

You know that credit card commercial that asks, "what's in your wallet?" Well, I want to ask you, "what's in your pantry?"

I love having a pantry.  I mean it's a bi-fold door closet that holds all my kitchen ingredients but that makes it a pantry right?

But I also have something even better than a pantry.  A back-in-the day pantry. A PIE SAFE! Man O and his dad, Papa Jack, built this for me thirty years ago when I was pregnant.  That was before push presents even.

Pie safes were the place you put all your food stuffs, including pies, you wanted to save from the critters that wandered in and out of the log cabin, the farmhouse, the mansion. Most were open in some shape or another, either with screening or tin with holes punched for air circulation. The richer the owner, the fancier the pie safe.

Being as ours was for decoration only, we decided on copper. Yep, Man O punched every single hole in those panels AND the ones you can't see on each side. I slept through all the copper punching. Must have been pregnancy hormones.

These days we keep most of our ingredients in our pantry closet. It has plenty of room to put up a lot of stuff and not worry about going to the grocery story for this and that.  But there are certain things I make sure to have around all the time.

Raw almonds.  My go-to snack, a garnish for meat or salad, and can be ground for a pie crust.

Small serving size spaghetti sauce.   I couldn't believe it when they came out with something smaller than a huge jar. Perfect for us empty-nesters. I use it for spaghetti of course but also chili or a sauce for chicken Parmesan.  No waste.

 

Olive Oil.  I don't use butter much any more. Olive oil is great for my stir-frys, salad dressings, and barbecue sauces. And as Missy pointed out the other week, it makes a great moisturizer.

  

Cinnamon.  We are into fall and I make sure to have plenty of cinnamon around, not only because it tastes great on apples and pears but I put it in recipes to help control my blood sugar. Try marinating pork in cinnamon, apple juice and juice of one lemon. Yum.



Mini Wheats.  Didn't expect this one from a gluten-free gal did you? But this is the only cereal Man O eats. I mean ONLY as in I buy six boxes on sale plus coupons at a time. The clerk always asks if I have a lot of children.

Virginia thought it was so funny she gave his compulsion a nod in one of her stories. I mean we currently have an entire shelf of the stuff because he gets worried if it runs low.  Man O lets the gas tank get as low as it will go but get down to one box of cereal and he panics.



So what about you? Do you have a pantry? Do you have a few items always in stock at your house? Let us know what your go-to ingredients or foods are! Or is there a food your family insists must be present at all times? 

28 comments:

  1. heehee! You know, I don't know which came first: Mr. Knightley/Brooks the professor or Man O the engineer. Either way, Man O's cereal compulsion was the perfect set up to exposing my Mr. Knightley's deep, never-changing love for Emma. He would do anything for her, and you don't take that sort of thing lightly when the man in question doesn't even fool around a little with his cereal choices. The man knows what he wants, all the way down to his breakfast cereal. No waffling there.


    And I have six kids, of course I have a pantry! And many cupboards, large and larger. We always have beans, flour, sugar, oil, a cupboard of spices, and pounds and pounds of pasta.

    Something we always have to have on hand is milk. Without milk, my kids act like they're going to die. What do you eat with your waffles/cereal/French bread/PBJ sandwich, etc. ?

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  2. What is a pantry exactly? Is it like a little walk-in closet full of food? I've seen those in new houses in the burbs. I live in a wee little house with a wee little kitchen so I have to stash food where I can and that includes stocking half the linen closet with food! Lucky I don't have tons of towels!

    So what absolutely has to be in my 'pantry' all the time? Dog food. LOL. It's like Simba has this sixth sense when the bag is getting low and he sits and stares at the closet until I feel so guilty I can't stand it. So I always have dog food in stock.

    And chocolate of some sort -- I mean really, that is a staple in every diet, right?

    And I have a thing about lentils. One of my quickest go-to is lentil soup. I can make it in my sleep and it doesn't take long to simmer on the stove so that's one of the meals I make when I come in from work too tired to think straight.

    Oh and onions. Because I make a lot of kitchen sink soups.

    Love your pie cupboard, you lucky woman you!!!!!

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    1. Yes. Except ours isn't a walk-in. It has a bifold door across a wall that would have been bare if we hadn't added the pantry there when we built our house decades ago. Storage, storage, storage.

      I miss chocolate. And you don't surprise me at all with the doggie food.

      I am blessed.

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  3. You should have seen Man O's face when I read this to him.

    We also are big milk drinkers and we aren't kids.

    I miss pasta. Rice pasta just doesn't cut it.

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  4. Let's see . . . Uncle Sam Cereal, raw almonds, snack-size bags of pistachios, protein powder, cans of tuna, soup and black olives, wheat bread, croutons, my hubby's stockpile of potato chips, and last . . . bottom shelf . . . Dog trests and Mighty Dog for Hartley :)

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    1. Wow, I can just see you standing there. Ha!

      You live dangerously with the dog treats on the bottom shelf!

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  5. I love a pie safe! I would always hope that there would be pie in it, but someone has to make the pie and that would be me....Oh well.

    I suspect that in my small pantry, I probably have the same amount of stuff that Virginia has, even though there are only 3 of us. I always have small cans of tomato sauce as well. When you heat up stuff that had tomato sauce, you need just a little bit more. I always have cans of pineapple tidbits. This is a great ingredient for cooking and for smoothies. And of course, with a 6 foot child, I always have lots of bread, peanut butter and jam (like his mother, he doesn't care for jelly as much)...

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    2. I am a jam fan, a pie fan and I had totally forgotten about pineapple tidbits! Best thing in jello!

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  6. I love my "pantry" - not that it's a physical place, but it's the concept of having food on hand.

    I do have one of those little closets off the kitchen, but I only keep my spices and things for immediate use in there. It's much too small. Almost everything else is in the garage (temporarily). I have a closet under the stairs that needs shelves, and that will be much better to store things.

    And, of course, the big advantage of having a stocked pantry is that when you get that urge for a batch of brownies, you don't have to run out to the store at midnight. You have everything right there :)

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    1. As Man O likes to remind me, if you are out of cereal in the morning, it's a bad way to start the day.

      I need to send him over to build those shelves for you. He is building some for dd today.

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  7. Wish I had one of those great old butler's pantries you find in houses with back staircases off the kitchen... I remember helping my parents (who owned an antiques shope) work on an estate they had bought out. (To be honest, I didn't do as great a job of helping as I did exploring...) It had the back staircase AND a beautiful walk-in pantry. *sigh*

    My kitchen has no upper cupboards and few lower ones. There is a floor-to-ceiling built-in cupboard for dishes, mixing bowls, etc. The food is out on shelves on the landing to the side door and to the basement. You'd think, after 29 1/2 years of living here, I'd stop complaining about it, but not me, LOL.

    Staples? Olive oil, honey, quinoa (our 2yo grandson LOVES the quinoa pilaf we make--and he gets fixated on it so much that he keeps asking for quinoa; you haven't lived until you hear a sweet 2yo say "quinoa"!), brown rice, natural peanut butter, lots of spices and herbs (especially garlic--oh, my goodness! We go through garlic like crazy), Arbonne plant-based protein shake mix and fiber boost powder... Yeah, the latter--usually made with peanut butter--make up my breakfast most days. Oh, and in the fridge we have to have eggs and almond milk (we've recently switched from skim milk). As DH and I are getting older (he's almost 57, I'm 54), we're discovering that we neeeed to watch what we're eating, even if it costs a little more. But at least we're cutting out processed junk for the most part, so maybe the $$ is leveling out that way...

    BTW, love the pie safe! I've always wanted one, but we don't have room (and we're taking in a small dresser handmade by my hubby's great great grandfather--we don't have room for it either, but we wantses it! And his sisters don't, so we get it. *big grin*).

    Enough rambling. Thanks for the look inside your pantry, Julie! :)

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    1. It's amazing how our staples change isn't it, Melanie?

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    2. It's amazing how our staples change isn't it, Melanie?

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  8. I know what you mean. I would rather have a butler's pantry than my walkin for my clothes!

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  10. When my husband re-did the kitchen he made slide out drawers and cabinets. The drawers are all made of metal because he owned a sheet metal shop which our oldest son now runs. We live in the country and these do keep out the little critters.
    The faces on the drawers and cabinets are from the knotty pine panels that were in the family room.
    I keep the staples like everyone does.
    I buy when on sale or at Costco.

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  11. We always have cheese in the fridge or freezer--cheddar, parmesan, mozzarella, and muenster. And then we have onions, cherry or grape tomatoes, flour and corn tortillas. I get a little antsy if we run out of any of those. My brother-in-law is like Man O in that he has to have his Wheaties. They buy them 6 or 8 boxes at a time and he eats them every. single. morning.

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    1. Big cheese fan here too. ManO is glad to know about your BIL.

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  12. P.S. I'm coveting that amazing pie safe!

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  13. I'm suffering pantry envy. Here in the city, storage is at a premium (as in there's practically none!).
    We have kitchen cabinets, but that's all.

    Julie, I'm laughing about Man O and the Mini Wheats. They're my favorite cereal when I eat it too. But he reminds me of my husband who HAS TO HAVE Instant Breakfast every morning. About 30 years ago, some doctor recommended he drink it and he's had it pretty much every morning since. He got in a panic a few years back when it got hard to find, so now he orders it in bulk from Amazon. We've got it stashed in every spare place.

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    1. Yay! Another MW fan. That is so funny about instant breakfast. Who knew it was addicting but I said everything with powder is addictive: powdered donuts, cheetos, cocaine. All the same.

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  14. Oh, I'm so laughing about the cereal! I drive my husband crazy with all my stock of cereal. :) Only instead of one flavor, I have a gazillion for variety. :)

    We have a laundry room/pantry combo. Very handy!

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  15. Wow! Man O sounds like my youngest son. Must have cereal.

    My pantry is way too small, so it spills over to another closet. And I love that pie safe. Man O did a great job.

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    1. Never thought of that. He eats cereal to keep young at heart.

      Thanks for all the compliments on the pie safe. Man O and his dad make a great team.

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