Pantry Basics, Part 4

Mary Kochan has finished her four-part series on how to make and use a pantry in your home. This 4th part talks about saving money by copying favorite pre-packaged and restaurant foods using your own fresh ingredients. Much of the time it only takes a little more time to make a meal from scratch, and you are less likely to waste food if you put out the effort to make it yourself.

Mary mentions that as you build up your pantry and don't have to go to the store more than every couple of weeks, you will notice that you miss fresh fruits and vegetables. This is when growing a garden comes in handy, as well as frequenting farmers' markets and other local produce growers. Maybe you can trade a neighbor part of your chard harvest for part of her zuchini overflow. You will become creative in your cooking when you find yourself holding a huge bag of fresh spinach leaves!

The most important outcome of learning how to keep a pantry is the sense of gratitude you can cultivate. After all, everything ultimately comes from God, doesn't it?

Tea for Today

Today: Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Outside My Window: sunny!
Today's Goal: Get everything packed into the van for our trip.
Today's Plan: Pack the dry goods into the kids' lunch boxes, make sandwich packs to put into the cooler in the morning, finish the last load of laundry, and clean up the kitchen.
Today's Tea: 8 Treasures Green Tea.
Today's Tidbits: We are in FlyLady's Zone 2 (Kitchen). The kids are helping me by putting clean dishes away and sweeping while I finish up the dirty dishes, clear and wipe the counters, and mop the floor.

Pantry Basics, Part 3

In this article, Mary Kochan explains how to incorporate your freezer into the pantry system. Mary's system will help you stock up and save money by not having to go shopping as often as you do now. My Mother-In-Law has an upright freezer in her garage which she uses in this way, and her system works well.

At this point, our family is able to go shopping once a week. I do have some non-perishables stored and we could probably survive in our house for a month or so, if we lost power and were snowed in, as long as I start storing water. Mary says I can store enough to only have to go shopping once every 3 to six months and beyond! I am intrigued by this concept and will try it.

Right now we have our kitchen refrigerator and a medium-sized chest freezer. In a few weeks we will be receiving another, larger chest freezer. I am hoping that this summer we can grow a lot of food and freeze or dry the bulk of it. I would love to be able to go "shopping" in my own pantry all winter, and maybe save up for an upright freezer to replace the chest freezers eventually.

The fourth and final part to Mary's pantry article will be coming out next week. I will be out of town until the end of the week, so I won't blog about it until I get back. You can read the article when it comes out at Today's Catholic Woman.

Pantry Basics, Part 2

Here is part two of the article I posted about a few days ago.

This time Mary has gone into detail about how to organize a pantry, including creating inventory lists that your household’s shoppers can work from and how to establish minimum and maximum quantities. Sounds like something I can use. How about you? Enjoy!

Pantry Basics

Over at Catholic Exchange, Mary Kochan has posted an article on the practicality of having a pantry. Not the small closet in the kitchen we modern women think of - the one with cereal and mac-n-cheese for this week's meals on its shelves. No - a real pantry like our mothers or grandmothers had - its shelves lined with jars of applesauce, green beans and beets she canned - and maybe grew - herself, the goods meant to last throughout the winter and spring until the next harvest.

This is an intriguing concept, one I hope to see revived in today's homes. Mary's article is the first of four, and I am eagerly awaiting the next one. I hope it will have some practical advice about how to start and maintain my own pantry.

Pretty Aprons!!!

I like wearing an apron as I go about my daily duties, but I never thought of an apron as a fashion accessory or as a figure-flattering fashion statement. Until now.

These are just the cutest kitchen gadgets I have ever seen!HeavenlyHostess.com has this same apron in many different prints, and they are all beautiful. Some have matching pot holders, kitchen towels and headbands for sale as well. Some, such as the one above, are available in a matching child size!

This one might make Spring Cleaning something to look forward to:
It is hard to choose, but this one is one of my favorites (bottom picture shows the reverse of the apron). All of the aprons are reversible:With such a pretty apron on, one might consider having one's hair done and wearing heels to vacuum the carpet! Well, maybe not heels, but cute shoes and lipstick are a must!

If they had one in a tea cup and tea pot print I would seriously save my pennies to get one!