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If you’ve started a food storage pantry, good for you! When I first started, my first few shelves became overloaded with grocery store foods, including a lot of prepared, convenience foods, such as canned ravioli and boxes of cereal.
Over time, I realized there was a better way to stock my shelves, and although grocery store foods remain in my pantry, I now have a better balanced pantry because it contains 3 different layers, each important in its own way:
- Grocery store food
- Ingredients and bulk foods
- Just-add-water freeze dried entrees
In this video I briefly explain these 3 layers and then discuss smart strategies for incorporating grocery store foods in your long-term storage pantry.
Great tutorial! Thanks for the info!
This is very helpful advise. My wife and I are just starting to stock extra food and so far we have all grocery store stuff, but I try to buy basic ingredients so if we have to live off of our storage we will be able to mix it up a bit. Thank you!
Thanks for the comment on Mylar bags. We’ve just begun to organize our cold storage pantry. I’m shocked at how much of the things (grocery, we’ve just barely started on the other types of food) we already have that you advise us to have on hand. We’ve been putting them on our shelving unit and in bins, but now I’ll repackage them into individual meals within Mylar bags. It will make rotating them easier.
I always have a ton of baking goods on hand, because I bake regularly…so that gets rotated often.
One thing I do to make it easier in rotating is to put the expiration date on the top of the can, it’s so much easier to see and use before it expires.
What I’ve been doing to build up our pantry is focus on buying one thing at a time. Last month, I focused on buying seasoning ( if you live near a Smart and Final, they have great and much cheaper prices, than elsewhere). This month I’m going to focus on cans (in particular beans). I do love to buy things on sale, like instant coffee or creamer.
Just one thing at a time adds up fairly quickly.
Next up, I need to start keeping better track, so I’m going to write down what I have, it’s expiration date in a notebook. Simplifying it further.
I keep and raise chickens for eggs and meat. I am slowly but surely switching all of my livestock over to a more sustainable food source since I do NOT believe that commercial feed will be available for some time after the crash happens.
The sustainable feed consists of barley, oats, soaked oats and wheat kernels. These can be planted and therefore, renewed. My chickens are also free ranged and that really helps with nutrition.
I am worried however, about the disgusting GMO crap. I don’t know how to get away from it so I am doing the best I can. Looking for sources that offer non gm seed. Any source links would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for all you do for us.
Marge
So… this sounds silly, I know. But I have wondered for a couple of years now. If the advise is to store what you eat, and eat what you store, what do you do with a family that doesn’t eat flour, sugar, pasta, etc… My kids would love to, but I have spent years switching slowly to a whole foods style of cooking? We might eat bread twice a month, pancakes three times a month, and I can’t remember the last time I made muffins or cookies. A 5# bag of sugar will last for months. I worry about storing so much that we should logically rotate through, when we don’t use enough of it to rotate?
I regularly check my expiration dates, and quite often make donations to the local food bank of still good stores when I find a good buy on new stock. I agree, and encourage others that this is a great way to rotate stock of less frequently used but needed items. I need to work on the repackaging aspect tho, for a lot of my ‘ingredients’.