Stocking A Pantry

What that reveals about us

Journal: 21 April, 2025, morning.

In my morning reading, this quote: “It’s funny how intimate someone’s pantry is.” The person who wrote it lives on a farm, keeps and shears sheep, carding and spinning the wool, swapping that product with others who in turn make lovely things from it. She farms, and because of that eats a largely (but not totally) plant based diet, which looks wonderfully delicious. Freshly gathered food is a treat. I grew up eating that.

Back to the pantries: hers contains a lot of bulk storage (because that’s the way they live) and storing food products for longer periods of time requires different packaging. Airtight containers, maybe silica gel packets, etc. Your pantry is going to look different.

I remember my parents and grandmothers talking about their childhoods and how they lived back then—on farms—and everything was seasonal, in rhythm with the seasons, and they grew crops and had a smokehouse and root cellars and my maternal grandmother had a small enclosed porch for churning and making cheese, and meringue for pies? They whipped it by hand, with a fork.

What a different world that was back then, compared to how so many people live now. People knew how to do most everything needed in that kind of world, and if you didn’t, your neighbors likely did, and you shared things and helped each other when that was needed. A community, in the truest sense.

We don’t live in that world any more, but a little self sufficiency is not a bad thing. I love keeping a well stocked pantry, and being able to cook meals without making a trip to the grocers. When our boys were small, I belonged to a co-op of friends and we’d regularly shop at farmers’ markets and divide the bulk food amongst us. Of course, you have to actually use what you buy or it’s wasteful, and that involves more work, and more time, and we just live different lives now. This approach doesn’t work for a lot of families. There are situations where regularly cooking meals doesn’t make sense, or just isn’t possible. Health issues, or you’ve cooked all your life and you just don’t want to do that any more. It happens and that’s totally a personal choice, and fine. There are seasons in life and we need to accept the rhythms of those, and live in harmony with them.

But… if you still do have a pantry, and keep it stocked, I’d love to hear about yours, and how you do that. What are your rules? Do you have any? Must haves?

We keep lots of rice, and flour, and cornmeal (Bob’s Red Mill Stoneground), and tomato products (if you’ve not tried tomato powder, it’s fabulous), and wine, and yeast, and olive oil, and balsamic vinegar, and various types of dried peas and beans, and a mix of canned foods.

I don’t can things, or make jams and jellies. I still have strong memories of childhood when we “put up” corn. Oh my goodness, what a job that was! Sticky, sticky, corn silk everywhere, stuck all over you. A mess. But the end product? The best food ever. I loved fresh corn. Still do.

Oddly, it turns out that living that life as a child and eating those foods was the healthiest way I could have grown up. Hardly any preservatives, only fresh foods. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it? What seemed like a burden at the time was really a gift, and a wonderful one.

#journalingalife