Creating a food pantry.

With rising food prices, everything else will soon skyrocket. It is imperative that we prepare for the worst while hoping for the best.

We are creating a food pantry in our basement. We have been storing our preserved foods there. We also store bulk foods in pails and all the other miscellaneous products we use throughout the year.

Our basement grocery store includes home canned foods from our garden or those purchased from local farms. It also has canned goods of foods we can’t raise like salmon. A supply of freeze-dried foods completes the list of stored foods.

In large food safe buckets we store bulk items. Rice, beans, grains, pasta which will last years when properly stored. For long term I use large Mylar bags with oxygen absorbents inside the buckets. Do not forget to have several bucket openers handy. These inexpensive tools make re-opening the buckets much easier. When I fill a bucket with Mylar bags containing ready-to-eat meals, I attach one of these tools to the lid. These are ready for long road trips, camping or emergencies.

Do not forget essentials but less thought of items like baking soda, baking powder, lard, spices, etc. Other essentials like toilet paper and other one time use products; foil, paper towels, matches, cleaning products, etc.

When creating your food storage pantry, place the newest foods at the back of the shelf. Use the oldest ones first. Keep an inventory of your foods listing the food, date stored, as well as when removed for use. Also make note of foods you want to refill as well as those you will never preserve again.