A Week in the Life of the Winter Pantry
We are in the thick of February here and winter pantrying is in full swing. Last week I kept track of everything I did in the kitchen to share with you all. I had so much fun keeping record of this! I think I want to do it more often. It will be fun to look back on in the years to come and will hopefully give you some inspiration as well!
This week was Azure Standard pick-up week and you’ll see me mention them and their products a lot throughout this post. We do an order about every other month, and find ourselves sourcing more and more of our pantry supplies from them. Azure is a small businesses with a big heart for real food. They have awesome bulk prices and routes all over the USA. When you sign up through my link or use my code (KaetlynKennedy1) and spend $100 on your first order, I earn a $25 credit to put toward my next order, which is a huge blessing to my family! Once you sign up, you get your own link to share with your friends and earn credit through. They put a lot of care in sourcing their products and their values align with mine. It’s so nice to have a grocery source I can feel good about supporting.
Our labors this week not only provided us food for the moment, but for the future as well. Excess was made for the freezer, little bits and bobs from summer preserving were turned into something new to enjoy. My sourdough starter got a workout! This is the art of pantrying— the little dance we do with food scraps and simple ingredients we have on hand. It’s beautiful and rewarding and my favorite way to spend my days. Cozy up and enjoy a week-long visit to my kitchen!
Sunday
After church on Sunday I got my sourdough starter out of the fridge. I gave it a feeding, covered it, and set it on the counter to rise. I also did some meal planning and went to the freezers to get out a few things for the week ahead. I got out a pint of cranberry sauce we froze after Thanksgiving in November, pumpkin puree I made and froze last month, a pound of bacon, and a pack of organic tortillas. I knew it was going to be a busy week, so homemade sourdough tortillas were out of the question. Mom made a quiche for lunch using homemade pie crust I had already made in the freezer and it felt good to use that up. In the evening after my sourdough starter had reached its peak, I began two sourdough sandwich loaves and placed the dough in an oiled bowl to ferment overnight. I put what was left of my sourdough starter back in the fridge.
Monday
On Monday morning I divided and shaped the dough into loaves and put them into greased bread pans for their second rise and covered them with a damp tea towel. It’s winter and our house it cold, so I put them in the oven with the light on for a little bit of warmth to help their rise. After breakfast Mom and I headed out to pick up our Azure Standard order from the truck. It wasn’t a huge bulk order this time, just some miscellaneous things we needed to restock in the pantry: balsamic vinegar, mustard, cheeses, jovial pasta and einkorn flour, dish soap, almonds, onions, grapefruit, etc. In the late afternoon my loaves were risen over the top of the pan and were ready to bake. After those came out I popped in a whole chicken to roast low-and-slow. I used my new chicken cooker and it really kept the breast nice and tender while the thighs and drums needed more time to cook, as they usually do. Closer to dinner time I made up a big batch of mashed potatoes, adding in an entire bulb of homegrown garlic and some of the pumpkin I got out of the freezer on Sunday, lots of sea salt, heavy cream, and butter. I made a lot on purpose so there were leftovers for pierogi-making the next day. We ate roasted chicken and mashed potatoes with sourdough bread, cranberry sauce, homemade pickles and apricots that we canned in the summer, carrots and homemade ranch dip. After dinner I whipped up a batch of double chocolate craisin cookies (recipe testing for an upcoming ebook…) and enjoyed those for dessert. Before bed I took my starter out of the fridge and gave it a feeding and let it sit on the counter to rise overnight.
Tuesday
On Tuesday morning my starter was ready to begin a batch of sourdough noodles: 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of starter, 2 eggs. I mixed that together, covered it with a lid, and set it aside on the counter to ferment all day. I also cooked up that pound of bacon before I had to go to an appointment. I arrived home around lunch time and made wraps with the tortillas I got out of the freezer on Sunday. Homemade ranch and chicken from Monday’s dinner, bacon that I cooked that morning, and some provolone cheese made a delicious lunch. At dinner time my mom and I worked together to roll out the noodles and fill them with the leftover pumpkin mashed potatoes to make pierogi. Before boiling, we froze half of the batch for another night’s dinner. That will be nice to have on a busy day! Once we were ready to eat we boiled the pierogi for a minute or two while caramelizing onions in bacon grease with dried sage from our garden last year. When the onions were caramelized we added the pierogi to the pan and let them fry until they were crispy on both sides. We enjoyed our labor-of-love served with homemade sauerkraut, local sour cream and applesauce that we canned in the fall.
Wednesday
I began Wednesday by making pumpkin french toast for breakfast using the sandwich loaves I made on Monday and the pumpkin I got out of the freezer on Sunday. With a piece of bacon and a glass of milk I was fueled and ready to start my day. Right after breakfast I picked off the remaining meat from Monday’s chicken and put it back in the fridge. I then put the carcass and other chicken bones we had been saving in the freezer in a large stock pot with filtered water and ACV and began a batch of bone broth. (I decided to do a long simmer, so I didn’t add any veggies in until the evening.) Before I left the kitchen and got going on my work day, I cleaned and organized the fridge and texted our egg farmer an order of 3 dozen eggs to pick up on Saturday. I got carried away with my day and by the time dinner rolled around, I realized I totally forgot to soak the beans I needed for the chili. No worries. I checked the pantry for the Jovial canned beans I keep on hand for this very reason: none to be found. So I promptly added those to my next Azure order and decided to move the soup to Thursday. I got the cannellini beans soaking with baking soda and then moved on to come up with something last minute for dinner. We ended up having the same wraps we had for lunch on Tuesday, with the last of the leftover mashed potatoes and pickles on the side. This ended up being a good thing because it gave the broth more time to simmer. Around dinner time I added in the vegetables and let it simmer until about 8 pm. Mom strained it off and we put the broth the fridge before bed.
Thursday
Thankfully, Thursday was a little slower of a day in the kitchen. In the afternoon I made the white chicken chili I meant to make the day before with the broth I simmered and the chicken left from Monday’s roast. I served it with cilantro from our cold frame (that somehow has survived our 3 feet of snow and ice!), chopped red onion, lime, and avocado. I also got my kefir grains out of the fridge and fed them with fresh sugar water and left them on the counter to ferment. Kefir grains can be “on vacation” in the fridge for 3 weeks max, but I keep accidentally going a little longer than that and thankfully they revive everytime! Before bed I got my starter out of the fridge and gave it a feeding, letting it rise on the counter overnight.
Friday
On Friday morning I started sourdough pizza dough while my mom placed a meat order to pick up from the farmers market on Saturday. We didn’t need much, just a small restock on ground beef and pork sausage. I went down the basement and went through the pumpkins and squash in storage. I tossed the molding/rotting ones and took note of the ones that should be used up soon. I also set aside the decorative ones that I’ve been meaning to save seeds from but keep forgetting about. In the afternoon my water kefir had lots of bubbles so I moved on to the second bottling. Water kefir is preferably a summer drink in my opinion but we had recently opened and enjoyed a jar of apricot halves that I canned in a light syrup this past summer. Instead of just throwing the syrup away once the apricots were gone, I wanted to use it up. Kefir came to mind and like I mentioned on Thursday, it was time to feed the grains anyways. In two flip-top bottles I added a few frozen raspberries from our garden last summer, lemon juice, the apricot syrup, and the water kefir. I closed the lids and let the bottles sit on the counter to naturally ferment and fizz. I fed the grains with fresh sugar water and then put them back in the fridge for another 3 weeks. At dinner time I got ready for pizza night by shredding some cheese. Organic Valley’s Thick-Cut Italian Blend is my favorite pizza cheese but it’s pretty pricey if you can’t find it on sale. Plus, I don’t like buying shredded cheese because of the added cellulose. (Even in organic products, the cellulose can be non-organic. It’s often made from cheap wood or pesticide-laden cotton) It takes more time to shred my own cheese but I find it tastes better and cooks up better as well. I’ve been wanting to make my own “pizza blend” for a while and was finally able to after our cheese delivery from Azure on Monday. I used about 18 oz of mozzarella, about 8 oz of provolone, and 4 oz of sharp cheddar cheese. We used half of that for pizzas that night and then froze the other half for future use. It was delicious!
Saturday
In the morning I started a loaf of sourdough with starter that was in the fridge. I almost never start sourdough loaves without feeding my starter and allowing it to peak first, but this was a last-minute decision because I noticed we were almost out of the two loaves I made on Monday, and I did not want to make bread on a Sunday. This starter was just put back in the fridge on Friday morning at its peak so I judged it was still strong enough to make a decent rustic country loaf. After breakfast Mom and I picked up eggs and meat from the local farmers market and then stopped at Whole Foods to grab fresh greens for Theo my bunny and some parmesan cheese I’ve been meaning to get for the freezer. (I ordered parmesan from Azure but unfortunately it was out of stock by the time my order shipped.) In the afternoon I made cinnamon crumble einkorn muffins (recipe also will be in an upcoming ebook…) using up buttermilk from the last time I made butter and I used some of the pumpkin puree in place of an egg so my brother, who has an egg allergy, could enjoy the muffins as well. While those were baking I juiced the grapefruits from Azure to enjoy with breakfasts and then started a vinegar infusion with the grapefruit peels and some rosemary growing on our windowsill. This will be used as a cleaning spray solution after a month or two of infusing. Mom chopped up some carrot slices to put in the brine of the pickles we had been eating. Just like the apricot and water kefir situation, we canned these pickles in the summer and enjoyed a jar this week. But instead of just dumping the brine down the drain once the pickles were gone, we’re giving it a second life. Evening rolled around and I shaped my loaf and put it in a bowl to proof. I got carried away and forgot to bake it until it was almost time for bed. It was far too proofed to put it in the fridge ‘til morning so I baked it before bed and came down in the middle of the night to put it in the breadbox once it was cooled. Lunch and dinner were both leftovers, which is always nice because by that time I was tired of being in the kitchen.
Sunday
After church I did a bit of meal planning for the week ahead and got what I needed out of the freezers. This is fun for me, so I don’t mind doing it on a Sunday :) A bit of pumpkin puree was still left so I decided to make sourdough pumpkin dinner rolls on Monday to go along with a soup made from the leftover broth and the cranberry sauce we still had left in there too. In the evening I fed my starter and let it rise on the counter so it was ready to start the roll dough on Monday morning. Mom made mexican for dinner with local ground beef from the freezer, peach salsa I canned in the summer, and other miscellaneous toppings and sides we already had on hand. I made heart-shaped hand pies using my flaky einkorn crust recipe with lard I rendered in the summer and frozen raspberries from our garden as the filling. They turned out pretty “rustic” but satisfied the craving nonetheless. The water kefir was fizzy and ready to enjoy before putting it in the fridge. We rested and prepared ourselves to do it all over again in the new week ahead!
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