The Art of Pantrying
pan·try·ing / pan-trē-ING / verb
The act of stocking, maintaining, and eating from a pantry
Traditionally, keeping a storage of food in the home was a common practice. It is only recently that we have become dependent on grocery stores being available to us at any time. While I am thankful that my survival does not depend on how my potato crop does this year, there is something about our dependence on convenience that I do not like to encourage in myself and in my home. In fact, I have made a conscious effort to push against our culture of convenience, even if in small ways.
“the first supermarket supposedly appeared on the american landscape in 1946. that is not very long ago. until then, where was all the food? dear folks, the food was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. it was near kitchens, near tables, near bedsides. it was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard.”
I think the events of the past 2 years have helped many of us recognize that comfort in our world of electricity, grocery stores, and speedy transportation is not guaranteed to us. At any moment these securities we rely so heavily upon can be taken away from us for a variety of reasons. While there are many things we could improve upon in our modern world as a culture, change begins in the home. Stocking a pantry is an actionable step you can take in your individual life— whether it’s by growing your own, buying from local farmers, stocking up on sales at the grocery store, or a mix of all 3 like I do.
food preservation and storage is about stewardship rather than survival
If you think about it, we are really only 100 years removed from knowing how to sustain ourselves through the work of our hands. This was The Way from the beginning, and the modern world is, at best, an experiment. Our survival now does not depend on how much we grow and what we store. But that might not always be so. Modernity may fall. It also may not. Nevertheless, food preservation and storage is about stewardship rather than survival (for now), making it the best time to cultivate the skill of keeping a family larder!
Woman Looking at Victory Garden Harvest Sitting on Lawn, Waiting to Be Stored Away for Winter by Walter Sanders
“Putting Food By” 1959
Stocking a Pantry
The first part of “pantrying” is to stock it! Keep in mind– this isn’t hoarding and it’s not storing food away for the apocalypse. This food storage is what our meals are made from! The beauty of maintaining a working pantry is that it is completely customized to your life. Your pantry does not have to look like mine, or like anyone else’s for that matter. You also don’t have to live on a farm or have a traditional root cellar to embrace the art of pantrying. You may have to get creative, step out of your comfort zone, or create new habits, but almost everyone in some way can return to the time-old art of building up a pantry.
Generally, there are a few different areas in a modern pantry:
Meat
Frozen, cured, dried into jerky, freeze dried, canned, etc
Storage crops
Potatoes, onions, garlic, apples, cabbage, squashes, carrots, etc
Dried goods
Flour, sugar, salt, rice, beans, etc
Canned goods
Home-canned or store-bought
Cold storage
Fermented veggies, eggs, dairy such as milk, cream, butter, and cheeses, fresh produce like leafy greens, etc
It may take some time to figure out what your family uses the most and how much to keep on hand. 2-3 years into this way of life and my mom and I are still learning! It becomes an adventure and may encourage you to use things up in a way you normally wouldn’t. You don’t have to have the ideal storage space or a huge budget to stock a pantry. The point is that it will ultimately save you time and money. Do you have a cool dark closet? You can try storing squash or potatoes in there! Do you have space to slide a few tubs of canned goods under your bed? Can you cancel your Netflix or Starbucks habit and put that money toward local meat for the freezer instead? If this is something that interests you, don’t be afraid to think out of the box and be willing to make sacrifices. It’s worth it!
Source unknown
Maintaining a Pantry
When you begin building your pantry, you will quickly learn that food simply needs tending to. You’ll need to go through your fridge and see what can be used up. You’ll have to keep an eye on squashes and apples going soft in storage. This is sort of where I feel like the pantry becomes a verb: things like making squash puree and putting it in the freezer for future meals, putting hard boiled eggs in the almost-empty pickled red onion jar to get one last use of the brine, canning cranberry juice because they need used up after Christmas, making a big batch of sourdough waffles to put in the freezer, which uses up the buttermilk you had leftover from making homemade butter... This little dance that we do with seemingly small bits of food, adds up overtime, decreases food waste, creates nourishing meals, and is indeed the very art of pantrying.
Eating from a pantry
Food storage offers security but it’s not wise to store it in a way that allows it to go to waste in the name of “being prepared”. That’s why we not only store food, but eat from it too! Creating simple meals with pantry ingredients inspires frugality and is actually quite delicious. It’s not just beans and rice. Quite frankly, we eat like kings in our house! The colors of summer apricots line the shelves, waiting to compliment a local chicken roasted with herb salt and mashed potatoes, or a hearty soup made with bone broth and frozen vegetables from our summer garden, served with sourdough bread and applesauce we canned in the fall. Winter is the time we really benefit from our labors of stocking a pantry. Not only does cooking delicious pantry meals pass the long winter evenings, but it tastes better knowing we had a hand in how it got to the table. Keep an eye out on my instagram and youtube channel for pantry meal ideas this winter!
Food storage Tour:
More Pantry content:
Episode 1: Eating From The Larder
Episode 2: Eating From The Larder
Episode 3: Eating From The Larder
“Now the potatoes and carrots, the beets and turnips and cabbages were gathered and stored in the cellar, for freezing nights had come.The pumpkins and the squashes were piled in orange and yellow and green heaps in the attic’s corners…The little house was fairly bursting with good food stored away for the long winter. The pantry and the shed and the cellar were full, and so was the attic.”