A Plan For Food
And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. 1 Timothy 6:8
In the fall of last year, amid a busy season of canning and cheesemaking, laundering and guilt-making, I learned to be content with making food and raiment my priority around here despite whatever “it” was that was making me feel guilty. Usually though “it” is that my children’s noses aren’t buried in dry textbooks with lifeless facts being drilled into their minds today and forgotten tomorrow. Ah, the guilt of being different among those who are already different!
I resolved to buckle down and create the perfect system to improve my days, and to be sure things did improve, perhaps due in part to the calm of winter, but I prefer to believe that I was making strides in the right direction simply by recognizing some of the changes and improvements that needed to be made and making them.
Overall, I have been very satisfied with the progress in organization I’ve made in the last year in regard to food planning for our family. Despite moments of discontent in my management abilities, it has been working for me. Small, sustained steps are the key to real progress and just like when I’ve dreamed too big and oversized our garden only to find that by mid-summer it’s overgrown with weeds that cannot be controlled, if we overhauled an entire system all at once, I fear I’ll find it to be just as overwhelming. And then how can I take pleasure in the fruits of my labor?
There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. Ecclesiastes 2:24
I have come to believe that a well-stocked pantry and weekly menu planning, with preparations for the following day being made every evening, is imperative for me to keep food on the table.
Several years ago, I found myself riding the wave of couponing, hitting the grocery stores and drug stores trying to get the best deals for free or better products. I had basement shelves bursting with all of the steals and deals that I found. When my husband chose to seek employment that would allow him to be home more, that naturally entailed quite a pay cut. Having that pantry was crucial to helping us get through that adjustment period. The Lord was so good and I marveled at how we were more well-fed than at any other time in our lives. (My husband’s waistband can attest to that- he’s up nearly two pant sizes in the last couple years!)
As time passed, a good deal was harder to find and it was determined that our time was far to valuable to chase down just one or two. As we grow more and more of our own food, we are also eating more and more scratch, buying more products in bulk, and relying less and less on beauty products.
We finally made it through all of our reserves and I was finding it frustrating to have to run to the store every time I ran out of something. I didn’t realize how dependent I had become on running (who are we kidding, I sent a child) down to the basement to replenish my pantry supplies.
{Building A Pantry}
Recently, I set aside a sum of money and after estimating 6 month totals for the pantry items I prefer to have on hand, purchased those amounts. I intend to assess the situation in 3 months and restore my pantry with another 6 months of food so that I always have at least 3 extra months on hand in the case of emergency.
I hope that this will accomplish 4 things:
~ No more hungry bellies and late meals because I’m too busy scrambling around trying to put together a meal rather than eating the one I had already planned and should have prepared.
~ No more emergency runs to the store, saving time and gas
~ Worse yet, no more trips to the fast food restaurant. We’ve all become so accustomed to not eating that garbage over the past several years that it really takes a toll on our bodies if we must resort to that. (Not to mention the pocketbook!)
~ And finally, I hope to increase my cupboard space by eliminating some of the less commonly used items, in turn reducing our grocery bill. When my shelf space is taken up by items that I use sparingly, they often get thrown out upon spoiling and then re-purchased later in the year. If I’m not shopping as often because I’m depending on the staples in the pantry, those here-and-there items won’t be weighing our budget down.
To determine what items I needed to build my pantry with, I simply made a list of our most used items.
For us that was:
Hard Red Wheat Berries (So blessed to have found a local supplier which saves a TON of money on shipping!)
All-Purpose Flour
Sugar (Although I’m decreasing our dependency on this one 🙂
Brown Sugar
Powdered Sugar
Honey (I have found a supplier of raw, local honey and it is so cheap!! $8/gallon!!!)
2 Bottles of homemade Vanilla
Yeast
Salt
Cocoa Powder
Baking Soda
Baking Powder
Baking Chocolate
Brown Rice
Rolled Oats
Cornmeal
Pasta- Elbows, Spaghetti, & some shapes- A quick pasta meal is better than fast food, right?
Canned Fish- (Tuna-Sunkist Low Sodium has no soy & I found that Costco carries canned wild salmon)
Vinegar
Apple Cider Vinegar
Cold-Pressed Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Pecans & Walnuts
Cheese- Cheddar, Mozzarella, Parmesan, and Swiss… enough to last until I can make my own.
Canned Mushrooms
Peanut Butter
Popcorn (Our go-to snacking food)
Coconut
A couple each of our favorite condiments… the last to be switched over to scratch since the quantities one uses at each meal are so small.
A couple each of things such as molasses, cornstarch, bread crumbs & panko, corn syrup, sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, red wine vinegar, cooking wine, soy sauce, worchestershire, beef stock, and chicken stock (just in case I run out of homemade)
Paper Towels ( Used for baby wipes only… A couple sheet run under warm water, saving a ton of money!)
Toilet Paper
Ivory Soap
Borax & Washing Soda
Gallon & Quart sized storage bags
Trash bags
Dish Soap
Toilet Bowl Cleaner
Lysol Spray
Foil
Plastic Wrap
Toothpaste & Brushes
As the year progresses, I’ll grow our reserves even more by adding frozen and canned (hopefully home-grown) fruits, meats, and vegetables. I put up 29 pints of jellies & jams and 4 quarts of frozen strawberries & mulberries in the last two day… a wonderful start to the year!
Of course, your list will be different 🙂
To determine quantities, I estimated how much I believe we will use, and am recording how much was purchased & when. Then when we’re all out I can get a better idea of how quickly we run through each item.
Storage is often done in 5 gallons plastic buckets that we’ve acquired from the local bakery for free!! We use these buckets for more than just food storage and sadly, we’ve run through them more quickly than we ever expected and to get back on the bucket list (pun intended) has been challenging. Next time, we’ll just take much, much more than we need instead of just much more.
{Planning A Weekly Menu}
I really rebelled against this for quite some time. I’ve always been the type who likes to decide what to prepare for a meal in the early afternoon depending on what sounded good to me at the time, but after menu-planning for a time and then falling away from it, I can truly attest to the difference it made in keeping mealtime a smooth event. We eat out a lot less- hardly ever- when I’m diligent enough to plan meals weekly, praising God for resilient bodies on the days I fail. I used to have a yearly menu plan with a free day to try something new, but as we try to depend more and more on what the Lord is providing for us off of our land, I can only skim it for ideas because I can’t be sure what we’ll have on hand. This year it was lots of beef. When I go to feed the broilers at night, I feel like a character in old-fashioned cartoon who sees the bird and in their mind it is transformed into a steaming roast on a platter. I can hardly wait until it’s chicken season!
{Prepare The Night In Advance}
Despite having a weekly menu, I fail to follow it if I fail to plan the night in advance. For me this simply means referencing the menu and writing out the breakfast and dinner selections for the next day on a chalkboard magnet on the refrigerator. What I love most about that chalkboard is that it virtually eliminates the “What are we having for…..?” question. I must have been asked that question a dozen times or more a day, so that board is a real sanity saver. This sets in my mind what we will be eating and allows me to begin thinking well in advance of any preparations that need to be made such as setting out meat to defrost.
I take this time to load the bread machine as well. Right now, I’m baking 2 loaves of bread on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday and load the machine the night before. I’m not working with sourdough right now, this simply isn’t a good time for me to be fussing with such a high-maintenance bread. Although, it’s not part of the typical schedule, I’m also loading it to bake and freeze hamburger buns on Wednesday. In the morning the dough will be all ready to go and I need to roll it out for the second rise and bake. When I fail to do this, we often don’t have bread for lunch and I end up resorting to some pasta dish which obviously isn’t as healthy as wheat bread.
{Reduce Baking}
And therefore sugar intake. As much as it pains my sweet tooth, baked goods aren’t usually as healthy as some other choices. Besides wasting time, the product wastes calories. My children are more apt to go for a healthier snack (or none at all) if the cookies aren’t even in the jar. I’m limiting baking to once a week with the exception of special occasions and will try to incorporate as much seasonal produce as possible into what I do bake.
{Doubling Up For The Freezer}
Planning at least one item into the menu that can be doubled up and frozen each week. This is preferably a dinner item, but a baked breakfast good might work too. Last week I froze spaghetti sauce and salmon cakes. This will help for those busy days when there is little time to squeeze in meal preparation or in times of illness. Were I to ever have another season where I’m blessed to find I’m expecting a wee one, I would definitely try to make more than one before the morning sickness hit or the baby was due for when I’ll be feeling less apt to grace the kitchen with my presence.
{Girls In The Kitchen}
(Feel free to substitute “boys” where necessary. My boys, while trained to do light kitchen duties, tend to gravitate more towards the farm chores. I’m fine with this stereotype, particularly on days such as our impending butchering day.)
Perhaps you’ve noticed, I’m not afraid to get my girls in the kitchen. Sometimes though, I think I should be… it can get pretty messy. Training my daughters to be active and involved in kitchen duties significantly lightens my load. I’m amazed at how much more quickly the preparations go with helpers. We’ve been preserving strawberries this week and it has been an amazing blessing to be working on one thing to find that all of the berries are nearly chopped. If you can get one daughter hooked, the others tend to get excited to follow in big sister footsteps.
It’s my desire that after making a habit of just these few preparations, my time in the kitchen will be more effective and streamlined, that we will be more conscience about our food choices and less apt to fall back on quick and unhealthy Plan B, and that I will be able to stretch our food budget further than ever!
We live in the desert, there seems to be no fresh natural foods here in the Sonoran desert. We have butchered our chickens and they give us eggs, we established a large garden last year ( only the eggplant, jalapeño, bell peppers, survived the winter) I am late in planting this year again as I have accidentally killed all of my first seedlings for lack of watering. I’m tempted to try some nopalitos recipes.