Book Review: Pantry Cooking

I recently bought the book, Pantry Cooking: Quick and Easy Food Storage Recipes by Laura Robins. This book is an excellent resource for anyone interested in storing food for emergencies. Whether you want to store food for just one week supply or store food for a whole year, the pantry cooking method is a great way to always have food on hand. Instead of teaching you how to store food, this book focuses on storing meals. Included are five whole weeks of recipes that only use nonperishable items you can store on your pantry shelves. The principle is this: you … Continue reading →

Pantry Challenge: Baking Day

Today is turning out to be a baking day. I normally feel more comfortable baking than actually cooking things on the stove. Put it in a dish and stick it in the oven is my philosophy. But today seems to be a real baking theme in my pantry challenge. (What is a pantry challenge? Click here to learn all about it.) For breakfast I made some baked oatmeal, using up rolled oats and raw sugar from the pantry, as well as some milk and eggs. This is a treat whether eaten hot from the oven or cold from the refrigerator. … Continue reading →

Pantry Challenge: How Have I “Bean?”

What is a Pantry Challenge? Click here to find out. It is Sunday today. The pasta with tomato soup went over really well on Friday night. I’m going to put that recipe down as very easy to make and kid-friendly. For yesterday, there was nothing much to report. We did make breakfast from a pantry item. it was a box of Vermont organic pancake mix. I bought this mix on clearance for 50 percent off of $1.57. I used the mix to make a double batch of pancakes (leftover pancakes make great snacks, especially when you put peanut butter on … Continue reading →

Pantry Challenge: Using Allrecipes.com

Brrr. It is absolutely freezing out today here in Pennsylvania. I am definitely not looking forward to taking the babies out for a walk to school to fetch Andrew. The theme of the day will have to be layers. Fortunately, since I am still in my pantry challenge, at least I won’t be going to the grocery store. If you are just starting to read the frugal blogs and want to know more about a pantry challenge, click here. Our cereal is running a bit low. I did stock up a couple of months ago when sales and coupons were … Continue reading →

Pantry Challenge: Making My Own Boxed Bake

Today is day three of my self-imposed pantry challenge. I must use up items in my pantry, refrigerator and freezer for meals and not shop at the store for anything but milk. I might add eggs to my allowable list, but I haven’t caved, yet. To learn more about what a pantry challenge is, click here. Yesterday’s lasagna meal turned out wonderfully. My picky two-year-old ate four helpings. Yup four. Plus she finished her salad and had a serving of ice cream from the freezer. I don’t know where she put it all. Andrew left a little bit on his … Continue reading →

Pantry Challenge: Italian!

It is day two of my personal pantry challenge. Last night, the helper enchiladas went over pretty well. In my pantry challenge, my goal is to use up items in my pantry and freezer for our family meals. To learn more about what I’m doing, see my earlier blog, What is a Pantry Challenge? Here is what we are using up today. Breakfast was english muffins thawed last night from the freezer. I toasted them and topped them with peanut butter, and we had some very ripe strawberries on the side. I’m glad of this challenge, because the strawberries might … Continue reading →

Pantry Challenge: Enchilada Helper

Well, we finally have a move date for our new home! It will be sometime in mid April. Buying and selling homes has really put a strain on our finances. Because of this strain and the fact that we will be moving, I decided that I really need to do a pantry challenge. A pantry challenge happens when you challenge yourself to use up items in your pantries for your meals. To learn more about having a pantry challenge, click here. For the start of my pantry challenge, I am going to be a little lenient. Honestly I have had … Continue reading →

Pantry Meals: Lemon Chicken with Capers

Looking for some meals for your food storage? Or would you just like a tasty meal made with only nonperishable foods? You can keep all of the ingredients on hand for a last-minute dinner without having to rush out to buy anything. This dish, lemon chicken with capers is very tasty. Everyone in my family, including my two-year-old son, loved it. Though I did take the capers out of his portion, but that was easy enough to do. The trick to making a tasty chicken dish out of canned chicken is browning the meat in a skillet. After browning my … Continue reading →

How to Store Your Pantry Meals

If you have decided that pantry cooking food storage is a good option for you, you may really love this method for storing your “pantry meals.” Even if you do a different type of food storage, you may like to adapt this method of storage to the foods that you have. If you store your food by individual ingredients (like putting all of your jars of peanut butter in one place) you will have a few difficulties. First, you will have to keep a meticulous inventory of how many of each item you currently have. This requires a great deal … Continue reading →

What is Pantry Cooking?

There will likely be times in most of our lives when we have some type of financial, natural, or other type of emergency where it will be helpful to have some emergency food on hand. In these times, will we know what to do with cans and cans of wheat, rice, and beans? If the idea of making cheese and sour cream from powdered milk sounds way out of your realm of comfort, you might like to look at a different method for storing food known to some as pantry cooking food storage. Put loosely, pantry cooking is preparing meals … Continue reading →