A well stocked pantry
The Proverbs 31 woman is described as follows:
14 She is like the merchant ships,
bringing her food from afar.
15 She gets up while it is still dark;
she provides food for her family
and portions for her servant girls.
I am in the process of starting up my pantry again. Having just moved from another country, I couldn’t bring any of my pantry stuff with me. I have had to start again with everything - spices, staples, cans, etc. It is costly to set up a good pantry, and I have been wincing when I see how high my grocery bill is at the moment. But I also know that I will save money in the long run. I have nearly got everything I need in my pantry, and then it will just be a matter of keeping it stocked.
I don’t know about you, but I just LOVE my pantry! Over the years it has been in very strange places – sometimes even under my bed 
Other times, like now, I actually have a pantry cupboard and it can all be in one spot. No matter whether you have your pantry in one cupboard or scattered around your kitchen and house, it is oh so important to have a well stocked pantry if you are going to see your grocery bill go down.
Tonight as I went to cook dinner, I ran into a common pantry problem that many of us have. I wanted to cook a simple Macaroni Casserole with onions, bacon, macaroni, a can of tomato soup, milk & cheese. Easy. Quick. Cheap. Supplement with some garlic bread and a salad and I’m done. Halfway through the recipe I realized that I had not yet stocked my pantry with cans of tomato soup. (I really thought I had!) I changed the recipe to macaroni cheese, and we have survived that small crisis
Now what if I had said,
“Oh, I really need that can of soup, I’ll just duck out to the shop and buy it.”
Have you ever gone to the store to just buy one thing? I have! Have you ever come out of the store with just that one thing? I haven’t! I know that I would have bought a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and the lines at the checkouts at this time of the night would be looooong!
The more organized we are in the pantry (and I include the freezer in this), the less often we go to the shops and the less often we are tempted to spend money on non-essentials.
Another benefit of a well stocked pantry is that you are able to stock up on “specials” of items that your household uses often. I hate to pay full price!
So what is in a well stocked pantry and how do you maintain it?
All of our pantries will be different. You know what things you eat most. It may be Italian style meals, Mexican or whatever. Many of your meals will have the same ingredients that you use again and again, but in different ways. These are the things you need to have a good stock of in your pantry.
These are some things that are essential for my pantry:
Sugar – plain, caster, brown & icing
Flour - Self Raising & All Purpose
Cocoa
Assrt Baking needs – yeast, bicarb soda, baking powder, patty cake pans, food colorings
Spices – paprika, onion & garlic salt, season all, oregano, etc.
Milk – powder and long life
Canned Veggies – corn, mushrooms, chick peas, beans
Other cans – soups
Pasta & Rice
For my fridge & freezer:
Cheese – slices, grated, cheddar
Bacon
Now I have LOTS more in my pantry and freezer, but you can see that with the above items I could make a meal or two In fact, I could live out of my pantry for a few weeks, if my husband didn’t get paid or there was some other emergency.
How I keep my pantry well stocked is by writing the can/jar/item on my shopping list as soon as I am down to the last one. To make this work, the whole family needs to be trained to participate!
I also use specials a lot, as I mentioned above. I do not pay full price for toilet paper! I do not pay full price for washing powder! I do not pay full price for meat!
My husband likes a certain brand of coffee that is quite expensive, and I never pay full price for it. We can still have luxuries on a budget
If you haven’t thought about your pantry before, or if you have gotten out of the habit of keeping a well stocked pantry, may I encourage you to sit down and write a list of things that you think should be the bare minimum you need to make simple meals with? It is the first step in thrifty meal planning.