The Larder And The Pantry

This room is for conversations about food storage, stockpiling, rotating our food stock and finding our minimum and maximum number. A place to share photos and ideas. 

Keeping a pantry was not as simple as first thought for us. Our pantry is a small utility closet turned into a pantry. We started keeping a pantry many years ago and we learned after the first few years that we needed a better way to place food items so that we could rotate it easier in a tight space. Our solution was to pull from the right and fill to the left.  A larder is a cooler storage area than a pantry. We do not have a larder so the larder part of our pantry is the lower part of the pantry, the cooler area towards the floor.

I started keeping a well stocked pantry about 20 years ago, improving how I do it year by year. We had a Hurricane blow over us and took our power out for two weeks, along with a order to boil water coming into house. That was eye opening to me because although I lived in a beautiful home full of beautiful things I realized none of that could do anything for us in that situation. I turned one very large closet into what I called long term storage, grains, dehydrated food, canned goods, etc. I packaged it to last a long time, if needed. The other pantry/ larder is in mudroom, which stays cool in summer and cold in winter. That area holds the items we use regularly, and rotate often. It also holds my home canned items, which is basically meats, a jams, and some pickles. It also has canned goods from stores, such as tomato products, some vegetables. I write on the front of the items with a sharpie the best buy date and put the oldest in front and newest in back. There is a lot of information online on how to begin but I would urge everyone to have enough for at least a month. I store more then my husband and I use because I have a large family of 17 and they visit often and in weather situations they all come home. Except my son, who still lived at home during the Hurricane and went through that experience. He keeps a well stocked pantry/freezer and he is a single guy. He is learning how to pressure can now and just built himself a smokehouse for his sausage. I have been able to help others when they were experiencing emergencies, and job loss. I keep an inventory of all pantries, and large freezer. I use my freezer for mainly vegetables, and some meats but generally meats are only left in there until I pull out my pressure cooker. With the price of meat going so high, I will concentrate on watching for sales and put it in jars. Meats such as turkey, ham, roasts, corned beef, chicken, venison, all taste very good canned but you must use a pressure cooker. When storms are on the way, inflation, pandemics, unemployment, or whatever it may be, having a well stocked pantry is a blessing. 

Grandma Donna wrote, thank you Karen d, for sharing your story what led you to an improved pantry/larder. I agree about having at least a months supply of food, especially now.

This evening we had a 90 percent pantry shelf meal for dinner. I took two quarts of home canned beef stew, heated it for ten minutes to a boil. While it was heating I took a bit of the broth and mixed in about two tablespoons of clear jel for cooking to thicken the broth then added it back to the stew. I seasoned the stew with black pepper and salt to taste. Earlier in the evening I made some of Grandma Donna's biscuits. I took two biscuits and broke them up into bite sized pieces. I served up the beef stew over the biscuits. It was sooooo good. The only item needed in this meal that was not shelf stable for me was the butter. I used buttermilk powder to make the cup of buttermilk for the biscuits. I am wondering if criscoe might work instead of butter for the biscuits. I want completely shelf stable biscuit ingredients if at all possible. Grandma Donna, have you tried using criscoe in your biscuit recipe? If Criscoe can work then the only thing stopping me from having this meal in a situation where I don't have electric is learning how to cook them in the Dutch oven on my woodstove.  We heat with wood so the stove is going pretty much all winter. We also have home canned pulled pork, home canned smoked and unsmoked turkey meat, home canned taco meat, home canned venison...all of these things would be good over biscuits. I never thicken my broths before canning so having clear jel for cooking on hand gives a lot more options. Also, we have chickens,  if I have olive oil and vinegar, I can make mayonaise....keep tuna and canned chicken on hand and we can have tuna on these biscuits...egg and spam sandwiches for breakfas. I have canned home canned sausage too that I just remembered. Thicken that and have biscuits and sausage gravy. Or, simply biscuits and jam....there are so many options if I can learn to cook biscuits with no power. 

Grandma Donna wrote, Kieva A, we cook our biscuits sometimes in our dutch oven with the flat lid in a fire pit outside. the coals go on top so the biscuits do not burn.  I think we did a post on this many years ago and if I can find it I will edit this comment and put a link to that post. 

Yes, you can use crisco and they should do very well or you can use shelf stable ghee, which is shelf stable butter.  It is expensive to buy but not to make yourself.  There is a wonderful youtube video by Rose Red.  She does a detailed video how to make your own ghee.  Ghee will work well to make biscuits or use the ghee for anything you would need butter.  To find this video just go to youtube and type in the search on youtube, Rose Red how to make ghee.  You should find it that way and if not just send me an email to let me know and I will get that to you.  You are doing so good with your shelf stable food and thank you for sharing this here on the forum.  :)

Thank you, Grandma Donna! I'm getting crisco then. Also, I have seen multiple videos from, Rose Red. I will look that one up, thank you ????! 

Grandma Donna wrote, Kieva, thank you for sharing your photos with us.  That makes me hungry!  :)

When I lived on a farm with my family as a teenager, we had a wonderful old walk-in-pantry that my mum always kept well stocked as there wasn't a shop just around the corner to pick up something that she'd run out of. I guess I've always kept my pantry the same way, albeit without the wonderful walk-in pantry space in most houses I've lived in as an adult. In my home now, I keep my main everyday stores in the kitchen pantry cupboards and use the linen press cupboard to store all the longer-term food supplies which like Grandma Donna I top up less frequently.

Of course that means I don't have a linen press, however I store the spare linens for each bed in the respective bedroom on the top shelf of each wardrobe, the spare towels are in the top of the laundry cupboard, the tablecloths in a dresser drawer in the meals area, and the doilies and other miscellaneous linen, on a shelf in my wardrobe. I started storing bed linen in the bedrooms when my children were very young and I had a couple of regular bedwetters. It was much easier to grab something in the dark which I knew would fit the bed, than have to go and turn lights on to source something in the linen press. It's much easier for teenagers to change their own sheets each week too if everything is close at hand for them.

We spent the month of January eating out of our pantry and freezer. Some items were purchased but for the most part, our stockpile was consumed. It felt good to have something available at all times.  The shelves have bare spaces now so I'll need to spend time canning and replenishing. Kidney beans were canned today and it looks like one jar didn't seal. That means kidney bean salad with our dinner tonight!