Other People's Pantries #177
From Adriel (10 Months Makeover) in Fayetteville, Arkansas:
I have almost no cabinets, but I'm a Sam's Club once-a-month shopper. This works for me because I DO have a freezer and I'm a very proficient freezer cook. My pantry is the four small shelves over my washer and dryer, but I make them work hard for me.
Spice cabinet with decorating stuff at the back of the top shelf. The cup is full of cigarette lighters for my stove top.
The top two boxes are baking boxes. One is filled with flours and sugars, the other with all the small things that you use exclusively for baking (soda, vanilla, cocoa). The bottom two boxes are for everyday use. One is starches (pastas, rice, instant potatoes), the other, masquerading as a ramen box, is snack stuff (chips, nuts, popcorn).
The basket is all drinks (coffee, teas, crystal light) and the crate is all bulk condiments (ranch, mustard, ketchup, BBQ sauce). To the right of the laundry detergents are all of my jars, can goods, and then breads go on top of the box.
I always dream of having a perfect looking pantry like Pantry Number Seven (Mary from Texas), but that won't be a reality for many, many years. In the mean time, diaper boxes work great because I have a million of them!
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I like that you are keeping it real. We all have dream pantries, but few of us have them. When diaper boxes are what you have, why not use them!
thanks for sharing your pantry with us.....now I know where to go borrow some mrs dash when I need some!
I agree -thanks for keeping it real! re-using boxes is practical!
What an optimistic post - thanks for sharing! I would love to read/know more about being a *freezer cook*.
As great as it is to see dream pantries I love to see what others recycle to use as storage. Gives us all good ideas. Thank you for sharing.
Hey, Adriel here. I was given a big box of craft paper for an early Christmas present, so guess what I'm doing next week? That's right! Covering all of my diaper boxes so that my pantry looks cohesive :-) !! I'm probably more excited about this than I should be.
Eko, my favorite freezer cooking websites are onceamonthcook.com/ and www.30daygourmet.com/ and the book I used the most when creating my family's favorite recipes was The Best Freezer Cookbook (http://bit.ly/vLgqOF). I shop the Monday after the 15th (second paycheck of the month). Then, on Tuesday-Saturday of that week, I make one recipe each day, but make six of it. We eat one that night and freeze the other five. Then, I don't have too cook again until the middle of the next month. I have extras in case of friends needing a meal (new baby, family member died, major surgery, etc), and reheating the meals is easy enough for my husband to be able to "cook" if I'm gone or sick. Oh, and if you're worried about variety, don't be. I have twenty recipes. I rotate through, so I only cook each recipe once every four months. But then, because there are so many extras (normally about five) at the end of each month, I can pull something a little "older" out of the freezer if I don't want chicken noodle soup *again*. The first few months that I was stocking the freezer, I cooked ten of each meal, so I have a good stock to pick from.