Pantry Cooking

A lot of people preparing for the zombie apocalypse tend to stockpile long-term food storage, such as whole wheat in plastic pails or freeze-dried foods in cans. However, a large pantry typically is also part of any food storage program.

The large pantry generally consists of canned foods (canned soups, veggies, meats, condiments, etc.), as well as dry goods (pasta, rice, barley, flour, sugar, etc.). Most people rotate these foods into their regular, everyday meals since these foods tend to have a short shelf-life (usually less than 3 years).

My family eats some pantry food, mostly rice, pasta, canned tomatoes and canned beans. And a little bit of tuna or salmon. But, for the most part, we rely heavily on fresh or frozen foods for our regular meals. As a result, my pantry stockpile is not getting rotated as much as I would like.

So I've decided to commit to making at least one "pantry meal" each week. For that meal, all of the ingredients will come from my pantry. Hopefully this will help me discover new recipes that my family enjoys (and could be used after the zombies attack), as well as help rotate my stockpile so we actually eat the food in my pantry before it expires.

To help, I recently purchased the book 100-day Pantry: 100 Quick and Easy Gourmet Meals. The recipes in this book are based entirely on pantry and long-term food storage ingredients. None require the addition of extra water (instead, the juice from canned goods is used as liquid). This could be super beneficial if water conservation was important. The author claims all the recipes are tasty, too. I'll be trying a few of the recipes over the next month or so, and I'll let you know the results. At first glance, I think using the word "gourmet" as a description might be a stretch, but we'll see.