Menu Planning From Your Pantry

For most of the twenty years we’ve been married, my husband has been self-employed as a contractor. We live in a rural area where the economy wasn’t ever good so we’ve had some very lean winters. I learned early in our marriage to keep our pantry as stocked as possible with the basics of what I needed to prepare meals.

This practice led me into another habit which I didn’t even think about until I read a blog post by Amy Bayliss about how she planned her menu for the upcoming week based on what was already in her pantry. For those of us on tight budgets, this is a life saver.

For those of us operating on little sleep or with scattered minds this is a life saver. Why? Because at any given time I can run into the grocery store and do my weekly shopping whether I have a list or not and whether I’ve seen the sales flyers or not. With five kids. With a mind that’s juggling a dozen different things. How? By remembering what we’ve had for meals since the last time I’ve shopped.

I keep certain items on hand in my pantry at all times, enabling me to make almost any meal we might want. Sure, there are specialty things I might need to buy just before preparing this meal or that one, but those are fairly simple to add into my menu according to when the item is on sale.

Do I spend a lot of time on my shopping list? No. Am I wasting our money? No. I shop at the cheapest stores in town and I buy in bulk (because I have a bulky family that eats a huge amount of food) to get the best possible deal. I also keep a calculator handy because sometimes bulk is not the cheapest way to go.

Let me stop and say that only very rarely do I shop without a list, and then it’s usually when we make an unplanned stop at the store. Also, knowing the sales ahead of time and having coupons saves a tremendous amount of money. Those aren’t options available to all of us though. I almost never see a sales flyer and only occasionally have a coupon for something due to living in the middle of nowhere.

If you’re challenged with feeding your family on a tight budget make up a master menu list. List out the ingredients you need for each meal and look for common ingredients in them. Then put together a master pantry list of basics that you need in your pantry to be able to make any variety of those meals at any given time. Are there items that go into several meals? Then have several cans/boxes of that item on hand.

Also, make sure that your pantry is stocked with what you need to make a few desserts without having to stop by the grocery store. Depending on the age of your kids and their involvement in school or church, will depend on how many you should keep on hand. For example, my (homeschooled) teens are involved at church and often have to bring a dessert and chips, so I keep several brownie mixes on hand, a box of rice krispies, marshmallows and chips. Since we like the flexibility of inviting people over for supper at the last minute, I keep ingredients for an orange pineapple cake that always seems ‘more special’ than a simple chocolate cake, and one that always gets rave reviews. Our Sunday School class has been known to throw together last minute get-togethers so I keep a loaf of Velveeta and elbows on hand so we can bring a crock pot full of homemade mac ‘n cheese and some kind of dessert. You get the idea.

Operating on the principle of eating what’s already in the pantry instead of shopping for a specific menu helps me keep my sanity during those weeks when I don’t have a menu made. But even when I do have a menu, we only loosely follow it because many times we don’t feel like eating what’s on the menu. That stocked pantry gives us tremendous flexibility, which is often necessary with our life as it is right now.

Planning our meals around what is already on hand has saved us money and it’s helped me keep my sanity as I oversee our menu and meals.

Since Patty quit running from God's call on her life, she's been happy. Life is never dull for her as she juggles being a wife, a homeschooling mom of five, bookkeeper of their family business, teaching online blogging classes, and her writing. As long as she's obeying God's leading, she figures that sanity is a novelty and not a necessity. Patty clings to the promise that God will enable her to do what He asks of her, otherwise you would find her living at the Funny Farm and not just occasionally visiting, like she does. In addition to drinking black cherry kool-aid from china tea cups, she loves weaving lessons that she's learned into short stories and devotionals, most of which can be found on her blog Patterings. You can also find Patty at Exemplify and Adding Zest, a site for Christian women who want to add some zest to their love nest. She'd love for you to stop by and share a cup of kool-aid with her.

Patty Wysong

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