"Deep Pantry" AKA storing extra of food you like to eat and know how to cook

I often see pictures of people with stacks of corn and beans to eat in case of emergency. I used to think like that: "Just buy a bunch of cheap food so we can eat if things go crazy". But, then I realized I would rather have stacks of food I actually eat. This means I'll eat it before it goes bad (just bring the oldest cans forward and the new ones behind), and I'll be happy eating foods that I (A) Like to eat, and (B) Already know how to cook, in an emergency.

The last think I want to have to do when life is crazy, is try to figure out how to cook kidney beans or listen to my kids fussing because they're eating canned peas for the 6th day in a row.

I also don't want to waste food. If I buy a bunch of food I don't know how to cook or don't like eating, it's likely going to go to waste.

A deep pantry means you have extra food that you actually eat. This is handy for all sorts of reasons and situations.

• Everyone in the house gets sick for a week or two? No worries, there's lots of food so you don't have to leave the house to go shopping!
• Big storm rolls in and you're out of power and the roads are blocked by trees? No worries, you've got food to spare! Just hunker down and relax until the storm rolls over.
• Lose your job and can't find a new one for a few weeks? At least you don't have to worry about buying food.
• Grocery prices go up due to volatile markets? You bought extra when it was cheap!
• Don't want to go shopping for a few days because life is busy? You've got extra in the house!
• An unexpected medical emergency happens and you've got a big bill? You still have food, so you don't need to worry about buying more and can use that money to pay the bill.

I always try to buy extra of whatever we like to eat when it's on sale. We've got lots of things lara bars, nuts and dried fruit, chocolate, canned beans, canned pumpkin, canned fruit, and frozen food. I also keep cartons of broth and coconut water and boxes of crackers for if we get sick. I don't want to make broth or go shopping when I'm sick!

All these shelf-stable or frozen food don't go bad quickly, and they're nice to pull out when we need it. We have at least 2 weeks of food that we like to eat, always in the house. There's probably a month of food if we count all the stuff we don't like eating. I always advise buying extra of the non-perishables that you're family likes to eat--then you have food that everyone likes, and that means it won't go to waste. And, when times are stressful, you're not adding to the stress by trying to get people to eat things they don't like.

eat what you store, store what you eat... i have racks that you put cans into and it rolls to back and drops then rolls forward to front. first in first out inventory made easy. so this way i can buy stuff when it's on sale and not have to waste time sorting stuff by reading expiration dates... the more used stuff gets more shelf/rack space. we can, and freeze things regularly. the major issue is when we get bonus crops and we're tired of zucchini, tomatoes, & peppers ect... then we hold neighborhood salsa making party and process store a bunch at a time. my suggestion to those starting out with building pantries is to take good notes on your food that regularly gets consumed. types and quantities then make a plan as to how to store it at about 80% of it's shelf life/rotation thru your kitchen. i started this path in the 90's and have benefited greatly from reducing impulse or panic buys. happy bargain shopping and planning your garden calories. john

I encourage you to do far better than that.  It is a good start.  But done correctly food storage will cut your food budget almost in half over buy it now strategies and you can fairly quickly build a much bigger reserve.  Buy what you eat, eat what you buy.  Key to doing it properly is storing and that means rotations.  Best aid tool for that is a permanent marker.  Put the month and year it was purchased on the container and the price and put it at the back of the shelf.  Sharpie makes an oval cross section marker that is amazing for this because it is not forever rolling off where you are working.

Now when you are opening cans you know when they were last on sale and you have a feel for the long term price.  If you can buy a years worth of what ever it is on sale do so.  So say you know use on average 4 cans of soup a month.  That means if you can catch that soup on special you want 48 cans on the shelf for the year.  buy it now price typical would be $2.35 here for name brand and watching the specials price would rough$1.   Since it is good for 4 or 5 years if you are slow using no problem.  And you have longer storage items too.  For example spaghetti 1 lb is just over 3 meals per person and you can get 26 packages in a 5 gallon bucket with almost 1/4 of the capacity left over.  Bucket and lid roughly $10, spaghetti less than $26.  Cost for the main calorie count for the just over $0.36 per meal and a 20 to 30 year shelf life in good storage conditions and you have a bucket and a lid at the end.  Now you are going to want, butter or tomato sauce or soup or meat something to augment that.  So plan for those things in your gathering food.

At this point in my life, I've basically been in survival mode for the past 6 months. Having the extra food stores of food we like to eat and that I can quickly cook has been super helpful.

There's totally ways to level-up my pantry use. I really appreciate Erica Straus' Food Storage For People Who Don’t Hate Food article. It has great advice for organizing and improving food storage for food people actually eat. Writing dates and prices on cans would also be super useful. I'd also love more area to store food.

But, right now, I'm still in the throes of disaster (It's why I've not been on permies much this year). My husband's Crohn's flared up right at the beginning of the school year....the same school year that I increased the amount of classes I'm teaching from 2 to 7. It's been me taking care of my husband, cooking all the meals, homeschooling my kids, creating all the curriculum for my classes, prepping for all my classes, maintaining the house, and teaching my classes. I'm barely able to juggle all the balls I need to juggle. It's a lot like the year that inspired me to write The reality of homesteading has dissolved my "prepper"/homesteading fantasies.

When I prep, it's this sort of life chaos I'm thinking of. Sure, we get 4 day long power outages every few years, and sure, worse things might happen. But, really, I'm preparing for when life goes crazy. When there's not enough money or time. Right now, I'm really grateful for the times I was able to get out to get groceries to buy lots of food my family will eat that's easy to cook. When we were all sick with some horrible crud for two weeks, I was super grateful for the coconut water, broth, tea, and crackers I'd bought when they were on sale.

Sometimes, life is too crazy to do really good food prep. Sometimes it's too crazy to grow a good garden or really organize the pantry. But, there's still stuff we can do that makes life better for "future me." I can buy extra food that my family will eat when it's on sale or at our local Grocery Outlet. Sure, that means I have a bag full of meat sticks sitting in my living room because I don't know where to put it and it's one of the few foods my husband can eat that isn't cooked from scratch. It's not perfect, but it helps!

Another type of food preparedness/pantry is the one we keep outside.

I really like perennial and self-seeding plants, like kale, berries, sorrel, alliums, and fruit trees. They don't take much work, and they survive when life gets crazy and I don't have time to care for them. They also usually pack a lot of vitamins and are expensive when bought in the store!

I really like the edible "weeds" that grow on my property. I can easily encourage them to multiply and create more food/medicine. The nettle is delicious for dinner. The mint helps my husband's Crohn's. The cleavers are good for my psoriasis. The dandelion is good for pretty much everything. Even if I don't have a chance to try and preserve them, I still can eat them for months of the year without much effort at all.

My garden this year might just end up being perennials and some peas, carrots, kale and radishes and potatoes....because they're all like to grow well here and my kids will go outside harvest/eat them without much help. Some years I can do more. More would be better. But, this year is my disaster, and I'm going to be grateful for what I can do, when I can do it.

Last night it so happens I was interviewed on a podcast about food, and people specifically wanted to talk about stockpiling and pantry.
Some background: I live in Brazil, and people still have strong memories of 'inflation times' (in the 80s, when the currency fluctuated so much prices of products changed before you reached the checkout, and people converted their savings into things like canned vegetable oil).
In the 20 years I've lived here we've been through not only the pandemic lockdown and the resulting limited shopping options but also several transport strikes, where the first casualty was diesel fuel and shipping of goods. We know a thing or two about surviving. I also had some very lean times as I was growing up, and ever since I've had the money to do so I've had things stashed as reserve, "just in case". I have never really quantified it, but I probably have enough to feed us for at least 3-6 months, not counting the garden.

The best way to prepare is calmly, little by little, when you see good prices on things you know you'll use, and you know you have a good place to store it. Bug proof, humidity proof, etc. That pasta you like is on sale? Those dry beans you know how to make a killer bean soup with? Found a good deal on something? Buy some extras to stash. This way you can slowly build up a reserve without spending too much at once, and you know you'll use the things you buy.

One thing many people learned during Covid, when they had things stockpiled, was that they didn't use some of the things they thought they would. A good friend of mine asked me, at least a year later, "what the heck am I supposed to do with all these lentils I still have??" If you don't have a plan for an ingredient, you're probably not going to invent some great use for it as the shit is hitting the fan (and you certainly don't want it in large volumes!). Buy what you know how to use, and what you like. For me, that means a whole lot of dried beans and rice and flours.
And what goes up must come down-- if you have a pantry full of dried stuff, it needs to be rotated or it will get buggy and wasted. Elsewhere I've posted my adventures as I clean out my cabinet and use up some of the weirder things (and replace them with stuff I know I'll use).

Gardens can be a great extender of the pantry-- I keep some kind of alliums (leeks, scallions, garlic chives, etc) at all times. But leafy greens are the real nutritional powerhouse, and you can have them year round. It can be as easy as growing a few sweet potatoes in a pot on a porch during the summer, or having a collard patch year round, or having kale or other heavier leafies in the cooler weather. You can even forage for greens-- chickweed, purslane, sowthistle grow almost everywhere and are edible (and yummy) and are important if your diet is limited.

And don't forget -- pantry also includes other things. Cooking fuel-- what happens if your propane tank runs out and can't be refilled? We bought an induction burner to test during the first fuel shortage, and it turned out to be so awesome that now we rarely use gas! We also made a mini cooking rocket stove out of large cans outside for the pans that don't work in the induction burner (mainly, my wok). It's nothing fancy but it cooks, and if need be I could rig one up out of bricks. We also have a stock of dish soap and vinegar (my main cleaning materials), laundry soap and materials for disinfecting (mostly for the animal spaces in the garden).