Pantry

We keep a large amount of food in the house as I cook from scratch. Avoiding convenience or processed food does mean that you need an incredible amount of ingredients. This does mean you need the luxury of a large house and a large pantry. We have neither, the jars above are in our dining room! Other food storage area is the cupboard under the stairs, a wonderful set of spice drawers and a wire racked larder cupboard in the kitchen.

We started to stock up for the possibility of a 'no-deal' Brexit but with the Covid 19 pandemic panic buying we were very grateful to be able to shop at home!

To plan your pantry think about the types of food you make often. I make savoury items more than I do sweet and we mainly eat a plant based diet. So for example I don't stock self-raising flour, if I need some I will substitute plain flour adding baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. I also don't stock icing or caster sugar I can make these from granulated sugar.

I have tried several pantry apps and now use Paprika Recipe Manager mainly because I use it for collecting recipes and its convenient to have everything in one place.

Hopefully the lists below will give you some ideas of items to include in your pantry. These items I regard as staples and try to always have in stock. Other items I'll buy for specific recipes e.g. lasagna verde, lacuma powder, pumpkin puree