I have a few foods that I always try and make sure I have in my pantry. I thought I would share some of them with you, because I ran out of one the other day. Joseph and I were shopping at Costco and he asked, do we have peanut butter. I replied that of course we had peanut butter and so we didn't get any. But last week, I used up the last of the jar of peanut butter and went to the pantry to get a new one.... and I couldn't find one. I went downstairs into storage to get a jar, there wasn't one there either. Not to be deterred, I went back upstairs and began to search the pantry for peanut butter, I just couldn't imagine that I had actually let us run out of my go-to ingredient. But no, there was no peanut butter.
I got me thinking, I need to clean up the mess that is my pantry, so I can actually find things, and I needed to share with you my favorite foods to always have on hand.
Peanut Butter - You bet we eat a lot of peanut butter sandwiches around here. But peanut butter is the main ingredient in my favorite Thai peanut noodles. It is my go-to pantry meal, everyone in my family eats it and it isn't spaghetti, so I can serve it the same that I serve spaghetti (WAHAHA evil laugh) To make this ingredient as healthy as possible. check your label for added sugar. Ideally your peanut butter should have peanuts and a little bit of salt.
Brown Rice - We love rice at our house. Some people are much bigger fans of white rice than brown rice, but we are trying to slowly make the transition to just eating brown rice. We aren't there yet. I love rice because it goes into and with nearly everything. You can add it to soups, casseroles, skillet meals. You can cook it and saute up some veggies and have a delicious stir-fry. And my family finds rice very non-threatening. When I say that dinner is chicken and rice. I have a sure hit on my hands, no matter the form that I have made it in.
Quinoa - I wasn't that big of a couscous fan until I began toasting it. That changed everything for me. I know that a lot of people use it as a swap for rice or grains, but it is too expensive for me to do that. When I make quinoa, I always use it as my protein. That makes some quinoa and frozen veggies an amazing for you dinner, packed with nutrition and very filling.
Lentils - these are another one of my favorite cheap and quick proteins. I love beans, but cooking them from dry honestly takes more time that I have 90% of the time. Lentils only take 20-30 minutes and since they don't look or taste like beans, the bean haters at my house eat them.
Pasta and Jar Sauce - This is one of my dinner emergency kits. My kids love noodles and white sauce, and they love spaghetti, so on those nights when practice runs late or I forgot to get food out of the freezer, this is our backup plan. We have found a few prepared sauces that we really like and I feel good about eating and feeding my family. And a jar of sauce and a package of pasta can feed a family for less than 3.00$. It can feed me entire family for less than 6$.
This is a wonderful list from Food $ense that has quite a few pantry foods that are great to have on hand.
And they have put together a list of what you can eat and make with those foods you have on hand. Enjoy!!
