7 Basic Food Items to Stock Now
Today I want to talk about 7 basic food items to stock now! You know, I really have to think about listening to the news. It doesn’t matter which channel, it’s just not uplifting, right? Yes, I want to know what’s going on in our country and the world.
It’s very concerning to me about our food chain. Now, I’m not talking about hoarding food, I’m talking about stocking your pantry with the food you will eat. You’ve heard the slogan, “store what you eat and eat what you store.”
If there was ever a time I have suggested you should stock up, it’s more important now than ever before. We saw what has happened last few years, it was not fun for us based on the level of challenges brought on by bad weather, sickness, unemployment, and more. If we needed toilet paper, paper towels, bottled water, over-the-counter meds, and more, the shelves were empty in many places. That doesn’t count the issues with the empty food shelves, and that’s why I’m suggesting you evaluate your storage inventory and consider stocking up on critical items NOW.
7 Basic Food Items to Stock Now
Rice
We have talked about rice before, but I feel strongly you need to stock up even more unless you have what will last you for an extended period. I have about 100 pounds in 5-gallon buckets, plus some small containers like shown below. If I see rice on sale for a good price, I buy it. Mark and I both love white sticky rice.
My favorite rice is Jasmine rice. I don’t store brown rice, it goes rancid too quickly for me.
If you need help with how to cook rice, please check out this post, How to Cook Rice. I tried cooking my rice in an Instapot, but it made a mess. I went back to using my rice cooker. I need a quick clean-up after making rice. This is the one I have, Rice Cooker.
You can make so many meals with rice, and stretch a meal by adding more rice. Rice will fill the belly and that’s the reason we need to stock up. Here are some of my favorite rice recipes, 7 Easy Rice Recipes For Every Day Of The Week and don’t forget Fried Rice.
Beans/Canned Meats
By now you know you can eat rice and beans and beans and rice and be okay for a few days. We can add other things, but let’s be real here. We need to fill the bellies of our family and possibly some neighbors who have not planned for any disasters.
If you can make Tortillas you can make bean burritos. If you don’t have a tortilla maker, I recommend this one. Tortilla Maker If you have a cast-iron pan, you can make so many things.
I highly recommend this set, Cast Iron Pans. In case you missed this post on how to make tortillas, How To Make Flour Tortillas From Scratch. If you have crackers, or know how to make your own crackers, you can make chicken salad dip with mayonnaise just like Costco serves.
If you can make biscuits, you can make Cream Chip Beef and scoop it over those biscuits. Homemade Biscuits are easy to make. Please practice making items from scratch and teach your kids and grandkids these great skills.
Peanut Butter/Honey/Jam
I confess, Mark and I eat peanut butter and jelly/jam sandwiches at least once a week, maybe twice a week. We started buying smaller jars of both peanut butter and jam since there’s just the two of us most of the time. Peanut butter doesn’t stay fresh for very long, so smaller jars work for us.
It’s certainly different than when we had our four girls at home. We bought peanut butter in #10 cans! Things have changed for sure! We’ve been known to have peanut butter and honey sandwiches as well.
White Flour/Wheat
Right now, you may have trouble getting hard white wheat, or any wheat for that matter. Unless you have a wheat grinder, I would not stock it. Some people will tell you that you can barter with it, okay, if that works for you.
I’m not going to have 500 pounds of hard white wheat stored just to barter, but that’s me. I would stock white flour because we can always make cookies, cakes, white bread, tortillas, crackers, and biscuits.
Just giving you the heads up about a hand crank grinder, it is not easy to use. I have an awesome one and it’s still hard to hand crank. I use my electric one weekly to make my whole wheat bread.
My hand crank unit is from Montana, I saved for 5 years to buy it. It’s called the GrainMaker, and now they make a smaller one. I have a few electric wheat grinders, but my favorite is the KoMo Classic Wheat Grinder. I will use my solar-powered battery unit to power this one if we lose power for extended periods of time.
Canned Vegetables/Fruits
We will be so glad if we have learned to garden, but if we have a drought and need fruits and vegetables, we can eat these and use them to make so many meals. Be sure and save the liquid so you have extra “water” when needed.
Take your family to the store when they have case lot sales and stock up on the ones your family will eat. Be sure to get input from each family member when deciding what to buy. If you can fruit and pressure can your vegetables, you are a rock star! It’s all about being prepared with food your family will eat.
Sauces/Salsa/Spaghetti Sauce
When I was raising my family we had spaghetti once a week, tacos once a week, and homemade pizza once a week. So, it’s only natural for me to stock up on spaghetti sauce, enchilada sauce, pizza sauce, and salsa. Lots of salsa, just so you know!
Mark loves tacos with ground beef, spaghetti with meatballs, and pizza with pepperoni. I could easily skip the meat! Just think of all the meals we can fix with spaghetti sauce. Of course, spaghetti, but also lasagne and manicotti! With enchilada sauce, we can make enchiladas super fast!
This is why I store flour tortillas in the freezer. I buy the huge packs from Costco and separate them into 6 tortillas per freezer bag.
Then in the freezer they go, I will thaw a package in the refrigerator when I need them, which is almost every day, just saying!
Pasta
Here are a few boxes of pasta I store. I also store them in Rubbermaid 8-quart containers. The boxes of pasta shown below will be used for my series, “Soup In a Jar” that I will be starting again very soon.
All other pasta is removed from boxes and placed in 8-quart Rubbermaid Containers with Lids.
These are the 8-Rubbermaid Containers and Lids that I buy. I give these as wedding gifts too!
Final Word
7 Basic Food Items to Stock Now
My hope is that you have stocked up with those items your family will eat. The price of food is going to continue to rise so, therefore, it will cost us more to feed our families.
So many of us are on a fixed income, whether our budget is $10,000.00 or $1,500.00 a month, we have to live within our means.
And it is hard, really hard. For those who were raised to cook from scratch, we are lucky, or blessed, you could even say. We’ve learned to cook using basic items that are good for you and can easily be used to make all kinds of meals without having to run to the store or fast food outlet to feed our family.
I’m so glad my mother taught me to make bread, biscuits, and crackers. Oh, and pizza! Keep prepping, we must. May God Bless this world, Linda
Copyright Images: Kitchen Utensils AdobeStock_207898950 by Nitr
Things are a wreck and about to get worse.
If your limited as many people are. I’d get meat, rice and vegetables. If all you can do is one can on your budget then accept that because your still better off than yesterday.
A lot of preparedness focus is on weapons which are necessary but we are in a slow boil situation rather than an immediate event. Food/water becomes more critical in these I noticed overseas. You can look at it as an investment. Fresh green beans are $4 lb right now. They sure weren’t in 2019 but those cans I bought are still good.
Right now is the time to do everything you can. The times of “well next time” I think have passed.
Hi Matt, I totally agree with you. I like the idea of food being an investment. It’s like car insurance, we need it, if we don’t have to use it, at least we had it ready to go. I agree with the slow boil. If people haven’t stocked up, well, they were advised by many to just do it. God helps those who help themselves. You are right “well next time” is gone. Great comment, Linda
I’ve recently been grocery shopping and both supply and prices are rough.
I stock canned tomatoes along with pasta sauces. I can always make my own sauce using canned tomatoes and herbs.
Hi Leanne, I agree we can make our own sauces if we have the tomatoes. I am seeing prices higher than ever before. I do not know how people will feed their families. Hopefully, people know how to cook from scratch. Linda
I’m still surprised at what’s “NOT” in the stores, on the shelves, etc. I’m not a WalMart fan but sometimes I have to go there. I went shopping Friday at 7:30am after sending my grandson off to school. No milk, no eggs, the majority of the dairy section was wiped out. No meats, no bread, several other aisles and most of the coolers were empty. Big bare spaces all over the place. It could be they were just waiting for trucks but one employee said they’d been out of dairy products for a week! I get it that we haven’t recovered from Covid, lack of truck drivers, etc. but I honestly do NOT see this getting better any time soon. When I’ve seen something I use regularly, I buy extra. I’m truly blessed to be able to do that. That even goes for fabric for my quilting hobby! Amazon’s been a lifesaver for us as well as Chewy.com. I have a very supportive husband who agrees with my thinking. We’ve always done “copy canning” with groceries that have a shelf-life. We usually buy 2 to use and 2 to store. It’s definitely helped us…and our grown children…out over this horrible period of time.
Keep helping us and reminding us of what we need to do so we don’t get too lax! It surely pays to be prepared.
Hi Robbie, I keep hearing shortages of butter, milk, and eggs. I’m very concerned that’s why I wrote today’s post. I agree with you some people get comfortable and do not check the shelves. And some people are just scraping buy, I get it. I’ve been there. I grew up very poor but didn’t know we were poor. It’s natural for me to pick up extras at the grocery store and cook from scratch. For others, they have never been taught. You and I were lucky. I have heard fabric is getting harder to get. I’m sure you have too. Stay safe, stay well. Linda
The last time I was at Walmart here in central Missouri the bread,milk and eggs were well stocked. The thing I noticed being out was packets of Fleshmann’s yeast, dry package pizza dough mix,some boxes of Mac and Cheese. I know a few other things were low but these I noticed the most. One thing I did was when I bought my garden seeds for this year I bought extra for next year. I have been blessed by living in the country and close to a small river down so I can
buy tomatoes to can whole and also juice. I also have my own fruit trees for fresh fruit or to make jelly.
As Matt said about buying a can extra if you can. Today I had to go to my local grocery store for milk so I
looked over the Ad and since I have their shoppers card I was able to get a bottle of Italian salad dressing for 99 cents.
I made sure I bought one to add to my stock. I plan on doing a shopping when I get paid for HBA items. Then I will get more food items if my budget allows if not then October will be a food stock up month.
Hi June, I love hearing you are stocking up in so many ways. You are blessed to have fruit trees! Great idea on buying stuff when it’s on sale, it all adds up and fills the pantry at the same time. Good job, Linda
Hi Linda,
The dairy section and paper plates and such were depleted in Walmart in Marshall, Mo on Friday. Aldi dairy was low too. I went to Aldi today when I had a little more time and saw the jars of marinara were only 85 cents. I had not bought any since early winter, when it was $1.35, and I thought that was cheap. I always buy cases. So I have not needed any. However, I bought 2 cases today. I will probably go buy more this week. My daughter will buy it from me and she can’t get out as often. We have to be always looking for good sales on what we use. I think it is going to get worse. Dave Ramsey says when a woman goes shopping she is hunting, lol!
God Bless You, Jackie
Hi Jackie, I guess we are hunters!! That’s too funny! Wow, thanks for the heads up on the dairy and paper plates. I will go check tomorrow and see how the shelves are here. I totally agree it is going to get worse. Hopefully, people are stocking up. Linda
Rice cookers are great, but I swear by the Zojirushi fuzzy logic cookers. Last one I bought was Zojirushi NS-TSC10 5-1/2-Cup (Uncooked) Micom Rice Cooker and Warmer, 1.0-Liter for my sister since her family loves rice and she sometimes runs out of burners on the stove top for family meals. It’s great to set and basically forget it – you just rinse the rice if you don’t want sticky rice and then press cook once the kind of rice is selected. It will cook then keep the rice warm without worrying about the timing. Any meal that uses rice I start a batch an hour or two before the meal and when we’re ready to eat I just fluff and serve. And with a nonstick pot cleanup is a breeze.
I usually cook extra and then can microwave the leftovers quickly for other meals, especially for lunches that I take to work.
Hi DMWalsh, oh I love that brand. I’m looking at getting a bigger rice cooker for the same reason you mentioned. Leftovers, I love leftover rice. Great comment, Linda
Leftover rice is also the best starting point for making fried rice. Works better than freshly cooked rice, so I always try to keep a couple pint soup containers of rice in the fridge and some chunked leftover meat in the freezer in case I need to pull something together quickly for dinner.
Hi DMWalsh, I LOVE fried rice! I may make that for dinner! Love it! Linda
Hi Linda,
Covid is flaring again here in East TN so I haven’t been grocery shopping inside a Walmart. Last week in another local store, the encap displays were only one row deep of product.
Appreciate your reminders to be ready for whatever is over the horizon. This morning I was straightening a closet and ran across an old Augason Farms can. It showed the mfg date but the “best by” wasn’t shown so I thought I would look it up on their website. I tried several times but got a message my browser was redirecting, but it never connected. Do you know if something is up with them? Thanks
Hi Grammy, what is the product? I can compare it to Thrive Life??? Freeze-dried or dehydrated? Thanks for the heads up on Walmart shelves. Covid is flaring here as well in Utah. What is the mfg. date, let’s see if we can figure this out. Linda
Hi Grammy, I saw this phone number for Augason Farms on FaceBook. (800) 878-0099
They also have a website: https://www.augasonfarms.com/
It is a #10 can Whole Eggs that was mfg 4 Sep 2012. Thanks, but I didn’t mean for to hunt it for me. Didnt know if Augason was out of service. Thanks again.
Hi Grammy, I wasn’t sure if they were out of business or service either. My whole eggs from Thrive Life say they have a shelf life of 3 years unopened and 1 year if opened. I would call that phone number. Eggs typically do not have a very long shelf life. Linda
Best food storage for Children, Babies are Cans of Apple Sauce, Cans of Yams, Cans of Milk, Cans of Water. Cans of Orange Juice , purchase fast and quick, as I was orderly on -line Computer Foods , the items were being listed as : SOLD OUT. Food is Everyday. Use wheeled Coleman Coolers for Storage of Foods, Rice , Beans, Dry Bags of Milk. DO NOT DEPEND ON THE FEMA GOVERNMENT TO SAVE YOU. Save yourself now ! Walmarts, Targets, Amazon Food will run out of Food. Emergency Food is everyday, Water is everyday.
Hi Celestial, thank you for your comment, I hope others realize they must be prepared. Hard times ahead, Linda
I have a case of peanut butter in the freezer..on bottom, I just stack on top since it is like a table top.
Tastes great and I’ve had it in there for years
Regarding shelves being bare–I went to a store run by Krogers like an Aldis. I decided to go down each aisle and get what I needed due to the covid restrictions being discussed.
I have lots of food and have had for years…just needed to be sure–I really didn’t need anything and that surprised me. I use sweet pickles a lot for tuna, chicken and ham salad. Those little cans are just right now that Gene is gone. Well, the pickles were $2.10 and I have never paid that for them–can’t say what I paid since it’s been so long since I bought a case.
I have tuna from before the oil spill and haven’t bought since.
One thing about Rulers..they don’t always have the same items stocked. Like the little cans of tomato sauce for my meat loafs. But, I came home and had a case –didn’t remember buying.
I pray for our nation and our patriots during this time and hope all can survive.
I will share something I do now…it is working out great for me. I have so much ground beef—I prepare meals and divide in 2 cup Pillsbury plastics (3/$1) and the night before, I take out what I want for the next day.
Yesterday, I bought hamburger buns and froze them in ziplok bags in twos. I made sloppy joes and froze them in tiny containers enough for two sandwiches.
I have veg/beef soups/chili/spag.sauce/white beans/brown beans/taco sauce/macaroni strudle(I made up a dish)/cabbage beef soup (stolen recipe from Shoneys)…and it is so nice to have most of meal done.
Well, take care and try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.
Hi JayJay, oh YOU are a rainbow in someone’s cloud, I LOVE that!! It sounds like you are so prepared with small meals prepared and frozen. I like the hamburger bun trick and the hamburger frozen in small 2 cup portions. I love sloppy joes! That sounds so good right now! Stay well, stay safe, Linda
JayJay, I forgot to say, I never thought about freezing peanut butter, that’s a great tip! Linda
I am a dietary director for a hospital. I have been having trouble getting everything I order for the cafeteria as well as for the patients. It’s random too. One week, I can’t get Italian dressing, another week, I can’t get croissants. Last week, I couldn’t get fajita beef but there are always things out of stock. It’s to the point that I change the cafeteria menu more often than not. One employee asked me last week “what are we supposedly having for lunch today” LOL…well, it’s not really funny but you get it. Schools and restaurants are having these issues as well. If us “big buyers” are having such a hard time, I mean, there’s your sign, right? Better get it when you see it because it’s getting more difficult by the week!!
Hi Des Moines Daisy, wow, that would not be fun! You think your menu is this and then you have to switch it out. Fajita beef sounds good! LOL! We better get it while we can, is right! Praying you can get what you need for the hospital, thank you for what you do!! Linda