The $20/$20 Challenge: Becky from North Carolina’s “Cook From Scratch” Pantry

Seeing the pantries in our $20/$20 Challenge is great, but I also love hearing about reader’s shopping habits. Becky only shops 1-2 times a month! Love that! Here’s her story:

Hi Mavis, I’m Becky from North Carolina. I’d love to show you my pantry and fridges/freezers. My husband and I have 2 kids {7 & 10} and live on 2 1/2 acres with a big vegetable garden. We hope to add chickens and meat rabbits in the next year or so.

I’m a Michael Pollan fanatic and after we watched Food Inc. about 5 years ago, the food we eat has changed dramatically… but the changed happened slowly over time. Now, 5 years later, I make most of our food from scratch. I work from home {daycare provider to 4 little girls under 3} so I have the luxury of rolling out tortillas at nap time or babysitting a pot of stew during the day. We’re always on a budget and it really helps that I make so much from scratch. I’ve been making all of our bread products since this past summer (bread, tortillas, muffins, etc.) and that has saved us a lot of money. I buy flour/oats/grains in bulk from an Amish store whenever I visit my sister in Maryland. I shop once or twice a month… alternating between Costco and Walmart. We stop at Harris Teeter or Food Lion on the off weeks for fresh produce depending on which store has the best sales.

My husband is a high school band director and his fall schedule is a very hectic one. This fall we were lucky enough to buy a huge, upright freezer from our neighbor for only $40! This has been a game changer for me. I started doubling and tripling whatever dinners froze well and putting the leftovers in the upright freezer for hectic nights. I may not make the whole meal ahead…just the component that takes the most time. It’s so nice to pull out a container of homemade spaghetti sauce on a busy night and have a great meal ready in the time it takes to boil the noodles. I also do this with my baking too. I love having a freezer full of bread, rolls, muffins, etc. so we don’t have to buy processed versions at the store. The freezer drawer at the bottom keeps my stash of breakfast smoothie supplies… berries, spinach, etc. This freezer also holds precooked taco meat, pre-cooked chicken, containers of maple syrup, pumpkin puree, and refried beans.

One of the things I loved most about the house we bought a year and a half ago, was the huge wall of pantry cabinets in the kitchen. I looked right past the 60’s wallpaper and the outdated cabinets and saw the storage potential I’d always dreamed of. I have a lot of ingredients in my pantry… grains, baking supplies, dried beans and fruit, potatoes, onions, oils, popcorn (and popper), nuts, teas, etc. I recently bought a few pre-packaged fruit cups and squeeze pouches on a super double coupon sale. I save these for special lunch box “treats”.

The refrigerator in the kitchen is my “working” fridge. The foods we’re eating in the next few days are kept here. Extras are kept in the fridge/freezer in the garage. The small freezer attached is used for our smoothie ingredients (mostly frozen bananas), dog toys (filled with treats), and anything waiting to be taken downstairs to a deep freezer. I try not to waste anything so I’m always looking through the fridge to see what needs to be used up. I love coming up with creative (okay, weird) meals using whatever we have left in the fridge. On top of the fridge I keep daycare kid snacks and any extra foods I can’t fit in our narrow pantry shelves.

We have a chest freezer in the garage that is mostly used for storing ground venison. We’re lucky enough to have a friend who is able to kill 2 deer each year for our family. We pay for the processing and the ground venison that lasts us a year only costs us about $2/lb. It’s delicious meat at a great price. I keep a few random items in this freezer like the lard I render and a few odds and ends from our garden {and Costco}.

And finally, I have an extra fridge/freezer in the garage. In the fridge, I keep our extra supplies like milk, eggs, cheese, etc. that would take up too much space upstairs. This fridge is also handy during holidays and garden season. The freezer attached holds my husband’s workday lunches {leftover dinners} and my soup stash. Whenever I make a pot of soup, I freeze a few portions and add them to the door of this freezer for a quick weekday lunch. I freeze a few gallons of water in milk jugs to use in coolers and to take up space in the freezer making it more efficient. I move them around to different freezers depending on which one has the space to spare. I keep large bags of frozen vegetables from Costco in this freezer too if I can make it all fit.

So, yes, it’s a lot of food and a lot of fridges and freezers, but it’s a system that I really love and make work for our family. I waste very little food and have so much fun planning and cooking meals. I wonder how I’ll fit this year’s garden produce in those freezers. I might have to break out those canning instructions after all.

Thank you for the chance to share my food system with you. I love your blog and read it every day!
Becky

Are you getting your pantries camera ready? You can participate in the $20/$20 Challenge by simply sending in pictures of your pantry. Find out more about the $20/$20 Challenge: Show Your Pantry – Fill a Pantry!