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Originally Posted by *Jessica*  But if things don't get tight then eventually the food will just expire and have to be thrown away, or donated to a food pantry shortly before the expiration date. That's just wasting money.
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I just realized that this is one of the two reasons I do regular pantry challenges.
The first is when things are unexpectedly tight for some reason, and the second is a few times a year to identify and creatively use up the oddball things I'm storing that we don't eat regularly.
Right now I am faced with a jar of capers, some rice wine vinegar, one Clif bar, some arborio rice, brown rice syrup, almond butter, figs, chickpea flour, and frozen shredded zucchini. Nothing wrong with those foods; they just don't come up in our regular meals, so I have to make the extra effort to use them up. They've been sitting in my pantry for too long. Also I bought a bushel of delicata squash earlier this year - fabulous squash, but I'm the only one in the family who likes it, and there is only so much one person can eat, so I have to make an effort to use that up, too.
When stocking a pantry I start with the basics and anything I see on a super-good deal that stores well and that we use often. We can always use brown rice, for example, and lentils, and there are certain seasonings we use frequently. Baking staples. Peanut butter. Popcorn. Frozen veggies and berries. Dried nori. Raisins and nuts. Olive oil and condiments that we actually use (ketchup, mustard, salad dressing, mayo, salsa).
I am sure this has been said, but if I were you I'd make a list of the foods I felt I couldn't manage without - not just in a crisis, but for everyday cooking. Then I'd figure out which ones were easily storable. I have spaces in my house where I store grains/beans, and canned goods, and freezer items, and root-cellary things (cold/dark but not freezing), and dried foods.
I built my pantry up over time. If something was on a great sale, I'd buy six or twelve of them, or a case, or a 5# or 25# bag, or whatever. I'd try to get through until the next great sale when I could stock up again. I started with very little in my pantry except for those surplus odds and ends of things we didn't use much, and gradually got the hang of stocking and replenishing so that we normally eat mostly out of our pantry, with the exception of a few fresh foods that we buy or grow. Most of my grocery shopping now is just replenishing the pantry.
Good luck.
I also have quite a few deep rectangular containers for storing various shapes of pasta. We get those little bitty fast ants periodically throughout the year (we're in the South so it's pretty warm all year) and if I leave just 1 thing in the original packaging then I am guaranteed to find ants in the pantry a day or so later. Tupperware is expensive but lasts forever. You can often find it for sale cheap at yard sales if you aren't picky about the colors matching or anything like that.
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