Pantry Inventory Notes and List ~ Spring Preparation

It is always helpful to do a pantry inventory of your "prepared" food storage before another season of harvest arrives. It gives you an idea of what you need to use up and what you may have processed too much of (excess canned goods can always be given away as gifts providing they haven't expired). It would also be wise to go through your freezer and use up anything from last year to make room for a fresh supply (make it a challenge to spend less on groceries by utilizing your reserves, don't buy when you have).

It may look like a poor inventory but I did do a lot of preserving this past year. The reason for the bare shelves it that we were intentional about using what we had. I would focus my menus around our garden, pantry and freezer foods which led to much savings. Our mentality was, what do we have to eat rather than what does the grocery store have to offer. And yes, that means that when cabbages were in season, we ate a lot of cabbage!

Here is a list of our current inventory of pantry items which we prepared ourselves:

• 1 pint of dried lavender
• 2 pints of dried citrus peel
• 1 pint of pickled eggs
• 1 quart of dried zucchini
• 9 quarts of bread and butter pickles
• 5 pints of lemon honey marmalade
• 3 pints of lemon marmalade (traditional)
• 3 pints of strawberry honey jam
• 1 pint of fig jam
• 4 pints of jalapeño rings
• 7 pints of pickled beets
• 1 small jar of lemon pepper
• 5 pints of salsa
• 1 pint of vanilla extract
• 1/2 pint of lemon extract
• 2 quarts of apple cider vinegar

What this list tells me is that we could use more tomatoes (zero inventory left)! You can never can enough tomatoes because they are so versatile (think soup bases, pasta/pizza sauces, Mexican dishes)! Also, the dried bell peppers, pickled cauliflower/carrots, pickled peppers and dill pickles are completely gone so we will try and increase our supply of these this season.

All the fermented food have been consumed so we purchased more Fido jars in order to accommodate more of that kind of food storage. We also purchased three, large, 5 liter Fido jars (I found them on clearance for $3 each and took the last ones!) which will be great for preparing bigger batches of apple cider vinegar when those scraps come in.

Our empty canning jars have been organized in size order and we have restocked our inventory of lids. We are now ready for the next batch of garden goods, are you? 

"The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to,
and the last duty done."

~ George MacDonald

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