How to stock a Healthy Pantry

It is important for me, before I begin, that you know that I know that I am in a privileged position right now to have a home where I can store large amounts of food with ease, and that I am fortunate enough to have the money to do so. I do need you to know though that Josh and I have gone through difficult times in the last 7 years: we have lived in a very small house where we have had to stash our stores of food under a staircase, we have been with very little money, to the point where I couldn’t afford a book if I had wanted one, let alone new clothes. However, I have always prioritised food. We have had to have less of the fun stuff at times, but we have always had organic wholefoods on our plates, and I have always found a way to have a full pantry of essentials so I can cook healthy and delicious food. Other things have been sacrificed for me to do so, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

With 2020 being as it has been, and Brexit imminent, there are many people that have predicted that we are going to have food shortages in 2021. I have been aware of this for a while, so I have been building up a store. The mainstream newspapers are now reporting it too, so I do think it is worth being mindful of getting some bits in stock.

Below I have listed out items in my pantry/store in order of real essentials, the very useful to haves, the nice to haves, what I keep in my fridge always, and then the weekly add ons (one of which is essential and one less so, but both not things you can really store). Everything I buy is organic, and always has been. I will not tolerate chemicals on our food, and when times were tighter, this just meant less variety, but always the best.

My goal here is to help you easily see what you would need to have stock of to be able to make simple but SUPER healthy meals, on a relative budget (and then outlining add ons if money meant you could afford more). So many people are boggled with where to start with eating this way, but I promise as you start to build your collection of things (most of which last a long time) the other stuff gets weeded out and you will soon wonder how you hadn’t always lived this way.

Please note that I know these ‘essentials’ are relative to the lifestyle most of us have in this country, but certainly not all. I know that this list would shrink massively if we had to live like some have to. I personally love to know I have a stock so I can help anyone who is ever in need, I am grateful every day for the food we have, and never take it for granted.

My dream is that every human can nourish themselves this way. May the breakdown of systems happening around us now lead to that being a reality, and may we all be there, prepared and knowledgeable, in order to support those who are ready to re-learn the innate wisdom of using what nature provides us, and can provide enough for all of us, every human, to be healthy and well, when it is allowed to.

The essentials

Flours

We are gluten free, so I always have a good stock of the following flours. For a long time I made my own gluten free bread from scratch (something I now pay a bit extra to get in a quicker form), and these flours are what were in it. They also go into pancakes and cakes. If it came to it I could survive on just having oats though, as they make a simple flour for cakes and biscuits.

• Teff flour

• Sorghum flour

• Brown rice flour

• Ground almonds

• Arrowroot

Canned legumes - protein packed, ready to go, for stews, curries, soups, and dips.

• Chickpeas

• Lentils

• A variety of different beans (aduki, mung, butter, bortoli)

• Baked beans (yes we eat them, we go for Biona or Mr Organic)

Dried legumes - a little more thought needed for these as you need to soak and then cook. I like to batch soak and cook a load at once and then freeze them, so they are easy to use.

• Chickpeas 

• Lentils

• A variety of different beans (as above)

Coconut products - I use all Biona

• Unrefined coconut oil

• Coconut sugar

• Coconut cream (solid block)

Nuts and seeds 

• Almonds (I use these almost solely to make milk - we use 1 cup a day, which makes us just over 1 litre of milk for porridge, smoothies, hot chocolates and baking)

• Pumpkin seeds (I soak and then dehydrate these to make them more bioavailable, and then toast them in a pan with tahini or blend with nutritional yeast and sea salt for a delicious cheesy sprinkle)

• Sunflower seeds (as with pumpkin seeds above)

Grains

• Brown rice

• Porridge oats (can also be used for oat milk and to be made into flour)

• Millet (I blend this to make flour for some recipes)

• Buckwheat (you can make flour from this, cook it as a grain with your meal, but my favourite thing to do is sprout it and dehydrate it to make healthy ‘rice crispies’)

Grain products

• Brown rice pasta of every shape and form (we buy Doves Farm)

Spices and herbs (I know there are so many more but these are the ones I use the most, and they are so cheap and store well)

• Turmeric

• Cumin

• Coriander

• Cardamom

• Garam Masala

• Paprika

• Ginger

• Cinnamon

• Nutmeg

• Chili

• Oregano

• Basil

Extras

• Of course salt and pepper

• Extra virgin olive oil

• Apple cider vinegar (with mother)

• Passatta

• Tinned tomatoes

• Peanut or almond butter

• Tamari

• Nutritional Yeast

• Herbal teas

• Cacao powder

• Dates

• Dried yeast

• Bicarbonate of soda

• Baking powder

• (I make my own stock, which I will share the recipe for another time, but you also need some stock of some form)

Sprouting foods

These are amazing to have on hand. They are cheap, small to stash away, and PACKED full of nutrients. You can find instructions of how to sprout online, but they are super easy to do! I may do a separate post on just this later this month.

Below are some of my favourite things to sprout.

• Broccoli seeds are an INCREDIBLE source of nutrients and so easy to sprout

• Alfafa

• Sunflower (which you can sprout into little tiny sunflower plants on your windowsill in a little soil, and then chop and eat, or just sprout a tiny amount and then dehydrate)

• Buckwheat (as above)

• And then you can sprout any of your smaller dried beans from above, such as mung, aduki, and for sure lentils

Very useful to have

Flours

• White rice flour

• Doves Farm gluten free self-raising flour

• Doves Farm gluten free brown bread flour

Nuts and seeds

• Hemp seeds

• Pecans

• Cashews

Cacao bits (I struggled with not putting this in the essentials - ha!)

• Cacao paste

• Cacao butter

Other bits

• Maple syrup 

• Oat cakes

• Tahini

• Coconut aminos

• Coconut milk (50% plus)

• Tinned soup (we love Amy’s Lentil Soup and Suma’s Mushroom Soup)

• Dried apricots

• Dried figs

• Brown rice noodles (we buy - they have a lot of varieties of gluten free noodles - check though that they are gluten free if this is what you want, as some brown rice noodles contain wheat)

The nice to haves

A random mis-match of things, but all extras I now I have, now we have a bit more to spend

• Coconut whipping cream (amazing on hot chocolate)

• Vanilla powder

• Quinoa

• Sushi rice

• Nori wraps

• Rice paper wraps

• Risotto rice

• Fevertree Tonic Water (the one with fruit sweetener, not sugar)

• Medjool dates (this is all I have these days, but I used to not be able to afford them, so I know they are a luxury)

• Cacao nibs

• OmBar (I am adding this for Josh, as he always needs a stash - I think he might say it is essential!)

• Olives

• Capers

In the fridge 

I stock up our fridge once a month

• Taifun Basil tofu (these are nice to haves now)

• Taifun Turmeric tofu (again now nice to haves)

• Fermented tofu

• Taifun grill tofu sausages

• Naturali Vegan Butter

• CoYo yoghurt

• Nush vegan cream cheese (a nice to have)

• Violife cheddar block (we rarely eat this but occasionally it comes in handy)

In the freezer

I tend to stock up our freezer once every 2 months

• Berries (mixed and individual bags of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and cherries - to throw into smoothies and make homemade ‘ice cream’ with)

• Peas

• Green beans

• Spinach

• Bananas (peeled and frozen in bags for smoothies)

• Clive’s gluten free pies (these were not there when money was short apart from for treats)

• Booja booja ice cream (again definitely not there when money was short - 1 tub every couple of months if we were lucky)

The weekly add ons

• Vegetables and fresh fruit - these are of course essential but you can’t keep them in your pantry (apart from squashes, potatoes (including sweet), and onions - which I do keep a good stash of in the garage to ensure they are cold) - I buy all of our veg and fruit from Riverford

• Treats - for example tonight we had The White Rabbit pizzas (vegan and gluten free), which we eat rarely and probably are the only example I can think of, of something that we eat outside of our usual stash

I hope this has been helpful. I know it will reach you all at different stages of your journey to returning to nature for optimum health. Know I am here, truly, if you ever have any questions. I know it can seem daunting, but it need not be. Take it slowly but steadily, and you will be where you want to be in no time. Don’t wait though. Now is the time to dive in, now more than ever. Our health is the most important thing we can prioritise, and being prepared is key, now and always.

Below you see a little gallery (click to look to look at all 3 images) of my messy but well stocked garage. You can perhaps see why I didn’t use it for the main photo…it isn’t exactly photo worthy, but I wanted to share it with you so you could get a feel for my life and my reality. When we had a smaller house, with no storage whatsoever, we had about 1/3 of this stock still, all crammed under a staircase, and just topped it up more regularly.

Twice a year I run Seasonal Cleanses. They are just £1 a day for 31 days, and they give you the foundations of how to nourish your body, and the mindset support to make you want to, all within a beautiful community of others striving for the same. You can read more about them here, and to stay in touch about what I will be running them, make sure you have signed up for my weekly Soul Review here.