MUST HAVE STAPLE ITEMS FOR YOUR PANTRY!

Welcome to Homestead Happy Mama. My name is Amber and I'm so glad you stopped by the farm. Today I'm making a video that is about what items we need to put in our pantry and I've had a lot of people ask me, what do you put in your pantry? What do you stock up on? And so what I'm going to give you today is just some items that are staples that we use here in our home and it's not right or wrong. You can put whatever you want in your pantry but these are just some things that I know that you can use if anything were to happen. You can make all kind of meals out of what I'm about to tell you. So as you know, things are crazy in the world. We saw what happened in 2020. We saw that the world shut down and I remember that March like we couldn't even go to the grocery store and that was crazy and I'm so thankful that we had things in our pantry but I just sometimes imagine what would have happened if we didn't have things in our pantry and there's really no telling. Like we have four boys. If you're new here, we have four boys. We homeschool them and we're always together and they eat a lot and it's just it's like mama bear's got to make sure her babies have food and I know a husband feels the same way but I'm just saying from a mother's perspective. So anyway, let's get to the list. I will put in the description what's on the list and I may add to this if I think of something else but I'm just to share it with you guys. Okay, so first this budget is close to $300 and I know that might seem like a lot of money but sadly today the more that groceries go up, I'm telling you like this is really not a lot of things but and too like I shop organic. Not everything's organic but I try to get the most natural option that I can. Not everything's organic. I at least try to do like non-gmo and we try to stay away from preservatives and stuff but we're not perfect. We don't always hit the mark. For example, there's a brand of butter that we buy. I think it's land of lakes or something. They're not organic but it just says on the back like like cream, butter, salt or whatever. Cream and salt. I don't know what it says but anyway it's just basic. Like I will choose something like that compared to like organic that's... I want to say it's like eight dollars for four sticks of butter and I can pay like five dollars for I think it's eight sticks of butter. So anyway, yeah that's that's like an option that we do but there's some things like chips for example. Like I'm gonna buy the organic chips because certain brands like Doritos... I know they have they do have some organic chips by Doritos but they have like red dye and things and we just try to stay away from that that sort of stuff but so the items that I have are pasta. This is 10 of those. You can pick up one. You can pick up whatever you want but this is just within the budget of $300. Pasta. This can be the long thin spaghetti noodle pasta. You can get whatever kind of pasta you want but just to have that filling with kids I think that helps too like with... you can add like veggies or whatever and it can be a meal. An easy quick meal. Okay dried beans. Our favorites are black beans, kidney beans, and white beans. There's bazillion beans out there but that's what we like. Rice. We usually get the two really big. I think it's like 20 pounds of rice. We get two of those and I think they're around... depends on what brand you get but I think they're around like $15 a piece. We love pink salt. I grabbed two of those. Those are six dollars each and sometimes I can get lucky and find a different brand and they're like five dollars. I think in a crisis and I'm going to try really hard not to comment on each each item but I will say with salt it can be used in a variety of ways like you can put it in bread. You can put it in baking like desserts and stuff. You put it in your food to make it taste good. So if food doesn't have salt like forget all the other seasonings. If you just have salt or salt with garlic powder or garlic and onion like it helps so much give that flavor just so food can at least be enjoyable. So I always try to grab an extra salt so I put two on there. All-purpose flour. I put five bags on there. I think flour is so essential because you can bake so many different things. If you just eat bread or you just eat biscuits you can you know get nutrition and enjoy it. I love stuff like that. If you have diabetes that's probably not the best option but I know there's different type of flours out there like almond flour has more protein. It is more pricey but that's the only downside. Okay next is cinnamon and these are just a couple of spices. I did salt, cinnamon, garlic powder, pepper. Now we love in Louisiana we love slap your mama but I didn't put that on there. But yes if whatever you love stock up on those. Baking powder two of those. Baking soda two of those. That's with cleaning, with cooking of course. Okay so canned veggies. They're not the best like it's not the best for you health wise. I don't think because it's yeah go study it but just to have those to that security of your pantry being filled there's nothing better than that. It's just having that security so what we usually get is diced tomatoes, corn, black beans, green beans, and white beans. I don't go crazy with the canned food stuff but I love like if I don't have we don't hardly have anything to eat I love going in the pantry and getting like black beans, corn, tomatoes and then if I have like a frozen thing of ground beef I can make like chili or taco soup or whatever so it's or we can just eat just black beans and the tomatoes with like sprinkle a little bit of cheese on there and it's good or eat it with chips or whatever so but yeah you can do green beans whatever kind of beans or canned veggies that you love but that's just what we that's what we use. I don't know about y'all this probably should have been first on the list but coffee like I can't function without coffee. I just can't. I know the Lord made coffee for people like me but at Walmart and if you go to Sam's it's even cheaper but like the big I forgot the measurement or the weight but there's a huge thing of community coffee and it's $15. I think at Sam's it's like double that size and it's $15 and I wish that we had a Sam's that's closer or I would get that but I put two for Walmart so that's like 30 bucks but that would last us like a month or longer um and if we ever got in a bond like that would be an amazing month to have coffee so um two big things of oatmeal that's a that's something that can be used in just about anything um you can literally make oatmeal put fruit in it you can just do plain oatmeal um you can make oatmeal cookies granola um this this video by the way is off the cuff I don't have notes or anything but the list but as far as notes go um more notes so I'm not editing this one I'm not I'm not worrying about lighting and all that stuff I just feel like an urgency to get this video out there and help people so anyway you just have to excuse the the whatever the me about it Dollywood I really want to go there but I don't know if that's going to happen this year um okay oatmeal one more thing um I saw a recipe the other day it's like oatmeal bake or something um I thought it looked so good because it's it's kind of like a breakfast thing um you'll have to maybe I can find it and put it in the comments below um butter you can freeze butter get tons of butter but I just put one thing of butter on here when I say thing I mean package that's just how I talk country um pecans pecans are so expensive you guys it's such a tragedy but um one large thing of pecans is like twenty dollars right now at walmart don't know about where you are but I could just put them in everything that I bake I love banana nut bread um with pecans it's so good I said I wasn't editing this video okay um peanut butter I don't know if it's clear on the gif or whatever yet but I put four things of peanut butter four jars of peanut butter um that's something it's protein and you can it's just an easy meal slap it on some bread and the kids are happy um this is not food but I did put mason jars mason jars you can do so many things with mason jars it's great to have they're great to have if you're canning or um storing things it's it's great like today I've had some extra bird seeds just to feed the birds outside and um I put them in some mason jars and they're really pretty but instead of just balling it up in the bag I was like I'm gonna put this in there but um as far as emergency or whatever they're just really good for canning and I always grab some because I'm telling you this year we've we've gotten really really lucky but last year and the year before um it was so hard to find jars I mean I went to every store that I could think of that would have them and they never had them cornmeal for cornbread one thing of that olive oil I love grabbing one or two extra oils that's another thing with like butter like you have to have that to cook with um I've tried not before and it's really hard um just your food sticks to the pan um it's not fun now back in the day they did bacon grease like if you had bacon then you had the grease to cook your food and we've actually done that one time on vacation we didn't want to go to the store and I was like we let's just try the bacon grease I don't know if it's healthy for you but it worked and we got past them um potatoes regular and sweet potatoes um we love the yellow ones for the regular um not big on the I forgot what they're called russet or whatever russell almost said russell I really am tired um this is like I said off the cuff video now what I love about potatoes is they can last a really long time in your pantry or if you have a cupboard or whatever you call it um if you have like a gosh what's the word um downstairs storage basement there we go if you have like a basement um yeah potatoes if it's in a dark area it will last very long time and I love it because it's a great staple food spam I'm not a fan of spam um I think you can dress it up but if you're in one of those situations where there's nothing to eat it does have protein um the only thing I don't like about spam is it's very salty and I just can't get past that but if you're starving I don't think you'll be too picky about that um canned tuna canned chicken breast these are sources of protein I'm very big on protein because if I just try to live off of sugar or starches or veggies I get really weak um with my blood sugar uh so I try to balance it out with protein speaking of sugar I put sugar and brown sugar um with baking and with having children you have to have the sugar on hand especially if you like sweet tea um strawberry jelly that's to go with those peanut butter sandwiches these are all your condiments um I wrote strawberry jelly ketchup barbecue sauce mayo mustard um then this is just a treat but it's pretty filling and easy to make like on a gas stove popcorn um we love popcorn around here tea yeast for the bread um I honest to goodness I know this sounds crazy and this is supposed to be like a farming homestead channel I've never made real bread I've done biscuits and pie crust but I have never made homemade bread but I want to and I'm soon I'm about to learn about that but um the yeast for the bread I think it's called like fast acting yeast I have no idea what it's called but um because I didn't write it down of course but I've heard that that's better than like the older way to do it older is not the right word but um real maple syrup because real maple syrup I'm not talking about the one that it's not real it's it's got like high fructose corn syrup um and all kind of additives and stuff in it but I'm talking about the real pure maple syrup and you can get like a really big container of it I want to say it's three pounds or something for like twenty dollars it used to be twelve but with the recession or inflation or whatever you want to call it um now it's twenty dollars but yeah um I love it because you can do so much as a sweetener with it put on pancakes put it on oatmeal put it in your coffee it's so versatile I love it granola bars this is another treat um I love to make our own granola bars with a recipe that I have with oatmeal and um and something else okay I might have to edit this I don't know I'm not doing it I'm not you just have to take take me as I am okay granola bars they're really pricey these days but they're good to have on hand they never last here though we try them okay moving on to things that are mostly not food I think I see one thing on there but toilet paper paper towels if you're a lady get your lady products tampons pads whatever toothpaste bars of soap deodorant laundry detergent um I am starting to do more simple things with my laundry detergent um ways that you can stretch it out or save it you can get another container whatever a jug or whatever you like and you can pour half and then put water to dilute it and it goes a long way or you can do more natural ways um you can use bacon bacon soda um vinegar it may not smell the best but you can wash your clothes in those two things and maybe a couple of drops of essential oils like whatever your favorite smell is um I like lavender or orange I really love orange um I just went on a rabbit trail I don't remember where I left off um toothpaste bars of soap deodorant laundry detergent dish soap same thing you can wash dishes with that kind of stuff but get grab your dish soap if you don't want to be like that um pens and paper batteries like those are the things we don't think about that are so helpful Advil um yes this is a more natural channel but if you've ever had a horrible fever or the flu or um whatever and you you feel terrible you may want to take some Advil um I never take medicine if I can help it um I will hang on to the bitter end but I will say there's times that I've had the flu and just taken Advil and been so grateful that I had that on hand even though it's not good for you um apple cider vinegar white vinegar apple cider vinegar is so good for your body um I'm almost finished here seeds good luck finding seeds right now yeah uh this is a long story I may make another video but recently like yesterday I went to a feed-in seed store and this is not Walmart this is not just any old store this is a store for seeds and um they're always like stocked down with seeds or stocked up however you want to say that and um yeah they hardly had anything on the shelves and I even asked the lady I was like what's going on like y'all always have seeds and she said that the people that they order them from like they cannot get seeds that's scary um so wherever you can find seeds get you it's always good to have on hand um even if you don't have a lot of land even if like it doesn't matter you can always do something with seeds even if it's trading you can trade things for seeds um or people would want them and I put local honey that's also a sweetener that you can use or for health benefits um mix it with some apple cider vinegar and some water and lemon and it's so good so good for you so this total and this is some of these items are organic so they may be a little bit more expensive but um I added everything up and the average I didn't get down to the penny but it's 285 dollars and that's just if you did this once a month um it can really really make your pantry just feel very safe it's helped us a lot and the cool thing is I mean just having that security and knowing that your pantry is is there and if anything were to happen you have something it doesn't have to be perfect and you don't have to look when you go shopping you do not have to buy five things of flour that's just something that we do um because I may not do this every month um if something comes up or the kids get sick or whatever I know hey I have that um this is not just for prepping for the worst this is just everyday life sometimes we get lazy we don't want to go to the store guess what we have a pantry to tap into so um I hope you guys enjoyed this video there's so much more that I want to create here um this is just a last minute thing that I feel like is needed today and I've been kind of quiet about it but um I just have this stirring in my heart that I wanted to help people help wake people up I've made a few comments on my Facebook page and um a lot of my friends they have no idea what I'm talking about um they don't feel the same urgency or they may not even they may be you know so busy with their own life that they don't see the need to even do something like this and I've been we've been feeling it for two years um so I pray that y'all will stay safe out there um just be on guard be wise um the bible says to be uh wise like a serpent and is it a dove hold on I'm going to google that I want to say it's a dove yes and humble as a dove or harmless so we are supposed to be wise and and gentle um when we're wise that doesn't mean we know everything if we're still gentle with people um a lot of times when we're we're wise it's only because of God if we ask for wisdom he will give it to us um and that's what keeps us humble it's not from our own our own intellect or our own doings but it's from him he gives us the wisdom and I just know right now in this time he is calling people to share um I think there's a lot of fear out there we we don't want to share because we might be afraid of what people might think of us um but there's not time for that there's no time to be afraid and to let fear win because we have great things to do right okay well I'm gonna let you guys go and I hope that you would share this video um if if you like to see more of this let me know and I will keep it coming God bless