Pantry Assessment: Rethinking What Our Family Eats

When we began considering what it would be like to dive deeper into the world of preparing better, quality food for our family we started with taking inventory of our pantry and refrigerator. We divided our needs into five main categories: Meat, Diary, Eggs, Produce, and Flour. We hoped if we could, at least, get these staples from close and reliable farmers we’d be making a significant change in our habits to refresh our cooking ingredients.

It’s was very important for us to go slowly through the process of seeking healthier, closer, and consciously purchased ingredients. For a family of six, it is overwhelming to try to change every single food item in the kitchen at once! So we didn’t. It’s also expensive! Although nutritious and safe, we quickly found farmer’s markets and organic grocers were not a more affordable option compared to our former suppliers.

Initially, we decided not to change every single ingredient into organic, locally produced products. It did not fit into the goals we want to accomplish. We figure, we’d like to change the majority of our ingredients to have an impact on the way we eat and the environment but there are many things we would like to hang onto.

From there we began our research to find local farmers to meet our needs. This meant taking several field trips to the farmers market with pen and paper in hand to make note under each category (Meat, Diary, Eggs, Produce, Flour) potential farmers represented at the market. Then we returned home, jumped online and did some studying.

We narrowed down our list to a few possibilities for each category before purchasing any products. Once we thought we found a farmer to fit the needs and values our family wanted to support we made a purchase. We bought the product and individually tested them at home, in recipes, and asked our crew for feedback.

There were definitely some tweaks made after reviewing each product but I think we are finally starting to get to a place where we have solid staples for each category. Some ship directly from the farmer to our doorstep. For example, I can get ten to twenty-five pounds of flour directly from the miller to our home in about a day!

Others we have to be very intentional to plan our visit into the city to pickup about every two weeks. For instance, our butcher, which is a great one-stop shop for locally raised meat, cut to order so we don’t have to do any of that ourselves.

I hope this helps get you started in converting your kitchen with fresher food for you family!