Spring clean your pantry!

Spring is a lovely time of year.  The birds are chirping, the bees are buzzing and the weather is just right. 

This is the time of year when many of us feel inspired to detox our bodies and declutter our houses.  Giving your pantry a thorough Spring Clean is a great way to help you achieve both goals!

It's time to throw out all those prepackaged, nutrition-void comfort foods that might have snuck into our pantries over winter.  Be ruthless!  If it's not "real" food and it's not brimming with nutritional goodness, it's got to go.  Into the compost also, goes anything WELL past it's expiry date. 

Great!  Now you're ready to fill your pantry with all the ingredients you need to make wholesome, health-giving foods to increase your levels of energy, boost your vitality and promote longevity.  Don't leave any room for processed snacks and other "dead foods".  You don't need em'!

If you need inspiration, here's my 5 Pantry Food Categories and my basic go-to's.

Canned Products

Not all canned products are necessarily nutritionally inferior.  Afterall homesteaders regularly can their produce to see them through the seasons.  But not everyone has the time, nor the garden-space to produce all their own food for canning. 

My Basic Pantry Go-To's

• organic chopped tomatoes

• organic tomato passata

• organic tomato paste

• organic coconut milk

• organic coconut cream

• canned salmon

• all my various home-fermented veggies have a place in my pantry during their 28 day fermentation period

Canned chickpeas, and other lentils are also handy to have on hand.  However, I personally prefer to use dried lentils as I like to soak them to improve digestibility before cooking them.  Also canned lentils usually contain a lot of table salt for preservation purposes which I prefer to avoid.

Oils

Oh how I love using fats and oils in my cooking!  Once upon a time, for many years, I avoided fat, thinking I was doing the best thing for my health .... well I couldn't have been more wrong!  When I finally learned the truth and started eating fats again it took more years just to recover my health.  Now I make sure I have some good fat in each and every meal I eat.

My Basic Pantry Go-To's

• organic raw (fair trade!) coconut oil

• organic virgin olive oil

• organic macadamia oil

• organic hemp seed oil

• organic apple cider vinegar

• organic balsamic vinegar

Grains

My diet would be incomplete without the fibre, vitamins and minerals of grain products.  Storage of grains requires a bit more planning than storing cans and bottles.  Especially when you buy organic.  Unlike common non-organic grains, organic grains have not been sprayed with pesticides and have not been irradiated to kill any of the bugs that naturally hang out in grain plants.  To avoid weevils or moths taking over your pantries you will need to freeze your grains for about a week before storing them in the pantry in a tightly sealed container.

My Basic Pantry Go-To's

• organic rices

• organic rolled oats

• organic quinoa

• organic polenta

• a couple of flours (eg. spelt, khorasan, coconut, green banana etc)

Eventually I would love to substitute some of these grains for some native Australian grains as used by the Aboriginal people for thousands of years

Baking Goods

I'm not much of a baker and don't have a sweet tooth so to the dismay of my children I don't do  a lot of baking.  However, for those times when I need to make a birthday cake or for when the kids want to make muffins or cupcakes, I at least have the basics on hand.

My Basic Pantry Go-Tos

• organic flours (above)

• organic aluminium-free baking powder

• organic bicarb

• quality gelatin

• organic desiccated coconut

• organic sugar (coconut, rapadura, raw)

• organic cacao powder

• vanilla extract

Seeds

We use a variety of seeds for their incredibly rich nutritional value.  Each seed is a power pack of energy.  We use them in smoothies, on our muesli, in salads, in chia balls.  And we love them!

My Basic Pantry Go-Tos

• organic chia seeds

• organic hemp seeds

• organic black seeds

• organic sunflower seeds

• organic pepitas

NOTE: some of these seeds should be soaked and dried before eating for improved digestibility.

Snacks

Our snacks and lunchboxes consist mostly of raw foods - fruits, vegetables, salads, cheeses, olives, salmon, dried crackers, dried nuts, dried fruits.  So the grab and go section of my pantry has to be pretty well maintained.

My Basic Pantry Go-To

• organic dried fruit - lots of varieties

• activated, dried, organic nuts

• plain organic crackers and rice cakes

• organic popping corn

• seaweed snacks