Extreme Preserving/Stocking Up

From the country...

Bulk food we purchase through a buying group. Bulk flour, coconut milk, tomatoes (we didn't get ours put away this year) rice, rice milk(for Lucas), oats, and a ridiculously big bag of bay leaves

The pantry all tidy...

jars of preserves,

herbs, beans, etc. in brown paper bags

Has anyone watched the show, Extreme Couponing? If you haven't here is a brief/slightly biased take on the show. People collect an gazillion coupons, go to their grocery stores and buy hoards of food and pay say $8.76 for a bill of say $600 smackers. While on one hand I think they are genius, men and women spending hours with their scissors, saving their families thousands of dollars a year. On the other hand, I look at their heaping carts (often multiple carts) and see a mountain of highly processed foods in a box.

So, over here we practice a little bit of extreme preserving/stocking up. Instead of a heaping cart of food we have a heaping freezer of frozen fruits/ vegetables, a pantry that makes a farm Momma smile, and a basement with crates of storage vegetables. I know that this lifestyle is not for everyone, I just wanted to weigh in here on how we live. While the women on the show gleams about her room of canned goods and toilet paper, I am equally as thrilled with my little pantry fully stocked. It reminds me of the hours of work and fills me with a sense of accomplishment and the best part is it will feed our growing family over the winter months.

I love my pantry. It has the sturdiest shelves. Shelves that are relied on around here year after year, to keep our food safe and sound. I love that someone many, many years ago painstakingly built these shelves in this little tiny space, for their food to be stored away. I wonder if that family beamed over the harvest placed on the shelves before them, they way that I beam about ours.