Organically Aussie

Welcome back friends,

In this post, I thought that I’d share some of the foods I keep on hand and regularly purchase to ensure I can feed my family the scratch made foods I love to make them. Having a fully stocked pantry means that I can make almost anything at anytime if my family requests it.

PANTRY BASICS

• Bakers flour – I get this for bread making as I don’t buy any bread products. I also only buy this when its on sale. We have a small family, so one bag can last us a little over a month, but if you have a larger family, I highly recommend stoking up when its on sale. I am currently looking for an alternative to the flour I currently use, so I will not be sharing the flour I use as yet.
• Plain flour – I make sure to keep a stock of plain flour so I can always make any baked goods that we might want. Again, I am looking for a good alternative to the one I use currently.
• Spelt flour – I use this for feeding my sourdough starter and some baking.
• Sugars – I use an organic raw sugar for all baking, sometimes I will use rapadura sugar if I can find it for a good price (difficult in my area), I also always keep brown sugar, raw local honey and organic maple syrup. I personally don’t like coconut sugar so I rarely buy that.
• Oils/fats – so I always have organic extra virgin olive oil, organic coconut oil and avocado oil. These are the oils I use for cooking and baking with. I also use lard, generally from the nitrite free bacon we get from our local farmer, which is part of our “use as much of the animal as possible” philosophy. I have recently dabbled in using tallow too, so I might talk about that in a future post.
• Cans – I always keep canned tomatoes, black beans, lentils, cannelloni beans and chickpeas at all times. They are essential to healthy cooking and having these items on hand means you have a healthy meal very quickly.
• Rice and pasta – I keep white rice (whichever variety is on sale when I need to buy it). I choose to purchase pasta that is made in Italy and processed slowly rather than the lower quality home brand organic pasta. Wheat grown in Italy is treated better and is sprayed a lot less than wheat grown in Australia. The pasta is also dried slowly and without heat, therefore keeping more of the nutrients in the wheat.
• Vinegars– I use balsamic vinegar, white wine vinegar and red wine vinegar for salad dressings and pickles
• Snacks– I keep popcorn kernels for a quick snack, I cook them on the stove with coconut oil and I season with salt. I also keep date balls, homemade crackers, sultanas, homemade dried mango and nuts.
• Salt – I keep both fine and course Celtic sea salt
• Herbs and spices – I keep an assortment of herbs and spices, some include garlic powder, basil, oregano, paprika, rosemary, thyme, cumin, cayenne pepper, chilli powder, sumac and many more.

MEAT

• Beef- we purchase bulk beef from our local farmer so we keep mince, different roasts, Osso Bucco, multiple types of steaks, diced stew meat and bones for making bone broth.
• Chicken – we keep whole chickens, chicken breasts, chicken thighs, drumsticks, chicken marylands, sometimes chicken mince. We don’t have a local source for chickens, so I buy free range chicken from the supermarkets. I like to go to the shops and see if I can get any chicken that has been marked down. Im not sure if other places do this, but in Australia, when meat and produce in the supermarket reaches a few days before its ‘best before’ date, the supermarkets will discount it so it sells before they need to throw it away. Many people don’t like to spend money on free range meats or organic produce so a lot gets marked down, making it a very cost effective way to buy high quality food. The meat is stored in the freezer so the dates don’t matter to us.
• Pork – we keep ham and bacon, and sometimes chops, from our local farmer. They cure their ham and bacon with no nitrates, so this is pasture raised, organic, pharmaceutical free and nitrate bacon and ham. This is why we keep the lard from the meat.
• Lamb – we really enjoy lamb, but we don’t tend to keep it on hand. I would love to keep more on hand though. There is nothing quite like some slow cooked lamb shanks on a cold day with mashed potato… mmmmmmmm yum!

PRODUCE

• Vegetables- I always keep the basics like onions, potatoes, garlic, zucchini and carrots. If you always have these, you will always be able to make a meal. We also keep salad and snacking veggies like cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, greens, shallot onions, green onions, lettuce and capsicums (bell pepper for my American friends). When they are in season, I also keep Shepard (green skinned) avocados.
• Fruit- we always have apples and bananas, then the rest is whatever is in season. In the warm months, we have berries, nectarines, plums, grapes, lychees, etc. in the cooler months, it’s a lot of citrus, like mandarins, oranges, grapefruit and winter variety berries.

FRIDGE

• Dairy- I always have milk, yogurt, cheddar cheese, mozzarella and parmesan cheese, butter, and sometimes cream or sour cream. I buy organic or local where possible, but my butter is from grass fed cows.
• Eggs – I always keep free range eggs in the amount I deem necessary for my family.

FREEZER

• Frozen vegetables – there are many vegetables that are more affordable to buy frozen, such as broccoli, green beans and peas. I also keep some veggies that I freeze from my garden, like eggplants and zucchini, I also bulk buy capsicums when I can and cut and freeze them. Sometimes I have frozen kale too.
• Fruit- I don’t keep much in the way of frozen fruit, but I try to always have a bag of frozen blueberries, some frozen raspberries or strawberries, and I freeze the off cuts of mango when I cut them for dehydrating.
• Bone broth- I keep both chicken and beef bone broth, plus bones ready for making more.
• Meat- all our meat is kept in the freezer

OTHER

• Condiments- I keep organic tomato sauce (ketchup for my American friends), BBQ sauce, mustard (American, Dijon and wholegrain)
• Wine- I keep one bottle of red and one bottle of white for cooking. I only use dry wines for cooking

Though this list is definitely not exhaustive and I know I will have forgotten some things, I hope that this can help you in planning meals for your own families and maybe give you some ideas on what to get while grocery shopping.

I hope you have great day my friends

Ashlee xx