What do you do when you buy a house with no pantry? Today’s $20/$20 Challenge submission from reader, Veronica, shows us just that. Here’s her story:
Hi Mavis,
My name is Veronica and I live in a suburb north of Seattle, Washington, with my husband and 3 kids – ages 5 and younger. I have been following your blog for a couple years now and have loved adapting my Texas (where I grew up) gardening skills to NW Washington! I wish I had your time to garden, but also know that your teenagers are a lot more helpful and self-sufficient than my young crew.
I now have a pressure canner and a friend of mine is going to teach me how to can chicken at the end of the month after we pick up our Zaycon chicken order! I am excited! We don’t eat jam as fast as I like to make it, so I have put a limit on myself to not make more jam until we finish the jam we have. It is so hard not to turn all these Washington berries into jam each summer! The first summer we were here, I canned 4 dozen or more jars of blackberry jam, jelly, syrup, and whole berries. It was a bit too much for our family of (then) 3.
I hope you enjoyed the tour of my pantry-less kitchen. Thanks for putting this together; I have enjoyed reading about your other readers’ food habits.
Cheers,
Veronica
Tamara says
Wow! You are very organized (and make me feel tired!). I admire your baking regimen and I love the spice rack! How special!
Veronica says
Thanks!
Linda says
How often do you rotate the water in those bottles? Kudos to you. I agree. You make me tired too. Keep up the great work!
Veronica says
We have moved about every 2 years, so that is when I have (historically) changed out the water. Now that we are (hopefully) in a more permanent location, I will have to figure out the water rotation timing. In an emergency, my plan is to treat the water with bleach and/or by boiling it for safety. By pouring the water between cups, you can re-areate so it doesn’t taste flat or stale.
I also found out that the plastic of milk jugs is too thin for long-term water storage. We had a big mess to clean up during our married student housing days!