KITCHEN: BUILD A NATURAL FOODS PANTRY

 Before

 A bit scary I must say...

After

I am loving it...

Well, this is definitely a work in progress, but I love how its coming along.  I think one very helpful change to making your life over to cooking and preparing natural foods is to have your pantry well stocked.  This year I made the decision to really focus on changing the way I cook for myself and my family.  I am focusing on eating as much raw foods as possible, natural and whole food ingredients, building a natural foods pantry, embracing more grains and cooking with an eye on color and super foods.  Early in 2011, I got my hands on Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Everyday cookbook and she has really inspired me in my cooking and thinking when it comes to food.  I love her blog as well ~ 101 Cookbooks.  She talks about building a natural foods pantry and I FINALLY starting working on it after a year of just thinking about it.

I love how my pantry is turning out.  It still needs work and it will take time, but I think the best part about all of is that you can see what you have stocked through these clear containers.  When you need to go to the market,  you can take a quick look and see what you are low on.  Before, everything was a mess and also stuffed into my pantry drawer, so I couldn't see everything quickly.  I always ended up buying something I already had.  This really makes going shopping so much easier.   There was definitely a lot of throwing out of things that were very old and things we so not eat anymore.  It's actually very liberating.

I purchased all of these containers from Ikea and I love them.  They come from two series... The 365 + series are the tall and small plastic containers which are $2.99 and $1.99 each.  The glass jars are from the SLOM series and are $2.99 each for the small and $4.99 each for the large.  Really great prices!  To stay on my weekly budget, I bought these over a months period.  But, the prices are very reasonable, so if you can afford to purchase a bunch a once, I would just do it!

I will be posting next week about our favorite grains.

So, come on everyone...let's build a natural foods pantry!

Will you join me?

Have a wonderful weekend!