One YEAR’S Worth of Food | HUGE Pantry/Root Cellar Tour | 1000 Jars

hi everyone my name is Chelsea welcome to Little Mountain Ranch and welcome to my pantry I am very excited to do my pantry tour preserving food is something that I am very passionate about I love everything about it from when I do my seed shopping in the fall to when I start planting my seeds in February March and April to when I take those seedlings out and I put them in the garden and then to harvesting and getting them in jars like this I absolutely love everything about it and I'm excited to share it with you I am going to give you a thorough tour of this pantry and also we have our cold room and our basically all of our store-bought food and this pantry and I'm going to give you a tour of this one as well and once we're done with both of these pantries we are going to go down to our Root Cellar and I'll show you what I have stored down there my main goal for this pantry is to have enough food to last us for an entire year so all the way from around September through to the following September and that usually is somewhere around the Thousand jar mark and we just hit that goal last week I didn't can an entire thousand dollars this year very close but there are some things that I'll show you in this Pantry that are from last year for the most part I really try to have all of the food that we have canned used up within about 12 months whenever I do a pantry tour video and I believe that this is our fourth year doing Pantry tour videos I always get a ton of questions that are sort of more logistical questions about the construction of the pantry the temperature rodent pressure and all of those kinds of things so last year I did a thorough kind of q a video and I'll put that down in the show notes below and Link it up here for you if you are interested in checking that out if you have any more specific kinds of questions in today's video I'm just going to be giving you an overview of all of the things that we have stored everything that we've canned in this Pantry all of the things that we have stored in here that I think might be of interest to you and then all of the food that we have down in our Root Cellar since our last Pantry tour video we've made a couple of upgrades to the pantry and the first one which many of you will be relieved to see is that we put in some protection against possible earthquakes by putting these strips on every shelf and I have to admit it does give me some peace of mind even though we don't live in an area where that gets a lot of earthquakes in fact I don't ever remember we've us ever having an earthquake here but this does give me peace of mind just in case the other thing is that I actually really like the way that it looks and even if you're going to pull jars off it kind of protects things from getting knocked off and smashed on the floor so I really love that the second thing that we did is Dan built these little platforms here out of some of that reclaimed wood from the cattle sorting Arena that we had outside that we've been dismantling and using the wood in all places all over our house but he took some of that and built these on both sides so that all of the food that is stored isn't stored directly on the ground is and this is just in case there is any flooding issues and we have actually had water get into this basement one time so this way none of this food is going to get ruined the last thing that we've done in here is gotten pretty serious with organizing everything and I have to say that my husband is mostly responsible for that he very much likes organization and he likes everything to be faced on all of the shelves so that there's nothing like that for instance so he likes everything pulled forward and he came in here and spent a long time getting everything organized and I'm so grateful because even though organization isn't maybe my strong suit I really appreciate it when it's done so without further Ado let's get into what's actually on these shelves where do you think we should start the top or the bottom Dan is filming for me today thank you honey it makes it so much funner when he's filming what do you think um why don't we go on the bottom okay sounds good down on the bottom outside of all of the stuff that we have canned in here we have stored a whole bunch of dried Goods in five gallon buckets and one of the other upgrades that we've done to our pantry is we got these gamma Lids off of Amazon and these are fantastic Lids they make getting into the food so much easier and they also have a seal on them so they protect the food a lot better than the other Lids do and I find these so much easier to get off those uh was an example of one here we go this is an example of the kind of Lids the peel Lids that come with these buckets and these are like really hard I usually have to get Dan to come yeah I can't even get it off so these Lids are a major upgrade for us and I love them so much yes they are really hard to put on that is true you had to take a hammer to them didn't you to get them on I think there might be a special tool for taking these off but once you get them on these buckets they're they're on there for sure under here along the back I have some hard red spring wheat we have split peas lentils navy beans black beans kidney beans all sorts of stuff stored under here the way that I kind of deal with having food like this in big buckets like this so they don't have to have them up in my kitchen is I just have smaller jars up in my kitchen and then I keep them refilled from these buckets now we get into the fun stuff this is all pickles these are all sweet pickles and they look so pretty the yellow color that you can see is from adding turmeric and this to me looks a lot more appetizing than the ones without the turmeric and it doesn't impart a ton of flavor onto it it's just more the color I love them I tried experimenting with some sandwich style dill pickles they're a little bit of a pain in the butt to slice so they're thin like this but they're really nice for sandwiches and then of course I have a whole bunch of banana peppers that are pickled these are pickled with onions and we use these on Pizza sandwiches salad anyone who likes a little bit of a kick uses those applesauce apple juice and this is one of my favorites these are the pickle beets that we did the other day and they look so incredibly beautiful next to the pickled beets we have some pickled coleslaw here and I had some issues with storing my cabbages in my root cellar this year so I have put a whole bunch up into sauerkraut and also into coleslaw my sauerkraut is stored in our spare fridge downstairs on the next shelf here there's a couple of things that were here from last year one of those would be these beans these are pressure canned green beans and some yellow beans in there too we don't like these very much which is why they're still sitting on the Pantry Shelf and when I was looking over all of my stuff earlier today I saw that I actually have six more jars than I thought that I had those will just go in some soup or something like that just to get them used up next to that we have some canned beads and these are canned in water with a little bit of salt with the pressure canner so they're not pickled these would be another one that I actually won't do again I'd rather just keep my beets in The Root Cellar or pickle them these are okay but they're not they're not fantastic so these were also one that I had done from last year here is one of my favorite pickles this is pickled asparagus I didn't end up making a ton of jars this year because my asparagus just didn't do very well I think my asparagus patch needs a little bit of work because it's just been steadily getting less and less productive over the last couple of years but I did get six jars of that done and then next to that we have a ton of pickled carrots and any of these recipes that I'm sharing in which I've made videos I'll make sure that I put those down in the show notes so that you can go and check those out if you'd like to make these two these are fantastic they have cinnamon in them really really good my kids just eat these up which is why there's over 32 jars of them and next to that is our very favorite relish that we make this is zucchini relish so good sweet really good on hot dogs this is a green and red pepper jelly and I have a lot of that one more thing that I had carried over from last year I only did a few jars this year some red ones which I love and this one has basil in it too it's very good and then a whole bunch of cowboy candy and this is pickled jalapenos with quite a bit of sugar it's quite sweet but the sweet and the hot is the perfect combination and then on the neck shelf over here I have all my canned chicken and turkey so this is all canned turkey and chicken breast which we really love using my husband uses this on salad all the time I make chicken melts with it it's delicious and next to that we have a bunch of jars of canned salmon and this is actually canned without water anything all the juices that you can see in there are actually just from the fish itself very easy to can salmon and it tastes really good I do take all the bones out a lot of people say that the bones just kind of dissolve in the canning process and I haven't found that to be the case all the time so I always remove all my bones from my fish next to that we have something very exciting it may not look exciting because it's just canned corn but I grew corn enough corn to can for the very first time this year we Garden in a Zone 3B in the interior of British Columbia Canada and it's very cold here and the season is very short the growing season and corn generally likes a lot of heat and an extended season but this variety is called candy corn and it did quite well here so I ended up getting six jars of corn which doesn't sound like a lot but I feel like it's a pretty serious Victory and I'm excited about next year's Garden because I'm going to try some tricks to extend the season out a little bit more just give them a little bit more protection early on so that I can get more hopefully and then next to that I have a whole bunch of more of the Pickled coleslaw except in this case it's purple uh cabbage that I used which I think looks really pretty I think both of them look nice as you can see they both look nice and this one's kind of nice because you can see the carrot in it but the purple color is pretty and then the beans here which will just cover up they're not they're laughing at me they are they're not very good and then over beside it is something I'm really excited about mostly just because it looks so beautiful so this is a mixed pickle that I made it has celery in it onions Peppers cauliflower and garlic and I am really looking forward to opening up one of these jars and giving it a try I made six of them and they just look beautiful I know you're going to like them because you love this kind of thing hey it does look so good with Pickles I do try to give them at least four weeks if not eight weeks on the Shelf because it just helps the flavor develop over up here we have some tomato products my favorite tomato product from this year is the enchilada sauce it is the best enchilada sauce I have ever had and the fact that it could be pressure canned and it didn't alter the flavor too much is fantastic so I'm going to be making tons more of this for next year and the other thing so I didn't make quite enough of the enchilada sauce but I made way too much of the green tomato mince meat we are using it on oatmeal in the morning and I roasted a pork roast and put a couple of jars in with that while it was roasting and it was really good I think I did 23 jars or something like that which was definitely Overkill and next to that we have the um what is this again Sloppy Joe mix that we made and my kids really love this I like I mentioned when we tried it the other day on a video I wasn't crazy about the consistency of the ground meat but someone one of you guys suggested that I not break up the meat too much when I'm frying it before it goes in the jars that I keep it in larger hunks and then that helps with the grainy texture a bit so I'll try that next time and then next to that we have a recipe that was inspired from Rachel from that 1870s Homestead and this is a green tomato Curry that's really delicious and you can just open a jar heat it up and put it on some rice and it's good it's really good next to that's one of my kids favorites and that is canned cherries in a medium syrup they are really tasty and they sure look pretty on the Shelf I love all the colors on this section you organize this very nicely to make it look very pretty I love it and then on the top it's kind of the boring section of the pantry this is all tomato sauce for the most part and you'll notice that the tomato sauce on this side is much brighter looking than the tomato sauce on this side and that was just because I cooked this for a really long time and it oxidized a little bit it tastes okay still but um but yeah that's why it's brown and then over on this side of the pantry so do we want to start at the top this time since we started at the bottom the last time sure okay the top it is up here we have all of our tomato Salsas here and then a peach salsa which is one of my favorite Salsas isn't it pretty I love it with chicken fajitas it's so good and next to that we have a couple of jars of salsa verde that I made last year so this is another one that was carried over from last year and the reason for that is because my kids much prefer regular salsa and Peach salsa so yeah we're gonna have to get that used up and then beside there we just have some canned tomatoes I turned most of my tomatoes into sauces this year and just did I think it was 12 jars or so of just the canned tomatoes and next to that we have more sauce and a whole bunch of pizza sauce over on this side this entire shelf here along with this section right here is all syrups and jams and some that are just canned whole fruit like the Saskatoon berries you can see here I'll use these to make pie or crumble and then all this is a blueberry syrup that I made this is for pancakes waffles all that kind of stuff yogurt parfaits raspberry jam strawberry jam lots of strawberry rhubarb jam what else do we have this is so pretty this is stewed rhubarb and I love that it retains some of the color so beautiful this is the best topping for ice cream you will ever have we have some apricot jam over here but my very favorite kind of jam both in terms of how beautiful it is and also the flavor is plum jam and plums are one fruit that is a soft skin fruit that we can actually grow up here we cannot grow things like peaches which we get from a farm about three hours south of us and that's where we got all these peaches so we've canned lots of those and then I think I did 12 jars of peach pie filling a couple jars of sun-dried tomatoes back over here what's this hiding back there oh right I forgot I made this I didn't label these something that was new to me as far as jelly and jam making this year was making my own cranberry sauce isn't that beautiful and when cranberries are on sale after Thanksgiving or Christmas it's a good time to buy a bunch of them they're usually really cheap and then you can make your own sauce it's delicious the next shelf down is mostly what do we have here beans and some potatoes and a few new meat products I'll share with you in a second I get asked whenever I share canned beans why I don't just store my beans dry and cook them in an instant pot if I wanted to have some in short notice honestly this is just about convenience for me I think I canned about 50 jars of chickpeas black beans and kidney beans and it took me I think I did it over two days or so in the pressure counter and now I don't have to think about it again I can just grab a jar and rinse it off and dump it straight into a recipe so this is just a convenience thing over here this is something that's new to me I did stew beef and actually don't think it looks too terribly bad what do you think it looks really good so this turned out really well it's so tender tastes really good so I did I think I only did seven jars of that it was just an experiment I wanted to try it out and then the same thing for the beef stew which is excellent we did open up a jar of this tastes really good not quite as good as it does when it's fresh but definitely good enough no complaints with that so that'll be something I do again and then we have a whole bunch of canned potatoes down over here again that's just for convenience you can take a jar of these rinse them out and fry them just pan fry them if you want like for hash browns throw them in soup or stew and I haven't found that they break apart or mushy or anything so those are fantastic and then this entire shelf down at the bottom all of this is turkey stock chicken stock and beef stock I can a lot of stock because I make a lot of soup during the winter time so we have tons and tons of jars here and as you can see we have a board because we ran out of space to be able to double stack our jars if you're going to take a jar and put it on stack it like this it can end up affecting the seal just because the weight's not evenly distributed across the lid whereas if you use a board or a piece of cardboard a board's better but a piece of cardboard would work too then you can evenly distribute that weight and it doesn't end up messing up the seals so you don't lose your hard work which is really important and then underneath we have some more dried Goods here we have popcorn yellow split pea use some more hard red spring wheat and then this is our the laundry soap that we use and one of these big tubs of laundry soap lasts us just about a year and we do three loads of laundry a day in our house so this stuff is fantastic I love it we've been using it for years now what else do we have oh there is one thing that's hiding back here that's hiding here for a reason because Dan just thinks they look yucky and that is because they do and that is canned chicken so this is legs and thighs that I canned last year and this is not our favorite thing the meat is quite stringy if you have any suggestions for recipes that we could use to use this up let me know because we do have quite a bit of it left that won't be something that I'll do again I'll just freeze them next time down in this area we have my cheese fridge and as you can see my cheese cheese fridge is empty and that is because I stopped making cheese back in the spring I was having a really hard time getting consistent cheeses and it's very very time consuming and I just couldn't find the time to be able to focus on becoming a good cheese maker and the truth is I'm just not a very good cheese maker Dan has been talking about taking on doing cheese making when we have calving in the spring and we have a big glut of milk so we'll see how that goes and see if we can get this filled back up again I hope so because I love homemade raw cheese I'm just I'm just not good at making it unfortunately over here we have our cheese press we have our grain grinder some of our attachments for our FoodSaver and FoodSaver bags and then a bin of Honey down here this is one of my favorite areas of the pantry I just think it looks so beautiful and on this we store all of our vitamins across the top I have some sprouting seeds over here for doing sprouts and then all of my dried herbs here most of the herbs that I use I don't use a ton of medicinal herbs I tend to use more culinary herbs and I do like to make some teas so a lot of these ones that are on this shelf are all for tea making so we'll run through quickly what we have here we have some mint up here calendula chamomile Rosemary some dried blueberries that we dried this year peppermint basil and echinacea doesn't echinacea look pretty when it's dried these are some Spruce tips from the spring these are supposed to be really good if you have a cold to use so I throw them in tea if anybody has a cold we have roses over here calendula wild what is this wild chamomile bee balm a flower tea blend that I made up tarragon this one is actually from last year now that I think about it because I didn't do any tea tea Blends this year tarragon this smells absolutely amazing this is Fireweed flowers I wish you could smell it it smells so good one of the new things that I did this year as far as drying herbs is I went and picked a whole bunch of wild Fireweed and then I fermented it so basically you take the leaf and put it in your hand like this and then you ferment it for a couple of days in a closed jar and then dehydrate it and this tea is delicious it's super fruity tastes a little bit like a black tea and it's just oh it's just so great I'm really happy with the way that turned out over here we have some black beans and some chickpeas that I actually grew not last year but the year before and I forgot to plant them this past summer here we have some fermenting garlic this is really good for colds I've been using this whenever I have any kind of feeling like I'm getting a cold and actually I feel like I'm getting a cold right now so I'm going to bring that up with me I just take one of these chunks of garlic once in the morning and once at night it actually tastes really good but I love garlic so that is a good one we have some tarragon and then these are some tinctures that I made a couple years ago and I've come to the conclusion that making medicines is just not really my jam and if I want tinctures I'm just going to order them from an herbalist that I trust so those ones have just been sitting there decorating the shelf and then this is mint over here we have an EpiPen that we leave sitting here and everyone knows where this is just in case anyone had a severe allergic reaction this is something that you can't have to be searching around for to find so it's just somewhere where everyone can reach it this little basket we use for grocery shopping down in the pantry and then we just bring it down here when it's empty so that we can fill it back up again it's much easier than trying to carry armfuls of stuff up the stairs okay let's head into the other pantry and I'll show you what we have there this pantry is fantastic because it acts as both a pantry and a cold room it stays really cold in this room there's a door between this room and our other Pantry it stays pretty cool out there too but this stays cold enough to be able to keep our onions and our garlic and I even have a bin of beets and sometimes potatoes down here that stays cool enough to keep them firm so that I don't have to be running down to The Root Cellar that's quite a ways from the house all the time this is a fantastic storage space it's kind of Ideal because it stays cold and because it's dark for storing just about anything the reason that we store so much food is mostly because I love it I really have always enjoyed food storage learning about it the preserving of food like you could see in the other Pantry it's just something that I enjoy it's almost a hobby really but it does have some practical purposes behind it it is definitely more economical for us because we have a large family to buy in bulk and we don't live in an area in which buying bulk is super easy so we end up having to travel to go buy bulk from a Costco that is quite a ways from here we also order in a lot of our food bulk so it makes a lot more sense to buy in larger quantities like three to six months worth than it is to have to do that regularly and the other thing is is it is a lot cheaper to to grocery shop the way that we do over the long run for our size of family how far we are from town and all that kind of stuff most of the food that you'll see in here was purchased at the Real Canadian Wholesale Club at Costco and from Horizon Distributors Horizon Distributors is a I think it's BC it might be across Canada but they supply all the food to all the health food stores and grocery stores so you can order if you're part of a Buying Club which we are you can order in bulk from there too so all that's this stuff is pretty much from those three places we also sometimes order from organic matters as well back over on this side of the pantry I have all my onions and my garlic we store our bulk oatmeal down here and then I have my Tattler Lids here and then this is just a box of onions that I need to use at first before I use these ones over here we have all of our spices and our baking stuff basically on this shelf except for this one here which has a few snacks juice boxes um what's this one seaweed granola bars we keep a bunch of tea on hand along with coffee although we don't drink coffee we keep that for company baking Goods here we have chocolate chips cocoa powder raisins Craisins and a whole bunch of nuts over here and then down below that is where I store all of my canning lids I keep my rings in a bag hanging on the wall out in the other Pantry but all of my canning lids here and then Dan has a major obsession with xavia so the entire bottom shelf is all of his Xavier I have some more snacky food up here Trail mixes these chips these ones and these ones over here we use for nachos crackers for snacking on these are the best crackers they're so good over on this shelf we have all of our condiments ketchup Mayo salad dressings mustard barbecue sauce some garlic stuffed olives because they're delicious we have a bunch of croutons back here so this stuff is all what I would consider convenience foods for us I have made ketchup before but it's so time consuming mayonnaise is super easy to make but I'm just not making that at this point and barbecue sauce we only have these two all of these barbecue sauces I actually got from a friend a whole case of them and they're really spicy my kids like spice and then these two are just backups for when I don't feel like making my own down here we have tomato paste again like the ketchup it takes a long time to make it so I don't do that I buy it in these big things put them in Ziploc bags and then into the freezer olive oil peanut butter coconut oil and coconut milk on this Shelf on these three shelves here along with the three on this side it's mostly bulk baking Goods so we have over here we have lots of the sugars we have maple syrup honey this is our homegrown honey we ended up with a robbing incident where the Wasps came in and robbed our Hive so we didn't get a ton of our own honey this year some organic sugar brown sugar lots more sugar salt this is our table salt fine gray sea salt canning salt curing salt and then a couple big bags of just regular table salt to use for preserving if we ever want to do salt pork or something like that over on this side we have rice and beans split peas kidney beans mostly all just beans and rice here once the bins that are over the five gallon buckets in that pantry are empty I will use these bags to fill them up everything in these pantries is used up pretty much within 12 months so I don't have to worry about getting Fancy with oxygen absorbers and mylar bags and stuff like that because everything that I store will last for that 12 month period over on this side we have pasta on the bottom I have been working with a company to order bulk flour from and we're just kind of working out what it's going to cost for shipping right now so once I get that I'll figure out I'll let you know if that works out because that would be a great resource for you guys but right now this is what we have for flowers so we have whole wheat flour whole wheat flour generally stores for about six months months if it's not in an ideal situation it can store up to a year white flour will easily store for a year as long as it's kept cool and dry and this is really the perfect environment for that and up here we have all of our medical supplies candles in back here in case of power outage and up here we have all like Sanitary products toothpaste creams soaps contact solution things like that Ziplocs and garbage bags up on the top shelf is where I have all of my vinegar stored so my canning vinegars cooking vinegars apple cider vinegar and then my parchment paper and my tin foil is right up here I used to store my squash in this Pantry but I don't have any room anymore for it in here so now I'm storing it next door in where I have my grow room and that's where I grow all my seedlings in the springtime and where I'm hoping this winter to grow micro greens but right now it's housing all of my squash but we don't have light in that room right now so I'm not able to show you that but what I can show you is our Root Cellar which is where we'll head to next the amount of snow that we're getting right now is pretty unusual for us we'll normally get a cold snap this time of year but not a huge dump of snow like this the roads are just an absolute mess we're gonna have to get out and plow today hey hun [Music] brought a flashlight this time so we can actually see okay this is our Root Cellar in here we store all of our root vegetables and we also store our cabbages as well so we try to have one year's worth of veggies but root veggies don't necessarily store really well when it starts getting warm in the summer months in usually by the end of May beginning of June it starts to get too warm in The Root Cellar to store and everything starts sprouting so I'll usually take those vegetables and I'll can them up so we will end up with that full 12 months and also as you saw in the canning Pantry I already have beets and potatoes and the carrots and all of that already preserved up there as well so I really try to get the whole 12 months worth of food as you can see over here we store our potatoes in these mesh bags which seems to work really well I have some celery AC and beets over there lots more potatoes over here and these all rest on pallets and it just helps them stay fresher longer over here I've noticed that my carrots are already starting to sprout and that is kind of unusual normally they don't Sprout this early but this could be caused by the fact that we've had such a warm fall and it didn't start cooling down in The Root Cellar until about a week ago but in behind so these are all carrots in all of these bins and then we have rutabagas and turnips and beets in these bins over here all of these bins that are over here are all carrots my cabbages that I had stored in here I've actually had to use all those up because of that really warm Autumn they did not store at all they started to rot what I did to cool it down in here was I actually left this door open when the temperature started to drop outside just to cool it down and now it is perfect and everything that's in here will store just fine all the way until the spring but those cabbages definitely did not what I did with those cabbages is I ended up cutting them up into that canned coleslaw that I showed you when we were in the pantry and so it wasn't they didn't get wasted except for the outside that started to get a little bit soft and all of that just went to the pigs and the chickens so sadly I'm not going to have any cabbages throughout the winter but that's okay because I have a lot of sauerkraut and a lot of that canned coleslaw I hope you enjoyed coming along with us everyone it is so fun for me to be able to share this part of my life with you gardening preserving putting up food the way that I do is something that I feel really passionately about and I absolutely love of and it's been fun for me to share that with you today and I hope you enjoyed it my friend Jessica over at Three Rivers Homestead is going to be sharing her pantry tour over on her channel on Sunday so I will link her Channel Down Below she has a very similar way of preserving food to me but one of the things she's doing that I have not yet started doing though I soon hope to be is preserving using a freeze dryer so she's going to be sharing all the food she canned and also all of the food that she put up with her freeze dryer over the last couple of months and it is a beautiful thing I follow her over on Instagram and so I've been able to see some of the things that she's been preserving lately and it is absolutely fantastic so definitely go and check her out I look forward to seeing you in the next video everyone bye

Channel: Little Mountain Ranch

Views: 1,387,127

Keywords: littlemountainranch, canadian youtube channel, homesteading, farm vlogs, large family, cooking, northern living, farm life, pantry tour, pantry organization, canning pantry, homestead pantry, preparedness pantry, prepper pantry

Id: HoSw00MPPR8

Length: 33min 32sec (2012 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 05 2022