March Pantry Challenge started back in 2011, it was a simple statement and much more difficult goal.. Eat out of your pantry only for the month of march.

Potato pie with homemade corned beef tongue with sheep milk yogurt with dried nettles Pantry Challenge 2011

2011 was the year of finding gaps, and I mean gaps, if you think you have a nicely done complete pantry, go ahead.. stop buying anything from the store.. cold turkey.. no shopping ahead.. and then make everything from scratch for 31 days..  Its eye opening to say the least.

In the cold of Canada, there is no fresh food.. if you are very lucky you might be able to dig out some small spots in the snow in the garden and cover with buckets and force a few things..  If you are on a farm, you might have eggs or not, you might have milk or not.. you might have one more chicken or rabbit that you can butcher yet.. or not..

In 2012-2013, I got better, much better at working my pantry and increasing what I keep as my basic’s and standards.. my biggest tips, always put up more yeast, baking powder and fats.. and more dried fruits for Baking.

In 2014 and 2015, I mixed it up and added extra challenges, added in growing more fresh greens in the house, more sprouting, more double bedded outside growing beds for forcing a few things early (starting them in the fall and overwintering them) and start them growing back in the longer daylight days.

2016, I did the war time food challenge to make it fresh again.. which leads up to this year..

It took me a few days of thinking to figure out what I wanted to do.. don’t worry, I was quietly making sure everything came out of the pantry just in case.

So my pantry goals for March of 2017 are twofold..

March Pantry Challenge 1- Do a full canning pantry count and get my canning page updated with a overview of what I want to put up by the end of the year.

March Pantry Challenge 2- Once a week round up of recipes-meals that had a min of one item that comes out of the cold storage, the canning pantry, the home grown and dried cupboard or the meat stores of only raised and processed on the farm. Some recipes will be included in regular posts and some will only come out on the week round up post.

It will be a fun and interesting march with these little rules in place.. Something different that makes it different for me..  and I hope interesting for my readers 🙂

While I can’t say that I will do all of them. is there anything you would like to see used in a recipe, a certain fruit or a certain meat or a cut of meat or a certain type of veggie from the storage area??

Drop me a comment and I will see what I can do about making it and getting it up on the months round up list.