• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Growing
    • Gardening
    • Our Garden ’23
    • Our Garden ’22
    • Our Garden ’21
    • Our Garden ’20
    • Our Garden ’19
    • Our Garden ’18
    • Our Garden ’17
    • Our Garden ’16
    • Our Garden ’15
    • Our Garden ’14
    • Our Garden ’13
    • Our Garden ’12
  • Building
  • Simplifying
  • Preserving
  • Recipes
  • About
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy

Northern Homestead logo

November 20, 2018

Our Plant-Based Pantry

Our plant-based pantry

For some reason, homesteaders enjoy reading about each other’s pantries. It gives us ideas on what and how to store food and provides inspiration. Here’s a glimpse into our plant-based pantry, showcasing the foods we can and can’t grow ourselves, all of which we’re grateful to enjoy nonetheless.

If you’ve followed our blog for a while you would have noticed that we are not about self-sufficiency, but about living a healthy, mindful, and happy life. We love to grow as much as possible, but to be realistic, we can’t grow all our food, and I do not think we have to. If you can grow all your food, good for you, in this case, this list might give you more ideas on what to grow.

When choosing what to eat we prefer wholesome plant food. Dr. Greger’s checklist, helps us to get a variety of healthy foods into our pantry and diet every day. However, not all the foodstuff in our pantry is 100% wholesome, we are not religious about it, but most of it is.

Legumes

Legumes are a big part of our diet. We eat them every day. There is no way we could grow as many as we eat in our garden. But we do grow some of them and buy the rest preferably in bulk.

  • Pole Beans Scarlet Runner grows well here.
  • Black Turtle dry Beans if we have room, otherwise we just buy black beans.
  • Tiger’s Eye Bean is so worth growing since I have not found a source to order them from. Pinto beans are similar, so we buy lots of those.
  • Kidney beans.
  • Chickpeas are a must-have. Dry, canned, and as flour. I usually make my own flour in the Vitamix blender.
  • Lentils, red and green, we love them.
  • Peas, fresh from the garden and dry from the store.
  • Tofu, soy milk (make your own), and tempeh.

Storage tips: Dry beans have a long shelf life. We store them in buckets with a lid in a dry place.
We also pressure can dry beans, see here how we do that.

Berries

Raspberries are our main berry, we grow and preserve (freeze) lots of them. We also grow honeyberries, strawberries, black currants, saskatoons, and blackberries.

Storage tips: We like to preserve berries by freezing them and enjoying them in our breakfast. And we love homemade berry jams. 

Fruit

In our very short growing season, we cannot grow much of fruit. Even though we have planted many fruit trees and hope to get more of our own supply.

  • Apples are a fruit we can grow. Not so much the good eating variety, but we usually grow enough to make apple jam, sauce, and butter. There are also always lots of local apples that people allow us to pick for free, and they are grateful if we do. We make apple juice, wine, and chips.
  • Apricot is my favorite fruit. We planted some trees and hope for the best. However, until we have our own harvest, we go to BC for U-Pick and make jam and canned and dried apricots.
  • Citrus fruit. We enjoy our homegrown Meyer lemon and limes, but most of the citrus fruit we buy in.
  • Cherries grow well here, and I think that our cold climate sour cherries are better than the sweet hot climate cherries (You can argue with me). We make jam, can, and dehydrate them.
  • Grapes grow here, and seldom do we also buy some. Grapes are rarely available organic, so we do not have them very often. But we do buy raisins all the time.
  • Kivi is another fruit we tried to grow a hardy variety, but haven’t had any fruit. We still get them from the store.
  • Pears. Our trees are too young to produce yet, so we buy them and love them especially canned or dried.
  • Plums to some extent grow here, but we also buy and dehydrate them.
  • Dates are a must-have, yum.
  • Banana is a must-have
  • Avocado is an occasional treat

More storage Tips: Fruits that produce ethylene, such as bananas, apples, and melons, should be stored separately from other fruits and vegetables. 

Vegetables and greens

We grow a good portion and also buy some vegetables and greens that we eat, simply because we eat so much of them. However, because we can grow so many veggies and salad greens, if we need to buy more, we allow ourselves to go shopping for better quality, preferably organic or naturally grown locally. Check out the Dirty Dozen article, annual vegetables for short growing season, and how to grow your salad greens year-round.

Mushrooms are not a vegetable, but it’s something we eat often. We like the white and brown cremini and shiitake mushroom. Occasionally we also get the other mushrooms as a special treat.

Storage tips: To preserve the harvest we store, freeze, can, ferment, and dehydrate. You can check out all the recipes and methods here.

Nuts and Seeds

Nuts and seeds are a great source of healthy oils. They are also a great replacement for dairy products, check out the creamy sauces that we make.

  • Seeds: flax, chia, hemp, sesame and tahini (for homemade hummus).
  • Nuts: Cashew, Walnut, Brazil nut, and nut mixtures.
  • Peanut, we love peanut butter.
  • Coconut milk in cans. Not a nut, but we use a lot of it.

Storage tips: We store nuts in a dry cool place. If there is more then we can eat soon, they can also be frozen to keep them fresh. 

Grains

We use two categories of grain, whole grains and products made of grain. We buy all grains preferably organic, to avoid roundup sprayed grains.

  • Oats rolled or steel cut and in muesli for breakfast.
  • Bread. Most of our bread is homemade, dinner buns, tortillas, pita bread, etc. We start with grain berries, (spelt, wheat, kamut), grind our own flour, and make bread out of freshly ground flour. But we also buy white organic flour for occasional use. We also buy some crispbread and rice crackers.
  • Noodles, both whole grain, and semolina.
  • Rice, brown, wild, basmati, or whatever rice we find interesting at any given time.
  • Buckwheat, it’s a less-known grain but very healthy and delicious.
  • Quinoa is also an occasional treat.
  • Corn flour
  • Cream of wheat

Storage tips: Grain berries have a long shelf life. We store them in bucked with a lid. Homemade bread freezes well.  

Seasonings and condiments

  • Herbs: Dill, basil, parsley (Curley and Italian), basil, cilantro, thyme, rosemary, savory, oregano, lemon grass – all mostly homegrown fresh, dried, or frozen.
  • Celery seeds
  • Mustard seeds
  • Ginger
  • Turmeric
  • Cumin
  • Paprika and smoked paprika
  • Hot chili (homemade)
  • Black pepper
  • Garlic and onion freeze-dried (We use the Litehouse brand, for some herbs and ginger too)
  • Pickling and herbal salt
  • Brags liquid amino (using it instead of salt)
  • Nutritional yeast
  • Vinegar: white wine, balsamic, rice and apple cider
  • Salsa (all homemade)
  • Maple or agave syrup
  • Organic cane sugar 
  • Local honey (plant’s nectar only gathered by bees, you can disagree)

Other

  • Vanilla
  • Baking soda and powder
  • Yeast, Saf Instant Yeast
  • Cocoa powder
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • Coconut oil 
  • Arrowroot powder 
  • Tapioca Flour (For crapes)
  • Cornstarch (Organic)
  • coffee and tea (homegrown herbal tea)

There are other things here and there in our pantry, fridge, and cold room, but this gives you a good idea of what a plant-based pantry looks like. As you see it’s not much different from any pantry, except that the majority of our foods are vegetables, fruit, and berries. It is a simple but yummy way to eat. And we love good food!

What is a must-have in your pantry that we are missing? 

We invite you to subscribe to Northern Homestead and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest for the latest updates.

More posts you might enjoy

Heating with a Wood Stove

Heating your Home with a Wood Stove in Town

As you know, we are an urban homestead in a small town in Alberta, Canada. It gets pretty cold here ...
Read More
Simple Winter Compost Solution: Keeping Your Composting Dreams Alive

Simple Winter Compost Solution

Composting is like nature's recycling program, but it has a bit of a love-hate relationship with winter. You see, compost ...
Read More
Do food growers need nutritional supplements?

Do food growers need nutritional supplements?

Northern Homestead focuses on growing, preserving, and preparing nutritious food. Despite our cold climate and short growing season, we strive ...
Read More

5 Ways to Preserve Vegetables, Fruit, and Herbs

Food preservation is essential when living in a cold climate with a short growing season. To eat homegrown food all ...
Read More
40 Easy Tips for Gardening on a Budget

40 Easy Tips for Gardening on a Budget

A limited budget often motivates starting a new garden to grow your own vegetables. However, gardening can be expensive. Fortunately, ...
Read More
A Country Garden Cabin can be a great idea for a family to still enjoy country life and homegrown food without moving to the country.

A Country Garden Cabin

A few years ago, we started a project to create a productive garden and orchard in the countryside using permaculture ...
Read More
Check out our top 3 gardening books for every season from our bookshelf. Books that cover a wide range of topics.

Gardening Books for Every Season

Looking to build your gardening book collection? Check out our top 3 gardening books for every season from our bookshelf ...
Read More
DIY Haircut at home

DIY Haircut at Home

Do you spend too much money on haircuts or struggle with uneven DIY haircuts at home? You're not alone. Many ...
Read More
Our Simplified Approach to Canning

Our Simplified Approach to Canning

During the warmer growing season, canning and preserving consume a significant portion of our time. Given the volume of food ...
Read More
Making Progress on One Thing a Day

Making Progress on One Thing a Day

Do you ever feel like there are never enough hours in a day to keep up with the garden, harvest, ...
Read More

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Primary Sidebar

Welcome, nice to meet you!

Jakob und Anna winter 2Northern Homestead is a blog about growing year round 🌱🍅🍁❄️, preserving, and preparing plant food in cold climate. Learn more ...

Find It Fast

Building

We share how we build things and use alternative energies. Building a greenhouse is almost a must in a northern climate to overcome cold and frost.

Growing

Growing your own food year round using organic methods. Here you will find many proven gardening tips and ideas.

Raising

Preserving

Recipes

Simplifying

Project simple living

Categories

Newsletter Signup

Popular Posts

  • Sowing Carrots in Cornstarch Sowing Carrots in Cornstarch Experiment under Growing, Planting
  • How to Build a GeoDome Greenhouse How To Build A Geodesic Dome Greenhouse (DIY GeoDo... under GeoDome Greenhouse, Greenhouse
  • Hardening off Seedlings the Easy Way Hardening off Seedlings the Easy Way under Gardening, Growing, Planting
https://www.facebook.com/northernhomestead
https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernHomestead/
https://ca.pinterest.com/NorthHomestead
https://www.instagram.com/northernhomestead/

Copyright© 2025 · Northern Homestead

Receive the newest updates to your email!

Sign up to stay tuned and to be notified about new releases and posts directly in your inbox.

[email protected]
John
Smith