My Pantry Staples

When I started eating healthy, it was overwhelming trying to reorganize and stock my pantry with the necessary food. It took a lot of trial and error before I found the right amount, brand, or foods that I would regularly be cooking with. While everyone has different eating styles and types of foods they lean towards, I'm going to share my personal experience and the recommended pantry staples that I couldn't go without in my healthy lifestyle.

Anytime you cook, you're most likely going to need an oil. For this, I use organic extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil. These are both cleaner and healthier options than your typical oils such as canola, vegetable, soybean, sunflower, etc. You can find extra virgin organic olive oil and avocado oil at any of your local grocery stores. If you're looking for the cleanest option available, I recommend looking for the words "Estate Grown" on your bottles. This means that your oil is made at one farm, and that the olives are hand picked, go through a cleaner growing and production process, and I have found that the taste is much better than the other types available. Again, this is just a personal recommendation that I lean towards!

Another food that I find myself cooking with fairly often is vinegar, specifically rice and apple cider vinegar. I like to cook different types of asian foods, so the rice vinegar is a great way to add a lot of flavor for little calories. I tend to use apple cider vinegar for a lot of my soups, to cut spice in my dishes when the heat is too much, and it adds a great fresh element to salads and fish recipes.

During the winter months, I found myself adding nutritional yeast to a lot of my dishes. Nutritional yeast has loads of vitamins and minerals in it, and it adds a savory flavor to your food. Anytime I felt like I was getting sick, or if we hadn't been out of the house in a while and were feeling blah, I would add a pinch of nutritional yeast to the recipe in hopes that it boosted our health and provided us with some of the vitamins and minerals we were missing out on.

One pantry staple I use every single day is my spices. I don't think anyone really cooks without a couple spices thrown in, and I have found that investing in good, organic spices is a great attribute for your kitchen to have. By stocking up my spice rack, I'm prepared to make almost any recipe I find online. In the past, I would have to run to the store and buy three new spices just for one meal I wanted to cook, and it would be chaotic and time consuming. Now, I have an organized spice rack that is loaded with great flavors and opportunities to make awesome dishes.

Although I don't find myself baking a lot, I do use a lot of flours for my dishes. Now, most people's first recommendation would be almond flour, but because I have a nut allergy I have found other alternatives that are just as healthy and still great to cook with. The flours that I use most in my pantry are chickpea flour and organic brown rice flour. One thing to note when using these in substitution for all purpose flour is that the substitute ratio may not be the same, so it's important to do your research to ensure you're adding the right amount for whatever recipe you're using. Compared to all purpose flour, these two flours are high in protein, micronutrients, and fiber while also being lower calorie.

Stop using regular sugar! Having insulin resistant PCOS, using real sugar creates huge spikes in your blood sugar. Monk Fruit has an extremely low impact on your blood sugar compared to regular sugar. One of the first things I cut out was the regular granulated sugar and I started using monk-fruit sweeter. You can get this sweetener at any grocery store, and it comes in a liquid and powder form. It does have a bit of a fruity taste to it, but I genuinely don't notice it and have used it in replacement for many recipes. Obviously this is still a form of sweetener, so use it sparingly, but it is still a great pantry staple to have.

One other pantry staple I couldn't go without is organic broths/stocks. I use broths and stocks in a lot of my recipes to add flavor. It's also a great way to add nutrients to your recipes. I don't know how often I will use stocks and broths come summer time since I will make soups less often, but right now I use them quite frequently.

Organic eggs are a great form of protein and can be used in loads of dishes. I have at least one egg a day and I buy a cheap organic brand that Walmart sells. I highly recommend having eggs in your kitchen.

I couldn't have made it this far without my freezer full of ground turkey, shrimp, chicken, and salmon. These four proteins are something I cook with on the daily. There are so many of these items available to buy at the store, and I try and buy the cleanest, most humanely raised meats available. For my chicken, I usually buy pasture raised or free range chicken and antibiotic free. Every once in a while I will buy organic chicken, but I limit that because it tends to be more expensive and harder to find. For my salmon, I usually buy it fresh from the seafood counter and I get wild-caught. Every once in a while I will get the frozen farm-raised salmon from the freezer aisle, but I make sure that I am buying it from a humane, clean farm. Simply read the label and see if their farming practices are clean. For shrimp, I don't buy it from the seafood counter, and instead I buy frozen shrimp and look for labels that boast clean farming, similar to the frozen salmon I buy. I would recommend buying raw frozen shrimp instead of precooked. If you are wanting to buy from the counter, any wild-caught shrimp is awesome. And for my last protein, I buy any clean ground turkey as long as it's 93% lean with 7% fat.

My last food groups that I have a huge amount of in my fridge at all times are fruits and veggies. Every morning, I have grapes and blueberries. They are great forms of antioxidants and just a healthy snack to have around. We also usually keep bananas, apples, limes, and watermelon around because I either use them in dishes or I dry them out in the oven to make healthy little snacks. For our veggies, we always have parsnips, romaine lettuce, carrots, celery, red and yellow onions, tomatoes, jalapeno and banana peppers, and fresh herbs such as parsley and cilantro in our fridge. I use at least three of these veggies a day to either have as snacks or cook with in my recipes. One veggie that I specifically want to touch on is parsnips. I use parsnips as a substitute for potatoes because starches can be very harmful to those who have PCOS. I have found that parsnips, when cooked or boiled, taste so similar to potatoes I wouldn't even know they were substituted for potatoes. I even cut them into fries and put them in the air fryer- they are seriously a delicious and amazing veggie. One thing to remember when substituting parsnips for potatoes in dishes is that potatoes often thicken recipes, so use a healthy thickener such as arrowroot or tapioca starch to thicken your dishes!

There are loads of other ingredients and foods that I use, but the ones I listed above are the first that come to mind when I think of what's really changed the game for my eating and cooking on this journey. Everything that I listed above can be found at any grocery store near you and are all fairly priced. I hope this list can be of help to anyone who is feeling like they are wandering the aisles aimlessly trying to make their pantry one that fits a healthy life style!