Everyone Should Have One
The main floor of our home needed some groceries and cleaning supplies to fill in for the amount of empty containers that have filled the recycling bin. It gave me a good bit of exercise to make the trips up and down the basement steps from our pantry. In the last century it would have been referred to as the fruit cellar.
Growing up with the abundance of food supplies in the fruit cellar of the home I grew up in, I could not imagine that my own home would not have extras on hand. The fruit cellar would have had a portion of the basement that had a dirt floor and far from any heat source. Maybe the store-bought staples might have been in slim supply from time to time, but fruit, vegetables and multiple types of canned meats were always just a trip away in the basement. Remembering my youth . . . hunger never entered in.
We’ve moved on up in the world and our pantry is located in a portion of the basement that had at one time been the cistern – a self-contained room that collected rain water for use in the home prior to city water being plumbed into the house. Ah, yes, this little bungalow would have many tales to tell. About twenty years ago Dennis and his cousin Bruce decided to use a jack hammer and an opening was made the size of a doorway and the area of the cistern was then an extension of the basement. Several sets of used upper kitchen cabinets were acquired and set one on top of another and we had an instant pantry for supplies.
It is wonderful to stockpile items when a good sale is going on or to just have the advantage of not having to run to the store as often. No doubt by the time the shoulder is healed there will be huge holes on some of the shelves as Dennis has been visiting the pantry often. At the end of this duration it will become a challenge to fix a meal around the items that have been pushed around and left for the more desirable favorites.
Whether it’s a fruit cellar or a pantry, I can’t imagine a home not having something similar.