Be the Difference - Stocking Your Holiday Pantry

I spent the day looking in my favorite cookbooks for new, yet familiar Thanksgiving recipes I can’t wait to try. With the holiday season quickly approaching and pot-luck dinners mounting, it looks like I will have plenty of opportunities to make and share them all over the next several weeks. But before I can get cooking, I need to get shopping for all the staple ingredients I will need to have on hand in order to whip something up on the fly, and on a dime. So, for that (and a variety of other things), I head straight to the bulk bins!

Even small health food stores have a decent selection of food items you can buy from their bulk quantity. There you can find anything from Turbinado sugar to your favorite morning cereal sold by the pound at a much cheaper price than the name brand varieties. I think the value is especially significant when buying nuts and dried fruit for holiday desserts or everyday trail mixes. In addition to helping out your wallet, you can also help out the environment when shopping bulk by saving on all the packaging that would be involved otherwise. You can even bring your own reusable, lightweight storage containers and skip disposable packaging all together, but if you need the produce-like plastic bags provided to measure out your desired amount and get it home and into your pantry, don’t throw them out or recycle them just yet. These bags are the perfect size to keep in your gym or yoga bag to keep your sweaty clothes separate from everything else until you can get them in the wash. They can also double as small wastecan liners, or I hesitate to say, for all those New York dog owners who have the pleasant responsibility of “picking up” up after their pets have “dropped off.” And you don’t have to feel bad about throwing it out when you do find a second use for it because most of the stores who care enough about the planet to carry bulk items, care enough to only supply quickly biodegradable bioplastic produce and bulk bags to their customers, too.

So get inspired to try something new this year when planning your Thanksgiving menu and shop differently for everything you’ll need this, and every other day of the year.