Recently I was pulling everything out that I would need to help my son make his meal for “cooking day”. I know I’ve talked about these before, but for those that don’t know, I let each of my children take a turn choosing a menu for dinner (usually a main dish, some kind of side, and a dessert) and then help them make it. I make sure to go through the ingredients, buy everything I need at the store well in advance so that we have everything we need and to help the process go as smoothly as possible.

Well, as I was pulling out the various ingredients, I realized I was extremely short on butter! I always keep a few extra boxes in the freezer- but I had completely gone through my stash. I was literally piecing together a few random bits of butter leftover in the fridge until I was luckily able to piece together the 1 cup of butter we needed for my son’s cookies. I haven’t run out of butter for years, so this was such a weird feeling for me- how can we be out of butter??

And then not too long after, I was helping my husband narrow down some breakfast choices that he could make for the kids the following day. I glanced over some of his chosen recipes and let him know which ones we had the ingredients for, and which ones we would have to improvise. In my mind, I had plenty of tortillas and sour cream to assist with the breakfast taquitos he was attempting. Turns out, I was very wrong.

And then shortly after that, I decided to make a delicious roll recipe to go with the soup I was making for dinner. It requires a homemade garlic seasoning, in which you put 2 tablespoons of grated Parmesan. “No problems, I have plenty!”. Uh, no. No I did not.

I chalk all this up to a crazy year with leaks and new babies and a new puppy…. I’ve obviously been a little distracted ;).

It sure is frustrating to start making a recipe, thinking you have everything you need, only to find that one of your “staples” is out. Luckily, in all of the above cases, we were able to scrounge up enough or be creative and tweak recipes and everything turned out fine. But sometimes you just want to use the ingredient the recipe actually calls for!

When I think of “staples” for my kitchen, I always think of flour, sugar, salt,yeast, you know, the baking staples. But I actually do have a handful of other “better than basic” staples that I almost always have on hand, and when I don’t- this mama stresses!

Here are some of the things I like to keep on hand that might not fall under your typical “storage” category:

• Butter
• Eggs
• Parmesan cheese
• Ketchup
• Almond milk
• Bread (specifically, Harper’s Homemade Bran Bread- it’s the best!!)
• Tortillas
• Yogurt
• Cream cheese
• Shredded cheese
• Tortilla chips

And of course, a few canned goods like diced tomatoes, black beans, corn, and pasta sauce- though those really do fit in with your basic storage items as well!

I call these my “better than basic” staples because they are the base of so much of what I do! If I go to the store and buy a bunch of fresh ingredients or pull some meat out of the freezer, I know I can put a good meal together with these. I try to never run out of these items! I keep a couple extra loaves of bread in the freezer, and rotate when I buy a new loaf. I do the same with milk, ketchup, everything (not the freezing, but the rotating).

I think it’s particularly important for me to stay stocked up because I have such a big family! Last year when there were limits put on so many things, it was a little stressful, because while 3 loaves of bread may seem excessive if you have 2 people at home, we had 7, (and now 8!) and we go through almost one loaf of bread in one meal! So I definitely try to keep a good stash of basics going!

I’d love to hear about your “better than basic” staples. What do you always try to keep on hand? Share with us below!