Pantry staples

We're talking living off the land sort of staples. Like the guy in "The Poet of Tolstoy Park" by Sonny Brewer, or "The Long Winter" by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

From http://www.untrainedhousewife.com/the-homesteaders-pantry:
Whole wheat flour
-Baking soda
-Baking powder
-Sugar
-Salt
-Vanilla
-Whole wheat pasta
-Lentils or other beans
-A bag of rice
-Jug of oil (canola)
-Canned tomatoes
-Spices such as: good black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder, bay leaf, oregano
-Cooking onions
-Potatoes
-Carrots

In your freezer, you’ll want to have some butter and plenty of frozen fruits , vegetables and even jams."

So, what you can grow in the garden are: beans, tomatoes, chili peppers, maybe a bay bush?, oregano, potatoes, and carrots.

You can set up shelves in your crawlspace and turn it into a root cellar. Or bury a barrel on the south side of your home, fill it with straw (and cover it with straw) as insulation, and store root vegetables there. Tomatoes can be canned without a pressure cooker, as can fruit. But beware vegetables else you kill yourself with botulism. This summer I'm going to make a solar dryer and dry some vegetables.

In the old days, stew and bread kept people alive. It might be boring--guess you'll have to find your fun elsewhere...

Here's another list of suggested staples, from http://www.pioneerthinking.com/cooking/solutions/st_pantry.html:

"1. Beans and Lentils
2. Brown rice
3. Canned fish
4. Canola Oil
5. Cooking spray
6. Dried fruit
7. Low-sodium chicken broth
8. Nuts and nut butters
9. Popcorn
10. Whole wheat pasta
11. Whole wheat flour"

And here, just for entertainment, is a list of Japanese pantry staples from http://www.justhungry.com/2006/08/back_to_japanes.html:

"Medium grain rice
Japanese soy sauce
White miso (shiromiso)
Bonito flakes (katsuo bushi)
Konbu seaweed
Sake
Mirin
Rice vinegar
Dried shiitake mushrooms
Sesame seeds
Green tea leaves"
'Course, if you're LDS, you can skip sake, mirin, rice vinegar and green tea leaves.
I had a friend in Okinawa whose family made miso. I wonder if self-sufficient-oriented people in Japan know how to make their own miso. And tofu. Hmm.