My list is very similar to yours--we always keep celery, for the triumvirate of onions, carrots, and celery. Don't use frozen corn, but always keep both yellow and white cornmeal.

I do a lot of baking, so I buy yeast by the pound, and always have milk kefir fermenting for bread. I just made four loaves last night. Yum.

My list is very similar to both of yours.

On my open shelves in the kitchen, I have mason jars with various dried beans/rices/peas, grains like couscous, quinoa and amaranth, a few types of oatmeal, and just about anything for baking one would need flours (AP, WW, WW pastry, rice, corn), all the sugars including turbinado, a few different types of honeys and syrups. My pantry has overflow of some of the things we use the most like AP and WW flour, wild rice, couscous, quinoa and a few others.

Pantry also has soups, some canned meats, canned tomatoes (whole and sauces), canned vegetables (mainly used for the dog's food but we could eat it in a pinch), canned beans, cereal, veggie broth, shelf-stable almond milk, pasta, and stuff for baking that I don't need all the time like choc/pb/butterscotch chips, karo syrup, molasses, evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk.

Snack pantry has peanut butter (our house can't function without it, lol), and other nut butters like cashew (yum!). Also a few different crackers, granola bars, nuts, popcorn.

Freezer has frozen veggies, berries, fish, beef, and some poultry (and home-made cookies so I always have some for guests).

Fridge always has cheese, meats, fresh veggies. Onions! I can barely cook without them.

And, of course, lots of different oils, sauces, vinegars, and seasonings.

I think we could eat for months here. It might get to the point where you can't create a tasty meal but there would be food to eat.

MG, I just created my own sourdough starter and am starting to play with substituting it for yeast in bread recipes. Sometimes it works great. Still learning. :)

Gosh, so hard to list. In addition to what you've listed, I keep a very wide variety of canned beans, chicken, beef, and veggie stock, tomato sauce and paste, artichoke hearts, pesto, assorted vinegars, olive oil, frozen ginger, dried peppers, teriyaki, jerk, chutney, kalamata and green olives, anchovies, horseradish, mustards, worsteshire, garlic, shallots, parsley, cilantro, Chardonnay, dry vermouth, brandy, Marsala, corn meal, wondra, bread crumbs, panko, maple syrup, brown sugar, sriracha, sambas oelek, flash frozen shrimp, tuna, salmon, cod, orange roughy, tilapia, Italian sausage, ground turkey, frozen spinach, peas, corn, and Parmesan, Romano, Asiago, Vermont cheddar, feta, Gorgonzola cheeses, almonds, pecans, and pistachios. I like having all the staples to cook whatever we are in the mood for and based on what protein and fresh veggies I've picked up. I'm sure I've missed lots!

Much the same as most for the pantry items and dry goods, except for one big difference... frozen foods! I have several grocery and specialty markets within a 2-4 mile radius, so I shop for the nights main course daily or at the most every two days. Fridge does have all the condiments, and plenty of eggs, cheese, milk, and produce, but our freezer usually has nothing but ice cream, ice and chilled beer mugs.

Glad you're doing better, Texas! You had so many wonderful offers for soup recipes, I didn't want to clutter your post with mine. However, it put me in the mood for soup and I made a big batch of Manhattan clam chowder for my family. :) Most of my staples are mentioned above; we, too, could hunker down for weeks on end, the next time a hurricane blows out of the Gulf! But I get particularly twitchy if I'm running low on Hershey's Special Dark chocolate chips (cuz all sorts of cookies!), garlic, canned clams and Chinese oyster sauce -- the real stuff, according to my mom -- not the one with the cute panda on it. :p

Most of our freezer is fish caught by DH on his annual fishing trip with family in Sitka. They stay at his sister's and fish on his BIL's and nephew's boats. So, for not much more than airfare and some gas for the boat, he came home with over 100# of halibut and just under 100# of salmon filets. We buy fresh tuna to home can (soooo much better than store-bought) and always freeze a few of the tenderest portions as filets. The only beef we have is a portion of a free-range, grass fed cow we share with a few other families. We don't eat much red meat but this at least gives us the best for when we do. Oh, DH doesn't hunt much anymore so he traded some halibut for some elk. Most of the berries we picked ourselves. You've never tasted a better berry than the little wild blackberries that thrive in areas that have been logged. Oh, and we probably have about a dozen limits left of razor clams we have dug this year.

cookncarpenter, I couldn't afford to eat this good if we didn't do it this way and freeze it.

In addition to the wide array of basics most of you have mentioned, I always have dried stone fruit from my sister's organic farm. Peaches, nectarines, plums, pluots, apricots, and cherries. I make lots of jam, but I've wanted a big enough freezer to be able to keep a stash of fruit for winter smoothies. In my new kitchen, I'll have that freezer.

I also keep a lot of gluten-free flours in my freezer: brown rice, sweet rice, millet, sorghum, tapioca starch, cornstarch, arrowroot and the like, as well as guar gum, which sounds disgusting but makes it a lot easier to bake GF treats for my nieces. I have pectin and rennet (in case the urge to make cheese strikes; never has, but I'm ready when it does), gelatin, unsweetened chocolate along with really good semisweet, bittersweet chocolate, and GF chocolate chips. Homemade stock in the freezer. Cubes of Meyer lemon juice to tide us through late summer. Plain yogurt is also one of our basics. I buy yellow mustard seed and toast and grind it myself--again to get gluten-free mustard as dry mustard can have flour in it. I have all kinds of things so I can cook for an extended family chock full of food allergies and intolerances. Ground buffalo instead of beef. I do wish DH was a fisherman. A friend used to give us home canned tuna. Wonderful stuff.

Wine, cheese, and chocolate! Everything else is optional! (j/k)

We keep a good supply of dried goods, such as brown rice and whole wheat pasta, as well as oatmeal (both quick and steel cut), beans, nuts, and lots of herbs and spices. Canned beans, especially black beans are handy, as well as tomatoes. We always keep Rotel tomatoes with chilies on hand.We a;ways have the makings of a quick linguini 'n clams on hand.

Since it's just two of us and we don't eat that much, we keep a lot in the freezer. Chicken, turkey, and whatever is on sale goes in the chest freezer. We pick blueberries and blackberries and keep a lot of them in the freezer. We keep bread in the freezer or it goes bad before we can eat it. I make my own sausages and keep them in the freezer as well.

Baking supplies include bread flour, whole wheat flour, rye flour, cornmeal, white sugar, and brown sugar.

Fresh foods include milk, eggs, yogurt, veggies, and fruit.

It's just me and sometimes the pantry and fridge get a little bare. My must haves tho are coffee, almond milk and sugar

I always have dry goods (flour, oats, sugar, cocoa), a variety of oils and vinegars, soy sauce, wasabi paste, pickled ginger, kalamata olives, tahini, sushi rice, chickpeas, tuna, peanut butter and popcorn on hand

When I stock up it's usually eggs, butter, buttermilk, whole chickens, salsa, avocados, cheese, fresh fruit and vegetables, tortillas and/or pita

Tea. I can't do without the afternoon cup. Pace picante sauce, which I can't seem to make myself. Umpteen pickles and mustards. Various types of rice and spices for curries, cajun, etc. Frozen veggies, as I am lazy. I'm going to experiment by throwing some raw potatoes in the freezer. What could possibly go wrong? ;)

I'm so glad you're feeling better!

Basics: condiments. Herbs & spices.
Maybe some canned tomatoes, corn, beef broth and consomme, rice and grains of many sorts.

I like cheese, but forget to eat it. If I buy veggies, I end up cutting them into pieces and freezing them in water or chicken broth, because I"ll probably toss them in a soup. My way of not wasting and planning ahead.

I really don't have basics anymore.
Previously it was espresso, evaporated milk and Reese's cups. Trying to weed that out, I"m down to trying to remember to buy some yogurt I mix with honey and some soy milk. Drink it like a lasse.
No snackies, so frozen soup. I'm really not a snacker, anyway.

But really, anything else I happen to have in my cabinets has been there a while and I can't think of anything else.

I just came back from BJ's, though. I bought stuff to make corned beef & cabbage, that lentil soup (except they don't carry lentils & I gotta go back out), apples, and cat food.

Basics.

I second scone911 on the tea. I have a giant tea box and lots of extras.

Same as Texas_Gem list (minus the ranch). I have hoards of dijon mustard (french kind) since that goes with everything in my book. Parmesan and lemons to go dress up the mustard sauce. We also have soy sauce, soba noodles, marinara and chickpeas in the pantry (and no I don't make all that at the same time!).

I make a lot of chicken broth and keep in the freezer. There is also usually an assortment of homemade and purchased dumplings and ravioli for emergency and lazy meals. Now i'm hungry!

@funky oh my I'm jealous.

Our basics are very limited compared to you guys. Oils, spices, condiments, rice, coffee, creamer, ramen noodles, pepper jack cheese, eggs and water. That's it. Oops forgot DH frozen Mexican food.

We buy everything else on a weekly or daily basis.

Well, all the fish is nice but I need to start giving it away, beachem. There are only so many ways to cook halibut. :)

I forgot the teas, coffees, flavorings for lattes, and such. My Aerrochino (sp?) has transformed my time with Joe.

@funky we'll take some halibut. You'll laugh at this. Years ago when I first went to Alaska with some friends, one of the guy was British with a wicked sense of humor.

He always kept a line in the water when we were kayaking in the Arctic Ocean. He told me that he was trolling for halibut. When we finally made it down to Ketchikan, I visited the fishing fleet and asked to buy a halibut for him since he never caught any.

The fishermen were laughing their head off and showed me what ONE halibut is like. It was large enough to eat me easily.

Must haves are peanut butter and bananas. The only things that stop my legs from cramping up constantly. For DH it's tea and milk. For DS and nephews it's bread and sandwich fixings. We always have eggs as well. Our pantry gets very bare in lean times, but we always try to have tinned sardines, (they get my blood sugar stabilized faster than anything, and help with dh's headaches), whole grain whole wheat noodles of various cuts and tomatoes and garlic. I can't eat many things but I can eat those. We always have cheddar cheese as well. Rice is seasonal here, at Xmas and Thanksgiving as I react to it, and the men aren't fond of it. We do have lots of spices which are kept in the freezer.

LOL, beachem. They are HUGE monsters. DH goes to Sitka with his brother and a few friends. There are usually about 6-8 fishing. In-between fishing, they filet the fish and put them in seal-a-meal type freezer bags. Everybody shares equally when they go home. So it doesn't matter who catches what, it's all a joint effort with joint rewards.

I am sooo jealous of you kayaking in the Arctic Ocean. I've only done local rivers. Haven't done any sea kayaking but would love to give it a go. Good thing a halibut didn't grab onto your friend's line! Wouldn't it have pulled him under? Or at least a cold capsize. :)

Gem, my friends same the same thing about me. Between my pantry and all of my camping gear, they say they know where to go for the zombie apocolypse. I'm smart enough not to let them in, however ;)

wow, it seems like everyone is much more prepared for the zombies than us. We will always have frozen dumplings, rice, ramen noodles, tea, eggs, coffee, oil, spices, spam, and homemade jam. Everything else we buy on a weekly basis. Honestly, I think we would be okay with just a refrigerator. We hardly use our freezer except for the two bags of frozen dumplings.

Among other things, I forgot grains and nuts. Looking over everyone's lists I think bbtrix has the most unusual items compared to mine, except for funky's surfeit of halibut.

funkycamper, no one here appreciates the taste of sourdough. My unauthentic sourdough starter is the one from the Amish friendship bread recipe, which contains sugar, so I use it in pancakes much more often than in bread. I like using the kefir in Mark Bitman's 4 ingredient/5 minute bread, and I substitute it for the water in my Challah recipe sponge. I also made 4 loaves for New Year's Day dinner, and my lactose intolerant younger DD said it made the bread taste as if it had cheese in it--she said it reminded her of my potato-parmesan crackers.

@Funky my friend was joshing me. He explained later that halibut is a deep sea fish so the trolling line that's 3 inches in the water wouldn't attract anything especially near the shore.

He loves fishing so his fishing pole is always in a pool of water no matter where he went.

He did keep us fed after the rest of the guys lost our food and water two days in of a three week trip.

You should try taking a guided trip. There should be expeditions that drops you off up at the arctic wildlife refuge with kayaks. You then kayak two thousand miles back down the coast. I used to take those trips once a year when my friends weren't with me.

Ha! He could have fooled me, too, beachem. You notice I don't join the fishers. Although I might go next year. Unfortunately, a couple of the regular fishers have passed on recently so there would be room for me. I love to fish if someone else baits my hook, nets my fish, kills it, guts it, cleans it, and I only have to cook it. :)

Yikes on losing your food. We hung a bear bag wrong and lost all of our food once. Luckily, we were only one day in. But it sure felt like a long, long walk out.

That would be a fun trip. We're planning on doing some bicycling in the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound and doing some kayak day trips on the Sound this summer. That would at least let me see if my arms can handle the bigger sea kayaks before heading out on a longer excursion.

I know what you mean, Errant. In 2007, we had a major storm here and all of us were without power for about a week (some areas even longer). We just put the generator on the freezer and fridge and set up a kitchen in our garage with our camp stoves and BBQ grill. (Too rainy to be outside). Between that and the heat from our wood furnace, it really wasn't a hardship. We were downright comfy. Of course, we had to open our garage door to cook safely and, with zombies, that might be tricky.

Wait, Christine, no cookie dough? :)

U guys got me thinking as we are hopefully moving into the new house next week and I'm not bringing any good items with us so need to buy all new. We have little kids and work crazy amounts of hours( I leave the house at 530 am and don't get home till 8pm) so we have always juice eggs flour sugar tons of spices oatmeal noodles many many boxes of noodles canned tomatoes tons of beans both dry and canned.cthen where we differ from most of u Is our freezer it is always stocked with meatballs hot dogs chicken nuggets and fish sticks. We have allergies to milk cheese and nuts here so never have any of those. Oh also we always have tons of ketchup.

I must say I'm relieved to hear that I could walk into most of your kitchens and be able to whip up something edible.

I shouldn't be too surprised though, that TKOers have well stocked pantries. I've always been teased about my pantry habits, but I come by them honestly. My mom grew up so poor she remembers going to bed hungry and spam being a luxury; a well stocked pantry was a necessity to her and I grew up thinking a pantry stocked with enough food for a month was what normal people had.

Reading through others lists, I see things from my own pantry such as peanut butter, sandwich meats, juice boxes (only during the school year when I'm packing lunches) soy sauce, mustards, various cooking oils, various nuts, etc.

The only things mentioned that are noticeably lacking in my own pantry are kefir (I've heard of it before but I still don't really understand what it is), and seafood.

I think my BFF put it best when she said, "well yeah, there isn't exactly a lot of fresh seafood 700 miles from the the nearest ocean, I mean how fresh can it really be?!?"

Other than that, I would be happy to walk into any of your kitchens blindfolded and make a meal! Much better than my (non-cook) friends who don't even have flour and sugar!!!!!

Hi Texas_Gem, thanks for a great topic! You know, when I was growing up, my mom always kept a good pantry. I can remember baking a lot with one of my brothers. We'd decide to make chocolate chip cookies, or a 7 layer dessert, or a cake, and there was never any question that an ingredient needed for those things wouldn't be there.

But things have changed, at least for me. I have always kept flour and sugar on hand. But last year, when I was getting ready to go to Zambia for a year, I downsized and moved all my things into storage. I gave all my pantry supplies to a good friend. When she came to get it, I noticed that I had one bag of sugar and a couple bags of flour. I moved into that apartment in August 2011. It was now September 2014 and the sugar and flour were unopened. That's when I realized my pantry didn't have to be just like mom's.

I always have a variety of canned soups on hand, usually have eggs, I have rice, potatoes, cooking oil, olive oil, salad dressings, and a couple of marinade sauces and spaghetti sauce, and pasta. That's about it.

Oh, and coffee! Couldn't survive without my coffee! :-)

Ketchup! Heffer, when my kids were living at home, we always had extra of that, too. Heaven forbid we run out. Without ketchup on something, my son wouldn't eat. He's now a vegan gourmet and thinks ketchup is horrid. Funny how things change.

Beachem, did he say that he would name the halibut Eric?

I have full pantry cupboards but a lot of it is impulse buys of something I see on sale "ooh, that sounds interesting to try" then it is weeks before I do anything with it.

I rarely keep peanut butter because I love it too much. Any jar will be empty in much less than a week.

Staples for me include:

I keep one small bag of flour, and one of sugar -- keep the flour in the fridge because I go through it so slowly. I don't bake much from scratch -- but always keep bisquick for what I do like to bake (impossible pies, casseroles, biscuits, pancakes). Rice lasts a long time, too. Whole wheat couscous.

Always have oatmeal, cream of wheat, eggs. Not a big fan of cold cereals. Dried fruits like prunes or those chopped mixes, raw walnuts and almonds and almond meal.

Tea and cocoa powder, and those sticks of flavored drink mix in summer.

Popcorn!

Cooking: olive oil (both dark and light), a small bottle of canola oil, and I save the oil that I pour off the peanut butter when I do buy it. Boxed chicken and vegetable broths for quick homemade soups. Canned tuna.

I do stock up on canned soups when on sale since I take one often for lunch at work. Also, when on sale and running low, stock up on veggie/WW pastas.

Always have tortillas in the freezer and refried beans & jarred salsa in the pantry. Love my homemade fresh salsa but jarred is good for quick dinners.

Freezer: Usually keep a bag of veggie protein crumbles, fish, pork loin, chicken all bought when on sale and wrapped in individual servings. Also some kielbasa. And a large variety of frozen vegetables -- more economical for me than canned or fresh, and just as nutritious (or more) than fresh in most cases. This includes bags of frozen grape tomatoes from my garden. Also, must admit, usually one or two frozen pizzas from TJs or Aldi.

Mushrooms, peppers, and greens in the fridge always. Sour cream, cottage cheese, yoghurt, butter. Fresh apples. Lemons. Tofu. Parmesan/romano cheese (grated). Mozzarella cheese sticks. Laughing cow wedges.

Condiments: horseradish, mustard (a variety), mayo, soy sauce, sesame oil, pickles, olives, malt/cider/white/wine vinegars, chili oil.

Seasonings: I have way too many but I depend most upon my garlic, cinnamon, pepper, paprika, ground red pepper, jerk seasoning and herbs provence.

There are many other things that I will always buy when at an especially good price, or things (like molasses) that I use but a few times a year, but not things that I find I want to be sure to have week after week.

My staples seem to be the same as almost everyone else's. I don't have butter all the time; only when I'm planning to do baking. It's way more expensive in Canada, so sometimes if I go to the US, I'll buy butter and freeze it. I almost always have frozen chicken, ground beef and steak in the freezer. I buy bulk and vacuum pack it. It's never hard to grab something for dinner as long as I decide that morning what we'll have. I use the little milk bottles for school lunches rather than juice boxes. It's a nice treat for the boys.

Mine is similar to others plus a lot of grains. Farro is my current favorite. Chipotle in adobo, capers and coconut milk always on hand too.