Stock up and show off! My list of Staples

There's very few items I make sure I am well stocked up on. These items are what I consider 'Staples'.
These staples are the building blocks of your food.

My staples start with flour. All types of flour too! I make sure I have 1 bag of bread flour, 2 bags of plain flour and 2 bags of self raising flour. Plain flour and self raising are pretty much the same apart from the exception that SR flour has raising agents. Any old basic flour will do, no need for all singing and dancing flour as when it comes down to basics, they all work the same. I've found a cheap bag of flour (except bread flour) can cost as little as 50p per bag.

Just by having flour and eggs, your a few ingredients away from making almost everything!

Speaking of Eggs.. The bigger the carton the better. Eggs are extremely versatile, from pies to quiches to desserts and cake. The possibilities are endless!

Sugar.. I like to have multiple types, caster, granulated and icing. Again if you don't bake often or don't have a sweet tooth, you won't find a need for different types of sugar. But if you are a proactive baker like me, this opens your world right up to what you could create.

Butter.. To bake and cook with. (I cook most meats in butter rather than oil)

Cous cous/rice/pasta
Tinned tomatoes/tomato purée
Cooking oil
Stock cube

A few honourable mentions...
Now these aren't essentials but I like to have them in to broaden my choices!

Yeast..forget the sachets though, you can often buy a tub of yeast for roughly £1-1.50 and you get more than 8 servings!! Yeast is handy if your wanting bread of any types. I have some super simple bread recipes that are literally fool proof! I will add them all eventually!

Baking powder.. Just for the times when a recipe suggests the addition, Mainly for cakes and buns!

Sugar.. I like to have multiple types, caster, granulated and icing. Again if you don't bake often or don't have a sweet tooth, you won't find a need for different types of sugar. But if you are a proactive baker like me, this opens your world right up to what you could create.

Chocolate is next on the list, bizzarely enough.  You won't find any Lindt here though! As a self proclaimed scrimper, I find the basics bars for 30p do the job. I buy a good few bars every month.
Now chocolate is only good for baking and eating. But when the sweet tooth hits, 10 minutes in the kitchen and you can have a delicious brownie.
or a cake, or biscuits, or puddings.
(Recently I found myself short on money to buy Easter eggs, so a few balloons and a couple bars of cheap melted chocolate later and I had the eggs I wanted!) cocoa however is used differently to chocolate and can be a very useful commodity.

Then there is the vegetables, Onions, Peppers, Potatoes, Broccoli, Carrots. A lot of your veg can be frozen!! So if you don't use them everyday you're not going to be losing them! Also a lot of veg at the moment is in some supermarkets under £1 as part of a cheaper veg scheme.

Phew!
Now wasn't that a gob full! I will do a seperate post outlining the spice rack essentials. Again I will give you my opinion on where the deals are!
Ttfn! (Ta ta for now)
Dee 😘 X