The Newlywed's Guide to Stocking Their First Kitchen

When you get married for the first time, and move into your own new apartment or house with your new spouse, you are going to need a nicely stocked kitchen so you can prepare and cook meals without always having to run out to the store to buy a common item that's in a recipe you want to try. Most of the items you will need to purchase have a shelf life for months, though several, once opened will need to be refrigerated. When you store your goods, make sure to do so in a cool cabinet, away from the stove, heater or radiator. Line the cabinets with wipe-clean materials made for shelves, and make sure the cabinet is dry!

Store your purchases in your pantry cabinet in a way that you can find them easily. Put the canned foods on one shelf together, the bags of flour, cornmeal and sugar together, the bottled oils and vinegars together etc. Also you need to check labels periodically for expiration dates, and remember some foods need to be refrigerated once open.

To make stocking your kitchen pantry easy, we will divide the staples up into five groups which include dry goods, spices, seasonings and herbs, oils and vinegars, condiments and baking and dessert products.

Dry goods include flour, pasta, rice and legumes. At first, just buy small bags of flour unless you plan on baking a lot. A bag of white flour, whole wheat flour, bread flour (if you are going to make bread yourself), and cornstarch will be a good start. Rice should also be in your pantry. Instant rice is a great choice, since it won't stick because it's been parboiled. It will be easy to make perfect rice with this product all of the time. You can also stock up on ling-grain rice and brown rice. Legumes are the dried beans, peas and lentils used to make soups and many different kinds of bean dishes. The main ones to have on hand are red kidney beans, cannelloni beans, chick peas, split peas and lentils.