I made a New Year's resolution this year to improve my food storage. I get the "preparedness bug" every few years, so I go out and buy several cases of whatever is on sale and that always seems to makes me feel better. But this time I'm going about it a little more systematically. I've been perusing various food storage calculators to determine what to buy and how much. And today I have spent quite a bit of time pouring over the Walton Feed website trying to figure out what I need and what is available.
Honestly, my findings have been a little frightening.
Did you know it is possible to buy a 25 pound bag of something called "meat substitute"?! And it's available in various flavors? I'm a big fan of protein, but that's just not right.
I also had no idea that there was such a thing as shortening powder. Imagine that, powdered fat. (I've always followed my grandmother's advice: "Never be so poor that you can't buy butter." So I'm going to splurge and get powdered butter. Yum)
And it is recommended that for my little family of five, I should store almost 1200 pounds of grains. I'm all for following wise counsel, I just have no idea where I am going to keep all of it!
I realize, however, that if I'm going to go to the trouble of buying all of this stuff, I need to learn how to use it up. So today I made whole wheat bread. I don't think I've made bread since my newlywed days. (And even then I had a bread machine.) I used a recipe that consisted entirely of food storage items so that I could figure out if I will literally be able to put my money where my mouth is. I was pleasantly surprised with the results. And even more pleased that my kids loved it.
But for the most part, I'm a little overwhelmed with this project. I know that it is often recommend to just get a little at a time, but I'm kind of anxious to make sure I at least have the basics. I figure after that I can slowly work on getting the more non-essential items like cake mixes. Although, if you were to ask my sister she would tell you that cake mixes are essential items--the reason being that if you are ever in a stressful life situation in which you need to depend on your food storage, dang it, you're going to want cake!
(And the last time I was at her house, I counted twenty three cake mixes in her basement)
5 comments:
That's great you're checking into food storage. If every one prepared for emergencies, the overall effect of a disaster would be so much more manageable.
I saw this week that there are now smaller cans of wheat available, and they store for around 25 years, depending on temperature of storage area. Sounds good to me.
Sarah, I have a great excel spreadsheet that I got from a guy in my parents ward. You put in what you have, including cereal, pasta, rice, PB, etc. and it calculates the tonage you have of each of the required groups and shows you how short you are in each of the categories so you know where you need to do some beefing up. I buy cereal in bulk and pasta, and that goes toward my grain requirement. If you want it, email me and I'll shoot it over to you. This guy is really gung-ho and has many miscellaneous items that I would never use, so you have to do some personalizing to make it work for you.
Cousin Jenni
As a former food storage crazy, I'm actually relieved that the Church is no longer recommending a year supply. The most recent recommendations (see the provident living website)are to store a three month supply of normal food (i.e., what children will actuall eat) and then stock up on carefully packaged emergency staples (like canned wheat)that will last for thirty years. That way, we won't find ourselves stocking up on 25 pounds of meat substitute--or even worse, trying to make fake meat from wheat (such recipes exist)and then attempting to serve them to our families. I try to spend at least $100 a month on food storage, and now I find that I actually earn the money back by not paying full price for shelf stable foods.
--Joanne
PS: I have a year supply of cake and brownie mixes. My husband thinks that it's weird.
You're doing better than I am.
But I've got about 6 months of grains, if memory serves and we're counting oats, rice, and flour--and my cake mixes. They're grains, right?
I'm afraid I've got somewhere near 20 of those . . .
The bread smelled divine the other day, by the way.
I'd love a copy of your bread recipe. I have the wheat, grinder and the yeast but no idea how to put it together!
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