Food Storage

This month our goal is to store 3 months of food that your family will actually eat. Regardless of the current state of your food storage, we are encouraging each of you to pick 7-14 recipes, and store enough ingredients to last you three months.

In an emergency, it isn’t likely you will begin to cook with some of the traditional food storage items like beans and wheat if you haven’t already been cooking that way. Your bodies will not be prepared to digest it, your family will not want to eat it, and it might be difficult to cook it. Selecting recipes that can be cooked entirely from ingredients on your shelf will ensure that you have viable options in times of need. Last night Karen Timothy taught us some ways that we can begin to integrate wheat into our diet. Aim to begin using those items gradually, but take immediate action by stocking up on food you eat now.

This is our 3-step plan that will guide you through the process of getting a 3-month supply of food:

1. Select your recipes. Karen recommended choosing 14 recipes that can be cooked from foods not requiring any refrigeration. Click HERE for our handout with 10 dinner recipes to help you get started. Look through your own recipes and see what you currently make that could be cooked using canned ingredients, such as canned chicken instead of fresh chicken. Another option is to select 7 recipes, and in an emergency cook them twice as often.

2. Make your shopping list. Click HERE to find a spreadsheet that will help you calculate a shopping list for your food storage ingredients. Each spreadsheet enables you to calculate ingredients for 7 meals, so if you are storing for 14 meals, print two copies of the spreadsheet. This is a simple way to create your shopping list.

3. Go shopping. We purposely selected March to focus on food storage so you could take advantage of the caselot sales going on now through mid April.  Have your family help you shop or put the food away for a Family Night activity. (On another note, it’s so smart to get your family involved. Your children will have more of an appreciation for what you are doing, possibly be more supportive, and have more experience for when they need to collect food storage of their own.)

 

A few tips to make this realistic:

  • Remember that you are only aiming to store one main meal a day. You can easily have ingredients for pancakes or other snacks. But in an emergency, we likely won’t be sitting down to the regular meals we are used to.
  • Add in as many fresh ingredients as possible, to make rotating these recipes easier and more enjoyable. For example, garnish the soups with fresh veggies, cook with fresh chicken, or top haystacks with fresh ingredients. In an emergency, your family will be familiar enough with these recipes that they will be able to eat them without the added fresh food.
  • Consider storing some freeze dried food to supplement the 7-14 recipes. We sampled freeze dried food last night.
  • Maintenance: Remember to add case lot sales to your six-month maintenance schedule.
  • Many of these recipes will require using dehydrated vegetables in times of emergency.  But knowing how to substitute dehydrated for fresh can get tricky. We have found the perfect resource for you! Check out THIS link – a guide to knowing the ratio of dehydrated to fresh veggies in your food storage recipes.If you have good food storage recipes your family enjoys, we want to know about them!