Food storage – four ways

“An army travels on its stomach.” Is a true concept, no matter if Napoleon was the first to be quoted stating this idea or not. (History buffs will understand this) When we are planning for a bad day one of the first things we have to consider is how to feed ourselves and loves ones. Aside from water and shelter, food is one of your top priorities. No matter the situation, loss of a job, fire, flood, earthquake or alien invasion your stomach is going to be one of the first things you have to address. If you have ever been truly hungry, I do not mean you haven’t eaten in a few hours but you haven’t eaten all day and you are not sure when or from where you next meal is coming you understand the type of hunger I am discussing here.

To address this subject a good suggestion is to have a multi-level approach to food storage; one which does not rely on a single source of food or a small selection of food types. You want to have as much variety as you can; short and long term storage and try to do all of this on the cheap.

BUY MORE
The first angle to a well prepared food plan is purchase more of what your family eats every week. By using coupons, buying in bulk and other creative means we try to purchase items our family regularly uses. Warehouse stores are great for this especially for items which do not go bad quickly. An example of this would be pancake mix. You can save money by buying ten pounds of mix at Costco than by buying five pounds at a regular grocery store.

You can also save money by buying none food items at the warehouse store and putting the savings toward buying extra food items. Say buying a giant pack of toilet paper at the warehouse saves you five bucks over what you would spend at a grocery store, take those five bucks and put it toward canned goods or other items your family uses weekly. The idea is to buy items for one more meal, one more day, one more week, etc. etc.

Just keep in mind your available storage space for these items!!!! Most of these items rely on refrigeration and if you buy more than you can store you have wasted money and resources!!!


EMERGENCY FOOD
These are the types of meals you can grab and go. Military meals, hiking meals and any other type of food which is portable and made for what can be considered the medium range of storage time; most of these types of meals can easily be stored for 3 to 5 years without any major concerns. Of course these meals cost a bit of money if you try to buy a large quantity all at once. A workable suggestion is to buy one or two meals at a time.

MREs are somewhere around $70.00 for a case of meals, 12 meals. Individual hiking type meals are around $7 or $8 a piece. If you can pick up one hiking meal a month that is one more meal you have or if you can save up the money and buy one case of MREs you have 12 meals. Doing the math, adding in the number of family members you have, can get scary when you realize the price of what you might have to invest. Remember, one meal at a time!!! Say for January you decide to cover breakfast for just one day. Maybe there are four people in your family, that’s two hiking meals or roughly 20 bucks. This can be all you spend for the month and all of us can come up with $20.00 without breaking the bank!!! Yes you can!!!

LONG TERM
These are food items made to be stored for an extended period of time, 20 years or more. These are you’re really bad day food stores! If you have to break into these something bad has happened. At first look these items might seem expensive but you have to remember they are special made to last for the long haul. Some of these items are buy and forget, well all of them are buy and forget hopefully!!! The trick here is to buy as many items as you can which are the same as your family eats every day. Keeping things as close to “normal” as you can really will help with lowering the families stress level during a bad situation.

I personally look to Auguason Farms for items in this category. They have quality items for reasonable prices. The customer service I have had with these folks is OUTSTANDING!

http://www.augasonfarms.com/?avad=49183_b7daf6cd

Using the same idea as before, just buy one item a month if this is all you can budget. You will be surprised how quickly your pantry fills up!

GROW YOUR OWN
This probably is the most fulfilling way to address your food storage needs. It sounds kind of cliché to say but growing your own food has a special feel to it. Learning how to tend to a garden and eating things you grow yourself allows you to learn new skills and gives you a sense of accomplishment. Trust me you will have some disappointments before your get accomplishment!!!!!!

I personally have learned to make jams from our fruit trees and have had to learn about making soil right to grow food. There is way more to growing food then just throwing seeds in the ground and pouring water on them. Plus it gives me and the kids something fun to do. Every kid enjoys an excuse to get dirt and play in the dirt!

Grow whatever you can. Even if you live in an apartment on the fifteenth floor you can still grow things on a balcony or just in the kitchen window! Fresh herbs and spices can be grown in almost any window and fruit trees can be grown in pots!!!

Growing your own food also allows you to learn how to make food from scratch and gives you more of appreciation of exactly what goes into those meals you pick up at the drive thru. You might also find this is when you want to learn about preserving food. Odds are you are going to grow more food then you can use and you will naturally want learn how to preserve the excess for later use. This is when you have a reason to learn about canning and other methods to preserve food.

Remember, nothing ever started without taking the first step. Build your food storage one meal or item at a time. You will be surprised by how quickly you will be able to feed your family for an extra day, two days, a week and then a month. There is a sense of security which comes with being able to feed your family for a month without having to go to a store. Should there be a bad day you and your family can stay safely at home instead of venturing out to find food others desperately need!!

As Always.

Stay Safe!

Food storage – start with staples

When we are planning for a bad day we need to set a good foundation which allows us to be flexible and adapt to changing situations. Food storage is no different. Now some of these items I will be suggesting a few of us might not consider ‘staples’. Maybe you do not eat this type of food on a regular basis. That is fine; we are not suggesting you alter your way of eating on a daily basis. What we are suggesting is you have the tools on hand to feed your family for ‘one more meal’ or even maybe have these items on hand to barter with if the situation calls for this.

The two items you should look at purchasing first are flour and rice. These are the bases for a vast majority of the world’s diet. With flour you can make several types of meals and the rice goes with just about anything. The idea here is to have items you can build up from and fill your belly. At most stores there are five pound packages of both rice and flour available. In some case you can find one pound packages for around one dollar. These can be bought, put up in the cabinet and forgot about for a while. Yes they need to be stored in a cool, dry place which is free of pest. Stored properly they can be left for extended periods of time.

Next items to look at buying are an assortment of beans. These again come in pound or larger packaging and can be picked up for around a dollar also. Along with the rice and flour you can store these in a cool, dry place the ants or rodents do not make a habit of visiting. Purchase a variety of beans to give you different tastes to work with. Any type of bean can be served with the rice and now you are really filling the belly when you need to. Add in a few bread items from the flour and now you have a decent meal. While you are picking up some beans odds are there are lentils somewhere near. Pick some of these up to make soups with. Pea soup is great on a cold evening!

Dry milk and sugar can be bought in small quantities and added to our storage. This allows us to make more items with the flour and now we can do some baking. How about some sugar cookies? Purely for morale!!! Add some oats and now you have the ability to make more items and increase your menu.

A valuable item most people do not think about is spices! With a foundation of rice and flour you can add different spices to change the flavor of your meals. Food apathy can be a real problem and spices can assist with keeping this at bay.

What is food apathy? It is when you are tired of eating the same thing over and over and over and over again. You can only eat plain white rice every day for so long before you do not want to eat another piece of rice. Changing the taste of the rice makes you want to eat more of it. If you begin to suffer from food apathy you will not eat, which leads to less energy to do things, sluggish thinking and is a spiral downward you do not want to take. Pick up a few shakers full of pepper, salt, BBQ flavoring and any other type of spice which catches your eye.

Honey is another often over looked item for food storage. You can pick up a container of honey, store it properly and just forget about it. They have found honey in ancient Egyptian burials thousands of years old and the honey is still good!!! Honey on a biscuit is a treat! The number of uses for honey is great and honey can also be used for medical purposes if you have to!!!
All of these items can also be stored long term. How to do this is the subject of a different post. For now, pick up a pound or two of staple items the next time you are at the grocery store. Remember we want to be able to feed our family for ‘just one more meal’!!!!

As always,

Stay Safe.