Friday, February 06, 2009

Food Storage Friday #2

How's the water collecting going? Hopefully you've gotten started on that. The next step I want to talk about is getting your 3 months supply of food. Don't be intimidated, this is really easy to do by just buying extra of the non-perishable items you already buy every time you shop. You want to build up a surplus of the food you already eat, that you could live entirely off of for 3 months if necessary. The easiest way is to choose 7 meals, times 12 weeks. Write out the ingredients you need for those 7 meals and start stocking up. Get 12 boxes of pasta and 12 jars of pasta sauce. Get 24 cans of chili and 12 boxes of cornbread mix. Canned soup, rice & beans, tuna, mac & cheese, top ramen, refried beans, peanut butter and honey are all good lunch options. For breakfast I have oatmeal, boxed cereal, and big bags of Krusteaz pancake mix- you just have to add water. I have some dry powder milk, but the thought of drinking it makes me gag so I bought a couple boxes of vanilla soy milk from Costco- they store for about 9 months and don't need to be refrigerated until they are opened.
I don't count the food in my freezer as food storage because in case of an emergency that you would have to rely on your food storage, there might not be consistent electricity.
Your 3 month supply is easy to rotate because most canned or boxed goods are fine stored for a year as is and if you use 1-2 of these meals a week and replenish your supply, you'll keep stocked and rotated.
Food Storage is easy! Let me know if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them! Next week- canning meat! It's not hard- wouldn't it be great to have some chicken or beef in your food storage? When you bottle it, it tastes better than the canned stuff you buy, and it stays good for TEN YEARS!

4 comments:

stephanie said...

these posts are great, katie. thank you!

nate and amy crandell said...

thank you katie! your so helpful in your posting I love it! those are great tips :)

Shauna said...

oh you make it sound so easy! these things are motivating...thanks!

Emily Ruth said...

Thank you Katie! I'm already getting more courage/motivation/less fear around food storage: )