 |
| source:Joe Lanman
|
Have you ever wondered how complete your food storage is? What
holes you would find if you were living exclusively out of what you have
stored?
Earlier this year my
good friend, Sariah, decided
to live exclusively out of her food storage for 30 days. She started with the food in her house and
didn’t buy any food (grocery store or restaurant food) for 30 days. She did use the food she had in her fridge
and freezer but they were both on the low side when she started. No
eating out or grocery shopping - for a full month. What did she learn?
- Store
a lot more fruit! Sariah had no idea how much fruit they would go
through. They snacked on it, put it in oatmeal, added it to muffins,
and used it in smoothies. Before this exercise she thought
that she had a lot of fruit stored but found that they needed a LOT more. So what can you do? I recommend a three pronged approach
 |
| source: .v1ctor Casale. |
- Freeze fruit
while it is in season.
- Plant fruit
trees/bushes in your yard. I think
of this as perpetual food storage because you store replenished each
year. At our house we have grapes,
strawberries, peaches, apples, apricots, and raspberries.
- Add freeze
dried fruit to your pantry and food storage.
- Greens
are hard to come by in the winter. Sariah and her family did
their 30 day food storage challenge in the winter and they live in an area
of the country where snow and freezing temperatures are a part of life.
Fresh lettuce and other greens are hard to add to you food storage and are
impossible to find/grow in the deep winter. So what can you do?
- Store seed
sprouting supplies. At my house we really like alfalfa and
mung beans. I use this
one from Amazon. It isn’t
perfect but it is inexpensive and gets the job done. We have been very happy with it.
- Add freeze
dried spinach to your food storage.
Freeze dried spinach will not make you a great salad but it is
great to add to soups, lasagna, casseroles, scrambled eggs, etc.
- Freeze spinach
and chard. I love to freeze
spinach as spinach pesto, and I like to freeze greens for green smoothies
in advance so all I have to do it throw it in the blender. Frozen greens won’t make a great salad
but they will give you some great vitamins.
- Sariah
learned that if you kids don’t like
something normally they still won’t like it in your food storage. One of the things I hear most often when
I talk to groups about food storage is: “If they are hungry enough
they will eat it” I guess my kids have never been hungry enough
because with the foods they really dislike they would rather be hungry and
super winy then eat something weird. Sariah ran into the same
problem a couple of times and it really has emphasized to me how important
it is to store food your family will eat happily. What you can do.
- Store foods
your family likes
- Store high
quality foods. When you are
buying food storage ask yourself “would I feed this to my family tonight?” If the answer is no then you might want
to reconsider your purchase.
- You need a breakfast plan other than
cold cereal. Breakfast is
tricky for a lot of us. You and you
kids are probably used to eating cold cereal. But in a situation where you will be
eating out of your food storage cold cereal will not be an option. So what can you do?
- Figure out what
cooked breakfasts your family likes.
I really love grits but my kids think they are poison, so grits
are not a great addition to our food storage. I have found that making my own instant
oatmeal, is a great way to help the kids eat food storage for
breakfast. We also really like:
- Scrambled Egg make
from Scrambled
Egg Mix
- Biscuits and
Gravy (make with Freeze Dried Sausage)
 |
| source: Paul Keller |
- Chocolate Malt-o-meal
- Butter
is delicious and really hard to store.
 |
| source: Greenmelinda |
For real butter you
have two options for storing. Have it in
the freezer or buy a cow. Both of those
options have some downsides. There are
other options including,
§ Commercially Canned
butter—like Red Feather is very expensive
§ Powdered Butter-(which
I store), has some of the fat removed in the processing and is a fine
substitute but will never be as good as real butter
§ Shelf Stable UHT
cream, with this you can make your own butter, but it is kind of hard to find
and pricy to store in quantity.
All of these options
have limited shelf life, and can be very pricy to store in bulk. As Sariah started her food storage experiment
she counted how many sticks of butter she had in her freezer and rationed them
out. Even though butter is delicious
on toast don’t forget to store other fats too.
Vegetable Oil, Olive Oil, and Shortening and all reasonably priced and
can be stored for a reasonable amount of time.
I buy all I need for the year at Sam’s club and keep it stored in a cool
dark place. (You can read about how
I store fats and oils here).
Sometimes I see the
idea of home canned butter floating around the internet. Just know it is NOT safe to can butter at
home you run a huge risk of botulism poisoning (which is very quick acting and
fatal). It just isn’t worth the risk. Don’t do it.
How would your food
storage stand up to a 30 day challenge?
What holes would you find?
