Pantry Challenge: What you should store

 

This month I’m participating in the Pantry Challenge and one of my goals is to evaluate my food storage.  For the last year I have been adding a LOT to my long term food storage.  It is time for me to reevaluate what I need, what I have, and what I want.  

With this as with all big projects I like to break it down into smaller tasks, so today we are just going to focus on figuring out what you need.   I like to use a combination of the free food storage calculators and inventory sheets available online. 

Choosing a Food Storage Calculator  

 

There are a couple of easy to use food storage calculators that I recommend. 

       1.      Food Storage Calculator from About.com

The is really easy to use.  You enter the number of people over 7 years old, than you enter the number that are younger and hit calculate.  You than have a list of basics divided by pounds. 

This calculator does not include any freeze dried foods, any canned goods, or any fresh foods stored in a root cellar.

      2.      Food Storage Made Easy Long Term Food Storage Calculator and Inventory

This is a free download.  You need excel to open the file. 

This is a great calculator.  It allows you to customize the number of months that you desire to have food storage for, that is a  great feature that many of the calculators don’t have. 

I also like this one because it has a place for those of you who are OCD to track the cost, where you purchased it, and how much you have stored. 

     3.      Shelf Reliance THRIVE Planner

This planner is specialized to the THRIVE brand of food that Shelf Reliance sells, but I feel like it is easy enough to transfer across to any brand you are buying. 

I LOVE it because it is easily customizable.  

For example my family is pretty picky about what beans they will eat.  They will not eat kidney beans.  Ever. So when I was figuring out what we needed the planner recommended that I store 5 cans or 25 pounds of red beans .  I took them out and the planner recalculated showing me that I now only had 43% of the meat and beans my family needed.   I swapped things around until I was happy which left me with a case each of Freeze Dried Chicken, Instant Black Beans, Sausage Crumbles and Whole Egg Powder.  This put me over the recommended but I’m okay with that. 

This is the calculator that takes the most time to use. But it takes that time because it allows you to totally customize it.  If you want to store freeze Dried Spinach and Freeze Dried tomatoes it can handle that.  If you are storing only gluten free grains it can handle that. 

It does take a little time to process as you change things around.   

One of the things I really like about this caculator is that it gives you the food amounts in pounds and in the number of number 10 cans.  

For example it figured out that I needed 7 cans of 9 grain cracked cereal which is 28 pounds.  I like this because I purchase most things in number 10 cans but I sometimes buy things in bulk and knowing how many pounds to buy is great .

When you are finished with the planner and everything is set how you want it.  You have a couple of options.  You can Set up monthly shipments (which you are totally in control of what comes, and when it comes) you can add all of it to you cart and buy it all in a go, you can e-mail your plan, and you can save you plan.  I like to e-mail it to myself and save it.

      4.      The Food Storage Planner from the USU Extension:  This file is a PFD and you will have to do some of your own math.  (But it is simple math and you can do it.)

This plan helps you create a list of 10 main dishes that your family likes.  You than break down the dishes by ingredients and store the ingredients to make these dishes.  This PDF includes easy to follow instructions, an example, and 3 blank forms.  The 3 forms are the food storage planner, the Pantry Storage Inventory, and   Frozen Storage Inventory. 

This is a great way to think about food storage.  It insures that you have foods stored that your family will eat and that you know how to cook.  I really like that it includes the pantry and freezer storage, places many of us overlook when we are evaluating our food storage.   

If this kind of food storage appeals to you, than check out the cookbook   it’s in the bag by Michelle Snow.  You can see my review of it here. 

5.  E's Food Storage Inventory:  You might Remember E from a while back.  She is the one with the super awesome pantry.  She also has a great way that she keeps track of her food storage inventory.   

How do you figure out how much to store?  Do you use a food storage caculator?  

Food Storage Celebrity, Jodi Moore, My Top 5 Food Storage Tips

Jodi has been blogging about food storage and emergency preparedness with her sister-in-law Julie over at Food Storage Made Easy for just over 3 years.  They started as total beginners and have shared their journey with readers as they have built their food storages and learned about how to become more prepared.  While they still don't consider themselves to be "experts", they have a lot of great tips and tricks they love to share.  

5 Things I Wish I had Known About Food Storage When I Got Started

 

#1 - Wheat is just FLOUR. 

 

  Photo Source: Annie Mole

 

I was really intimidated by long term food storage in the beginning because I didn't even know what wheat looked like, let alone how to use it.  One day I was at a friend's house and saw her wheat grinder sitting on her kitchen counter.  I asked her about it and she gave me a demo and sent me home with a baggie full of wheat flour and a great whole wheat bread recipe.  I made homemade bread for the first time in my life and had an "aha" moment when I realized that if I know how to cook with FLOUR, I already know how to cook with WHEAT.  A few months later I was able to afford to purchase my own wheat grinder and my food storage life changed forever.

#2 - You don't have to store everything a calculator tells you to store. 

 

 Photo Source: Leonid Mamchenkov

 

 In the beginning I was obsessed with getting the exact right pounds of everything that the typical food storage calculators said to get.  As my shelves started filling up with legumes like split peas and lentils, and I faithfully tried to learn new recipes to actually USE those items ... I finally admitted defeat.  I just do NOT like split pea soup or lentils. I even tried sprouting lentils and sneaking them into foods but I still did not like them.  It is not a sin to store more of something else that you and your family will actually EAT.

#3 - You need more water than you think ... and even more than that!  

 

 photo source: Dottie Mae

 

Most sources say to store somewhere between 3-14 days of drinking water and assume 1 gallon per day per person.  I initially thought that 14 gallons per person was a TON of water and I would be all set with that amount.  As I have done more research and practiced living through different emergency situations, I have quickly realized how important water is, and how many things we use it for beyond just staying alive. 

 

 There are things you can store (paper plates, sanitation kits, etc.) that can reduce the amount of water you use for things like washing dishes, flushing toilets, etc. but it is still a good idea to store as much water as you possibly have space for.  Stick juice and pop bottles EVERYWHERE in your house.  You will be glad you did!

#4 - Beans are an AMAZING food!  

 

 photo source:  cookbookman17

 

If you think beans are just for chili so you don't need to store very many, think again.  Over the years I have learned so many ways to use beans and my storage has grown to reflect that.  White beans can be ground into a bean flour that can be used as a healthy, low-fat thickening agent.  You mix bean flour and white to act as a white sauce base for soups, homemade mac n cheese, etc.  You can add a little chicken bouillon and make a fantastic cream of chicken soup for casseroles.  

 

If you cook up and then mash your beans, they can become a fat substitute in tons of baked goods.  Don't replace your oil with sugary applesauce, add a little fiber to your cakes and brownies by using beans!  You can even match the color of beans to the color of the food you are making and no one will ever know the difference.  

 

One of the best purchase I ever made was getting an electric pressure cooker to make my bean cooking super easy and delicious.  I now have the confidence to use beans in so many different things, and if I ever have a powerless emergency I can easily transition to cooking them using alternate methods and using them in all the foods I've been practicing with this whole time.

#5 - Starting small is better than not starting at all.  

 photo source:  Yoni Lerner

 

This was an approach that I took with starting to get my food storage in place.  Julie and I developed the ten babysteps on Food Storage Made Easy to make it very easy to get started without getting overwhelmed.  However there were many things we were really intimidated by that we just ignored for the first little while.  Powerless cooking was one of the biggest examples.  Instead of starting small with a small camp stove, I just chose to ignore the topic and worry about it later.  Looking back, I wish I would have jumped in and started at least researching and learning a few small things back in the beginning.  It would have given me a lot more confidence for emergency situations and I would have had a lot more years of experience with that topic.  So if there is something you feel overwhelmed about, just jump in and at least do something SMALL!

Food Storage Celebrety: Food Storage Tips

Photo Source: Everydayfoodstorage.net

Did you know there are food storage celebrities?  I have asked my favorite food storage celebrities to share their top 5 food storage tips.  These are things that they wish they had known when they first got into food storage. Hopefully the tips they share over the next month will help you one your food storage journey.  

Crystal Godfrey is the queen of food storage.  You might recognize her from her amazing website: Everyday Food Storage or from her awesome book: I Can't Believe It's Food Storage, or from her TV appearances on Studio 5.  

I must confess that Crystal's blog was the first blog  I ever read, and I totally blog stalked her blog (this was before I know about Google reader) and I would visit her blog every day to see if she had posted something new.  If you haven't checked out Crystal's blog before, my favorite recipes are:  French Bread, Sunshine Crepes, and Cookie Clay Dough (in the photo above).


I love how her recipes use my food storage and they are  things that my family will eat happily.  The tips Crystal shares below are great advise for those just starting out and for those of us who have been around a while.  Here is what she has to say about food storage.


My Top 5 Food Storage Tips By Crystal Godfrey

1. Get out of your comfort zone!  

 I would have told you that you were crazy if you had told me when I first starting using food storage that one day I'd be putting beans in my brownies, making yogurt from powdered milk-or even drinking it for that matter, or that my wheat grinder would become a permanent structure on my counter!  Everything is worth a try at least once and most of the time I've been pleasantly surprised-even if it does sound crazy!
 
2. Don't warn your family! 

Don't ever warn your family that what you're cooking has food storage. Try first to put it in your own recipes, your family will assume you made it like always-unless you tell them.  There are some things my family still has no idea they've eaten it...and I like to keep it that way! ;)
 
3. Don't listen to what the outside world has to say! 

 I've heard it all food hoarder, crazy, worrier, I've heard them all and do you know what?  I absolutely do not care!  They can say what they want but for someone who has lived through job loss, pay cuts, and a bad economy-I know none of what they are saying is true.  Whatever you do, do not stop working on your food storage.
 
4. JUST START! 

 It took me a long time to start-even after I knew I wanted to because I felt like I had to have everything figure out FIRST.  It isn't true.  If you work on it a little at a time then you can find the money and the space for it.  Better yet, you can even learn to cook with it too!
 
5. Share it!  

One thing I didn't expect when I first started with food storage was how much it would allow me to share and help others.  I can now give generously to food drives, make dinners for others on short notice, or help others learn to cook with food storage.  It will save families!