The topic of food storage drives me crazy, but I have a plan. I say "plan" because we don't have a lot of food storage yet. Every class I go to has just made me confused, so I checked out the Church's website for clarification. It's actually not that hard, and the guidelines are very general. When one starts food storage, it's based on assumptions of some sort. I'm assuming that we're going to need food storage for a financial crisis, that I will still have some way to cook normally, and that it's not going to be the absolute worst-case scenario disaster (no electricity, water, etc.) I realize that this can happen, but for the most part, I want to have things in storage that I'll want to eat, that are healthy, and that are not some of those rip-off items that they sell just to make money by instilling fear into people. So here's what I've done to plan. (Yes, I tend to plan everything before I actually do it.)
1. I have a grocery list of everything I ever buy.
2. I have a recipe box of all the meals we eat and a rotating menu, so our meals are fairly predictable.
3. I cook from scratch whenever possible.
4. For our short-term supply (3 months), I used that grocery list to figure out how much we use of each item for 3 months and made a spreadsheet. It took a little while, but it wasn't too hard. I know I didn't miss anything.
5. For the long-term supply (1 year), I looked up the amounts for grains and beans on the Church's website. I glanced over our dinner menu to see approximately how much of each grain we eat (wheat, rice, pasta, corn, etc.) and divided up the numbers accordingly. For the beans, I picked our favorite 3 and divided up those amounts. I listed everything in pounds, because I don't know how I will end up buying these things (cans? buckets? bags?)
6. I went back to the short-term list and updated all the baking items to 1 year's worth, since I will need things like oil and salt to make bread. Basically, my goal is to have a year's worth of everything that I can possibly store in my cupboard, which is most of the list. (Only 3 month's worth of things that have to be frozen or kept in a cool cellar, like some of the fruits, veggies, meats, and dairy products.)The long-term supply stuff will be out of sight, out of mind, but the short-term stuff will get rotated and be more easily accessible. I have no idea how much space it will take up this point, but we will definitely need more freezer space!
7. As a side note, I never plan on storing things that fall in these categories, because of the extra money and/or space required:
a. Things I don't eat right now (like powdered eggs). I will have real eggs somehow, even if I have to have my own chickens, which is what I'd really like to do.
b. Candy or junk food. If we have a financial crisis, we are not going to be sitting around getting fat. We will get healthier!
c. Store-bought mixes. With all that powdered milk in food storage, it's very easy to make your own pancake, brownie, or cake mix.
d. Canned versions of anything that I could cook myself. I do plan on having canned veggies, because it would be tough to have enough freezer space (and I like some veggies better canned), but I don't use canned soup or chili. Again, it's cheaper and pretty easy to make that stuff from scratch.
Hopefully, that makes sense to somebody. Like I said, we don't have a lot of food storage yet, but I'm happy to say that I do have a bucket of wheat that I've been grinding into flour. I've also been making pancake mix from powdered milk, which is quite tasty.
The only problem foods I've come up with that I can't figure out how we'd store for at least 3 months, even with a freezer, cellar, and lots of other storage space:
fresh tomatoes and lettuce (But we could have a garden!)
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