My new exciting obsession.... food storage!

First of all, I just want to say, no I am not LDS. Second of all, my newest obsession/life goal/hobby, as weird as it may sound, is food storage! Exciting, right? It all started with a couple articles I saw in our home town newspaper that a local LDS woman wrote, tips about food storage. I had never heard of such a thing. I began browsing food storage on the internet at night, finding out everything I could. Yes, this is what I did for fun after my kids went to bed. :) Anyways, I decided that while I do not believe the same on paper as the Latter day Saints do, they make alot of sense when they teach about food storage. They instruct/encourage their members to have a years supply of food stored up for the every day emergencies (job loss, sickness, etc.) but also for the chance that someday we experience a bigger crisis (such as a Depression, natural disaster and so forth). So smart right? Well I began to think so, and so I decided that after alot of research I would like to start slowly building up my own food storage. My main reason was that I have three kids now. Thinking about job loss or something worse such as an earthquake or some other kind of crisis in which we weren't able to buy food, I would be heartbroken to not be able to feed/take care of my children. My secondary reason after doing some poking around was that it really made sense to have extras of things you use everyday. You never run out of common ingredients that you use (which is, I am sure very convenient) and also you aren't having to go to the store to grab one thing and coming out with two full grocery bags, having spent $30. I am notorious for doing this and have really been looking to cut down on my food budget and I think that this will be a great way to do it.

So the first thing you are instructed to do is start thinking about a 3 month supply of foods that you eat on a normal basis. You could include spaghetti, chili, chicken noodle soup, casseroles. Determine how much your family would eat in 3 months time. Next step is to slowly, staying in your budget and using coupons and sales, start purchasing extra items for your three month supply when you go to the store. It really adds up. The motto for this step is "Store what you eat and eat what you store". This food supply is going to be used, replenished and rotated so that you always have them on hand and nothing ever expires without being used. Even though as this point I do not have my three month supply completed, I love this step! It has made my life to much easier. I am going to the grocery store less often which means I am saving money. I have all of the ingredients on hand to make dinner or cookies or most other things I would want to bake. I think this is awesome because before I started doing this, some nights (okay alot of nights) we would end up eating grilled cheese sandwiches or something else convenient but not very healthy, because I didn't have the ingredients to make dinner or hadn't thought to take something out of the freezer. I am so much more organized now and have way more options of meals to make now that I have lots of things on hand. Plus, we are eating healthier too. Food storage does not mean eating beans and rice every night or storing things for 10 years just in case. It's about storing things that you can use now also!

So next time I will talk about long term food storage. Right now I am reading a pretty amazing book called "I Can't Believe It's Food Storage". I would totally recommend it if you are interested in started a food storage and also learning how to use long term food storage in your every day life. There are tons of recipes and ideas on how to use beans, rice, wheat, powdered milk and eggs in meals. I am pretty stoked to start applying some of the ideas to my own meals. I get to pick up my first 50lb. bag wheat at Sunny Farms tomorrow! Woo! You see the things I get excited about these days? :) Happy Friday!