Acquiring Food - Part 4

Now that I have chosen a menu, calculated the ingredients and taken an inventory of what I already have it is time to calculate what I need to acquire. This seems VERY overwhelming, especially if you are like me and start running totals in your head...48 lbs. of chicken at $1.70 per lb. (if I get it on sale) equals $81.60...yikes! That's just one ingredient on this big list. (I will be talking about canning meats in a later post...you don't need to buy another freezer!)

Step #4 - Acquiring Food

Now we need to determine how much we need by subtracting the total we need from what we have. I fill in my third column in my list that I created when I took an inventory which is "What We Need". Because I have a list of what I need, I can now watch for sales and buy what I need when it is priced decently. I often take my food storage spiral notebook with me when I shop so that I can remember how many I need of the items I might want to buy.

Take a deep breath! You can do this over time. I decided to take $10 a week...that's just $40 a month...and in the last month I was able to buy...

• 36 small cans of tomato sauce = $7.50 (25 cents each)
• 12 cans of diced tomatoes = $7.08 (59 cents each)
• 8 cans of cream of mushroom soup = $5.52 (69 cents each)
• 8 cans of cream of chicken soup = $5.52 (69 cents each)
• 8 cans of cream of celery soup = $5.52 (69 cents each)
• 12 16oz boxes of rigatoni noodles = $10.68 (89 cents each)

Total = $41.82

Money? What is that?
Finding the money to acquire our food storage is overwhelming to me. Since Mike was laid-off almost 2 years ago, money has been...shall we say...more than just "tight". We make a little bit more than half what we made 2 years ago. That is a big difference! Some things we have had to do to make ends meet, pay down our debt, and buy food storage.

• Downsize our home - we actually live in a larger home in Missouri than our Queen Creek home for less money...because it is a Duplex. A bit of a sacrifice for us, but it saves us over $150 a month. I would love to live in a regular home again, but this has made life quite a bit easier.
• Got rid of paid TV (it's free on the Internet anyway - hulu.com, channelsurfing.net.)
• Got rid of a home phone (we paid $40 for one year of MagicJack)
• Reduce eating out - Mike and I pretty much eat out once every two months for a date and we try to use "buy one, get one" coupons.
• Reduce our heating/cooling costs - we have turned down/up our thermostats by one or two degrees. It took a couple weeks to adjust, but we are now comfortable at the changed temperature. We also keep our thermostat very low in the winter over night. We have plenty of blankets.
• Reduce classes, clubs, and sports - Our kids are very talented, but we decided that it is more important to feed them and be debt free than to participate in costly events. They have ONE thing each that they participate in and those are often chosen very carefully.
• Make homemade items as much as possible - we are having another homemade Christmas this year. Last year was a big success!
• Use cheap cleaning products - except for the dishwasher and clothes washer, we use bleach or vinegar for all of our cleaning. I do have some items I got for practically free with couponing. Also, I have learned we can use less than half of what the product recommends and still have clean dishes and clothes.
• Go without! - There are many things we had grown accustomed to that we have given up. I am careful how much I drive, we cut our own hair as much as possible, I stopped coloring my hair, etc.

Pantry Inventory - Food Storage - Part 3

Whew! All the brain power I used to tally my recipe ingredients wore me out! Don't worry if that part takes a week. It is a bit of work. Take the time you need to not feel overwhelmed and to make sure it is is right.

Step #3 - Pantry Inventory
I actually like this part even though it takes a bit of time. I stand in my pantry and just start recording everything that I have into my spiral food storage notebook. Many of the items in my pantry are not on my Week 1 ingredient list. That's OK! I still record it in my notebook.






I have three columns:

1. Item Name
2. How much we have
3. How much we need (don't do this part yet, just leave a column for it)

If you have a small house like we do, you have food storage located in several areas of the house...under beds, stacked in closets, in our garage storage room (in the Midwest you can do that, but in Arizona do not store anything in your garage!). I tally what we have on hand right now. This can take awhile if you have a lot or a depressingly small amount of time if you are just getting started. Don't worry! You are getting prepared and that is what counts.

Since we do have items scattered around the house, we made "maps" of what we have and where it is located. For example, we have boxes stacked in our closet and under our bed. The boxes are labeled from the top and the end so that we can see what is in each box. We have a diagram of what is under our bed so that I know which side and whether I should pull from the foot of the bed or the head of the bed if I need green beans for example. Mike is a great organizer and has helped me with this part a lot. We keep all the diagrams, "maps" and list of things together in a food storage binder that also has my spiral notebook in it. This way as we rotate it is easy to find what we need.

Ingredient Calculations - Food Storage - Part 2

ProvidentLiving.org

Our Heavenly Father created this beautiful earth, with all its abundance, for our benefit and use. His purpose is to provide for our needs as we walk in faith and obedience. He has lovingly commanded us to “prepare every needful thing” (see D&C 109:8) so that, should adversity come, we can care for ourselves and our neighbors and support bishops as they care for others.

Step #2 - Ingredient Calculations
After I have chosen a menu for the week, I make a list of all the ingredients and how much I need of each item for 1 week of meals. This takes a bit of brain power. I add up the water needed to cook items like oatmeal and boil noodles into consideration as well. I hope to not need to ration our water, but we may need to do that, so I make sure I know how much water is needed for cooking.

An item might look something like this:

Shepherd's Pie
1 jar canned ground meat
1 can green beans
1 pkg. brown gravy mix
1 cup of water (gravy mix)
6 servings of mashed potatoes

1 1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp. Butter (if we have it)
3/4 C. of milk (1/4 c. dry milk + 3/4 c. of water
2 cups of potato flakes

1 tsp. Seasoning Salt
1/2 tsp. pepper

This is what is written on the recipe card. I re-write the items into my spiral food storage notebook. I do this for each meal.

Next, I multiply each item by 12, which gives me the amount I need for 12 weeks (3 months) of each item. I then combine items onto another list so that I only have one entry for each item. (see pictures)

Ingredient Conversions
If you need help figuring out how many tsp. of salt are in a container or how much wheat you will need to make your bread recipe, Everything Under the Sun has a table of conversions. I highly recommend you read all of Everything Under the Sun by Wendy DeWitt. She explains it so well.

Example:
WHEAT........................... # 10 can=5.8 # =12 c=18 c flour when ground
1 c wheat = 1 ½ c flour, 1#=2 ¼ c wheat=3.37 c flour

If my whole wheat bread recipe requires 8 cups of wheat flour and a #10 can of wheat kernels gives 18 cups of flour, then one #10 can gives me 2 1/4 of my bread recipe (18 cups of flour per can / 8 cups for my recipe = 2.25 recipes). Since I plan on making one recipe of bread each day (which gives me two 5x9 loaves), that means for a 90-day supply I need 40 #10 cans of wheat kernels to fulfill that ingredient requirement (90 days / 2.25 recipes per can = 40 cans of wheat kernels).

Working on Food Storage - Part 1

This post is a long time coming. I have not worked on food storage much in the past two years. Mainly because we have been eating what we had. I am SOOO thankful for the food storage we had because we never had to go on any type of assistance for food during Mike's layoff, subsequent lower paying job (which we are thankful for!) and move to the Midwest.

I wanted to share what we have done. We are back to trying to build our food storage back up. I have gotten a ton of great information from Everything Under the Sun by Wendy DeWitt. She inspired me to have a Sun Oven and prepare and store the foods that we really eat.

I have to say that Glenn Beck's emphasis on what is happening with the economy has heightened my awareness of how short we are on time in order to be prepared.

The U.S. government is currently printing money just to survive. The Federal Reserve has held the Fed Funds Rate at 0-0.25% for nearly two years and just announced that it will be printing an additional $600 billion in new U.S. dollars by the end of June 2011. Since the beginning of September until now, just in anticipation of the Fed's upcoming quantitative easing, we have experienced the largest ever short-term increase in the history of agricultural commodity prices with corn rising by 32%, soybeans rising by 32%, orange juice rising by 12%, coffee rising by 19%, and sugar rising by 66%. These agricultural commodity price increases will begin to work their way into grocery stores nationwide in the weeks and months ahead, as food manufacturers and retailers are forced to raise their prices. - inflation.us - Nov. 10, 2010

Our financial situation, like many others, has been a bit on the shaky side. That said, I hope that Heavenly Father will continue to bless us with the ability to become debt free and have our food storage.

This will be a series of posts, so I hope you will tune in for all of the steps. (Don't get overwhelmed! it is not rocket science, but it does take some time.)

Step #1 - Menu Planning
Decide on a set of meals for one week - 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches, and 7 dinners. Because I want to cook with my Sun Oven we decided the "big meal" will be lunch and dinner will be sandwiches so that we have time to cook bread and the big meal in the midday.

Here is what we planned:

Sunday

• Oatmeal
• Spaghetti
• Tuna Sandwiches

Monday

• Wheat Muffins
• Shepherd's Pie
• Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches

Tuesday

• Oatmeal
• BBQ Beans
• Tuna Sandwiches

Wednesday

• Wheat Muffins
• Chicken and Rice Dinner
• Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches

Thursday

• Oatmeal
• Posse Stew or Vegetable Soup (Alternate)
• Tuna Sandwiches

Friday

• Wheat Muffins
• Chicken Dinner
• Peanut Butter & Jelly

Saturday

• Oatmeal
• Creamy Chicken on Rice
• Tuna Sandwiches

Not a ton of variety, but it will keep us fairly healthy and from starving. I wrote out each recipe and put them in a little index card book (see pictures). I have the menu for each week separated by Breakfasts, Lunches, and Dinners, with an additional section of substitutes for eggs, how to cook wheat for extending meat, and other food storage tips including alternatives for shampoo and other hygiene needs. Each recipe has instructions for how to cook it using various methods - stove top, sun oven, crock pot, etc. That way we can use whichever method we have available.

I keep these recipes separate from my other recipes. I feel that in times of crisis I don't want to be searching around for what to make. Also, this has given my children peace of mind because they know that they can pull this out and have food to eat for 3 months. I had planned to then do a "week 2" set of recipes and enlarge our food supply to 6 months, but I never got that far. :-)

Record Snow! - Digging OUT of 3 Feet of Snow

What a crazy amount of snow! There is still a ton of snow on the roof, which was re-roofed about two years ago. The biggest problem we faced was some broken tree limbs that fell because they were laden with snow and the wind was fierce at 50 mph. The sound of tree limbs crashing onto the roof in the night is not a pretty sound!

Here are some photos of the storm of the century here in Flagstaff, AZ.

Thankfully, we had power the entire time and were prepared with plenty of wood, water, food, and clothing. We were very blessed!

Lumberjacks

With my recent accident in log splitting, I was very skeptical about Christian chopping wood. He convinced me that he had sufficient knowledge of safety precautions and that he would be careful. He also pointed out that Almonso in "Farmer Boy" was allowed to do a lot of things that are considered dangerous as part of his regular chores. (So much for using classic books as examples...he had me there!)


Of course, I was being careful too when I fell onto the log splitter and injured my hand! But, a mother has to put some trust in her children and allow them to learn and grow at some point. He is a careful boy and so I felt the need to cut him some slack and not smother him in his desire to WORK for the family.

He did a great job getting the wood started on Friday! Over the weekend Mike and Christian chopped a lot of wood. Our garage is extended by 6 feet and has an area for storing wood. They filled that area and we still have more to split. Too bad the rest of us are too sick to help right now. We could at least stack for them. Maybe next weekend.

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Living on Food Storage

I'm feeling thankful for the counsel that I followed in gathering food storage today. Although, it is quite a bit of work to organize it in such a way that we can use it. With Mike out of a job, we decided to live off the food storage as much as we can. We do not have nearly a year supply, and our three month will get us by, but not without some sacrifice.

My bread making skills are sorely lacking! I am trying a new bread recipe each time I need to make bread until we find a recipe that works well for sandwiches, does not include milk (Marly can't have that), and does not need extra gluten added. I've been making bread every other day without a bread mixer, since ours broke. I have to say that I am EXTREMELY thankful for electricity and running water. I don't know what I would do if we had to grind the wheat by hand. Please, please Lord allow us to keep electricity and running water!

If you have any good wheat bread recipes that do not require milk or added gluten, please send them my way!