Jimmy and I have been discussing food storage this week. We try to keep canned goods stocked in the pantry but we don't have a real long-term food storage plan. Now that we finally live by a cannery, I'm determined to have a plan and start building a food storage month-by-month. It feels good to start doing what I need to do for my family's well-being.My dream is to get a shelf reliance for a storage room. One of my friends said she found one for a super price at the holidays at Wal-Mart. I'm going to keep my eye out for a great deal.
I want to buy some hard white wheat and an electric wheat grinder. Which is why I've been practicing making bread so we can actually rotate through the wheat. I also want to get salt, oats, sugar, potato pearls, and hot chocolate. I'm debating on canning with #10 cans or just using buckets for everything. I've never been to a cannery or bought anything from one. Help!
Please share your ideas about organizing, storing, rotating food storage?
What items do you like from the cannery? What items should I avoid?
What other fun items do you store that kids will actually eat?
Please share any tips!!!
"We encourage Church members worldwide to prepare for adversity in life by having a basic supply of food and water and some money in savings.
"We ask that you be wise as you store food and water and build your savings. Do not go to extremes; it is not prudent, for example, to go into debt to establish your food storage all at once. With careful planning, you can, over time, establish a home storage supply and a financial reserve."
—The First Presidency, All Is Safely Gathered In: Family Home Storage, Feb. 2007, 1
11 comments:
We love the #10 cans for the smaller bulk stuff--dried onions, hot chocolate, potato pearls (these are Mae's favorite!)). At first we didn't like the dried/refried beans, but now we use them more and like them. The cannery fruit drink used to be AWESOME with real fruit puree (dried of course), but now it tastes more like smarties flavored kool-aid. It's fine, but we miss the good stuff. Popcorn is really good to store in the #10 cans, too. Grandma Nelson used to store it that way. Well, there's my 2 cents for you!
As if I didn't comment enough already...we store water in 2 liter bottles in addition to some larger water storage containers. They are free, easy to clean and last and last. Every time we move, I just use up the water in laundry loads before the big day, and recycle the 2L bottles.
We don't have much food storage yet, although I feel like I've been working at it for years. I used to just focus on canned food stuff, but like you have recently started gathering the true basics of food storage. I love those gamma lids that are in your picture with you blog. They are very handy for getting into the stuff I use on a regular basis - flour, sugar, rice. Of course, on the long term storage I use the regular lids.
So far in the big buckets we store wheat, rice and beans.
The #10 cans work well for things that won't be consumed in such great quantity at one time. I do my powdered milk and oats in the cans, since once they are opened these don't keep really long.
I believe in using what I store, meaning not only buying things that my family will eat, but helping them get used to the basics that store well, and therefore using them on a regular basis. Therefore, I find that we are using faster than I am buying and replacing, because I have never truly bought a year's worth yet, and we eat what we store. So I'm still trying to figure that part out. I was working on getting my wheat storage up, and this recent run on wheat is not helping things, every time I go to get wheat, everyone is out. The church's dry pack has the best price on wheat, but because people are buying like crazy they are having a hard time staying in stock.
I found a blog site that has a weekly challenge for working on food storage -
http://ajshermanfamily.blogspot.com/search/label/Preparedness%20Challenge
It's nice because it encourages me to work on it a little at a time, but also consistently, which is definitely where I need help, I usually do things in spurts and then forget about it.
Food storage. We are excited about it right now. Last summer or was it winter, I can't remember. Anyway we had 0 food storage. I thought I would wait until I got proper shelving to start, but there was never a good month to spend the cash for shelves.
I decided to just start buying cans and boxes of stuff we like when they were on sale. I also bought one 7 gallon water jug every time I went to wal-mart.
I had quite a pile of food on my storage room floor. It wasn't organized, but I slept better at night knowing that if the trucks stopped bringing in the food to the stores we'd be okay for a few.
We now have shelving. (My parents Christmas gift to us.) I am also proud to announce that I believe we are up to a three month supply.
I haven't made a single trip to the cannery. Eventually I'd like to go, but it's not part of my routine. Eating however, is part of my routine and I need to make sure we have food if we need it, even if we just get it at the plain old store, and its just plain old stuff we like eating regularly.
By the way, the church no longer carried potato pearls. Tragic.
I think it sounds like you have a great bunch of stuff to start with. When we get moved in to our house- this is the area where I want to focus on also. FOOD STORAGE. I have all the wheat and the grinder, but I need to now USE THEM! I also like storing water in the 2L bottles. My Dad just got back from the cannery and got some pancake mix that he was excited about. Do they still do the beef stew? I remember I used to love that. Well, I'll quit wondering out loud now since I am not saying anything helpful :)
Great post! For the last year, I have been an obsessed (you could say) with food storage and we've pretty much got everything. I want a shelf reliance so bad, but I figured I would spend the money on actualy food right now and then down the road get one. I love the cannerys Pears and Peaches. I also love the potato pearls, but I heard they aren't doing them anymore. If you find out that your cannery is, would you let me know. It would be worth a trip to Utah. The pears are great at the cannery. I did a lot of pricing and actually found that it's cheaper to buy sugar, salt and that kind of stuff from Sam's Club or a Costco. This summer I am going to try to dry my own mushrooms, carrots, and onions from my garden and that will cost almost nothing. I could go on forever so I'm just going to email you.
Actually, other readers might want this info I will leave it here. There is a fabulous dry milk called "morning moo" and you can actually drink it and not gag. I have regular dry milk in storage now and I also store chocolate syrup just to give it a little more taste. I eventually want to get all morning moo milk for drinking.
Yippee for food storage!
Go to my other blog. Last week I posted several links I found for tracking and rotating food storage and other info. Lots of good links!
I LOVE the cannery. I am lucky that in Utah and here in Boise I have always been close to one. I love going. We have all our wheat now (thank goodness) as prices are skyrocketing and even the cannery is in low supply. I have stored the dry packed things I won't be using for at least 5 years in our crawl space on wood pallets. We have no storage space, no pantry, and no basement. So I have gotten very creative in using the space that I have. Under beds, in closets, etc. The stuff I use and rotate on a regular basis (sugar, flour, some wheat, oats, etc) I am starting to keep in the big buckets in the garage. I explained more on my other blog how I keep track of stuff. Oh, and I love the milk from the cannery but it is SOOO pricey now. I have also been told that Morning Moo milk is very good. Macey's carries it. Macey's has a lot of good prices on food storage items. I miss Macey's....even 7 years later.
Good luck...it is such a satisfying feeling getting a foos reserve. And, more challenging as the kiddos get older as you have to store more food! Man, they eat a lot!
You need to come see my storage--I have a shelf reliance shelf and I LOVEEEE it! It was so worth the money. Also, do you know all th new guidelines for food storage??? Look it up on the website (providentliving.org), but really focus on getting a three month supply of food you eat every day (or at least could eat)--you know the canned stuff and boxes etc... Then work on the big stuff.
We like the canned chicken (well, like is a strong word...) I like to use it if I am in a hurry and can't cook anychicken, but it was the grossest thing I have ever canned--a disgusting experience. Come over to see my storage!
We have two 55 gallon water drums in the garage. Don't forget about storing water...you can't cook without it, not to mention drinking or hygiene.
I'm so glad you posted about this. I actually went to our cannery last week and purchased some bulk food, but I couldn't stay to can it with all my kids, so when I got home I started panicking about how to store all this food. I may go back an can it or look into getting some buckets. I so don't know what I am doing, but at least I am starting to try to put together food storage.
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