Garden season is upon us! I started my vegetable garden today by starting a few seedlings indoors in my little jiffy pots. I’m so excited to get started with my garden.
WonderMill is raising the price on their electric grain mill. It is currently $239.95 and as of Februrary 15th will only be available for $259.95. If you have been sitting on the fence about purchasing one of these great wheat grinders … now would be the perfect time to take the plunge and do it!
Today I decided to try sprouting lentils. I’m being brave here. I took some pictures so if it actually succeeds I will document it for you. I have a fun little sprouting machine that my mom inherited from her grandma so I’m going to be trying that. Tonight the lentils are soaking in a bowl. They were pretty old so the outsides seem to be flaking off as I rinse and soak them so I’m not sure if it will actually work. Definitely worth experimenting though. Wish me luck!
Fun place to talk about food storage with people from all around the world. Come on over and find me there under the username Jodi-FSME.
I was in food storage heaven the other day at Macey’s. They had a great sale on tons of food storage items and I got the following:
150 pounds of wheat
25 pounds of oats
25 pounds of rice
25 pounds of white flour
25 pounds of sugar
#10 can of dried eggs, powdered milk, celery, peppers, and onions
Brown sugar
Yeast
Gluten
3 buckets to store some of the long-term stuff in
And probably more but I can’t remember off the top of my head. All this cost $215 and I was thrilled to get it all taken care of at once!
Cool interview about getting started with your long term food storage.
So I have been following a great little blog called The Obsessive Shopper. She helps you to match sale prices with coupons to get the BEST deals on your everyday groceries. This week I was able to get a TON of great deals from Albertsons. Mostly cereals and other things for my 3 month supply. It was nice to be able to save so much money and stock up some great items. I hope to be able to continue doing that. And the best part is I got $15 off my next purchase there!
Look at this cute invitation for the launch of a food storage network! Definitely looks there will be some great resources here with the joining of three great food storage blogs.
Found this great article on how to get your food storage put together in ten steps. It totally feels doable to just go down the steps one at a time instead of feeling overwhelmed by it all.
Building up a food storage supply can feel like a daunting task. What do you store? How much of it? How the heck do you use wheat? Where do you buy these items? And how do you store it all? All of these questions come to mind when you try to get started. I have split the process up into ten simple baby steps which will hopefully make the task feel less overwhelming.
Getting Started: Put together 72 hour kits for you whole family, have an emergency plan in place, organize your space to ensure you have a large, clean storage area.
Step 1: Determine which type of shelf system you want to use and purchase them. You can do anything from building your own wooden shelves, buying inexpensive plastic or metal shelves from Wal-Mart, or buy a fancy can rotation system from Shelf Reliance.
Step 2: Store a 2 week’s supply of water (1 gallon per person per day). You can buy 55 gallon barrels, get several 5-6 gallon jugs, or fill up empty soda/juice bottles. Just make sure it is food grade plastic, and milk jugs don’t count!
Step 3: Purchase a three month’s of foods you normally eat. You can come up with meal plans for the whole 90 days, or simply buy extras of the things you use a lot. Don’t deplete these stores even though it will be tempting.
Step 4: Educate yourself on long term food storage and determine the types of foods, recipes, etc. your family will want to make. Use an online tool or spreadsheet to figure out the actual amounts of each food you are planning to store for a year supply of food. (can start with 3 month and move up to 1 year eventually). I highly recommend trackmyfoodstorage.com and everydayfoodstorage.blogspot.com for help on this step.
Step 5: Purchase your grains and learn how to use them: wheat, corn, barley, rice, pasta, etc.
Step 6: Purchase your legumes and learn how to use them: dried beans, bean soup mixes, lentils, soy beans, etc.
Step 7: Purchase items necessary for baking such as oil, sugar, etc.
Step 8: Purchase or preserve fruits and vegetables to supplement your core foods.
Step 9: Purchase any comfort foods that would be pleasant to have should you be forced to live off your food storage for a long time. This could be things such as hot chocolate, pickles, jell-o, salsa, spices, etc.
Step 10: Purchase non-food item necessities such as toothpaste, deodorant, female products, diapers, etc. Also paper plates, plastic utensils, etc. are nice to avoid wasting precious water in an emergency.
Once you have finished these steps you can move on to more complex survival issues such as heat/cooking sources, long term water solutions, growing your own foods, etc. But just remember, even accomplishing up to step 3 will put you in a far better position than most of the country should an emergency arise. Get that much done immediately and then take your time to truly figure out the more difficult long term food storage concepts.
Article by EzineArticles expert author Jodi Moore who also blogs at Food Storage Made Easy
Food storage words of wisdom …
A compilation of useful food storage information about topics such as emergency preparedness, food storage shelves, water storage, three month food supply, long term food storage, and non-food items.
