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Week 3 of 52- How much food is YOUR three-month supply?

4/27/2019

Now that you have a record of the food already in your house, identified a place to store more, and set up a shelf, it’s time to find out how much of what food items it will take to feed YOUR family for three months! This method can work for anyone, whether you have food allergies, picky eaters, or other special diets.

Sit down with your family on Sunday or Monday-- during Home Evening works great-- and get your children’s suggestions of favorite meals. Plan a menu of at least breakfasts and lunches for anywhere from one week to a month. (At our house, lunch is leftovers, or sometimes sandwiches.)

Need ideas for meals? Here’s a month plan from me, a collection from Wendy DeWitt, a list of things my family likes, and a Shelf Stable Recipe Book collected from readers of FoodStorageMadeEasy

Then you need to figure out how much of each food item or ingredient you need for each meal. There are at least two good ways to do this—3x5 cards, or spreadsheets. There’s a digital spreadsheet that will add your totals for you, and a printable one if you prefer to do it in hard-copy.

3x5 cards-

The method in a nutshell:
If you’re planning 7 breakfasts and 14 dinners, pull out 7 + 14 cards. Write a meal at the top of each one. Below that, on the left, write down each ingredient or food item you need for that meal, including water and salt. In the middle, write down how much of it you need for that meal. Once all cards are done, make a master shopping list from them. Read more about this method on page 1 of Wendy DeWitt’s food storage booklet. She also has a video explaining her system- watch from minute 6:55 to about 9 minutes. She uses this method for her year-long storage, but we’re only using it for the 3-month supply.

Spreadsheet method:

You start out the same-- choose 7 or more breakfasts, 7 or 14 or more dinners, list out the ingredients/foods and quantities. This Three-Month Supply Excel Spreadsheet will do all the math for you. If you're not sure how to use it, watch this tutorial. If you prefer to have a hard copy to write on, go to the same link as the Three-Month Supply spreadsheet; there's a downloadable, printable version there as well.

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Three Month Supply FAQs

4/27/2019

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Why store three months of regular food? Is this instead of a year’s supply?

For decades, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has counseled its members to have at least a year’s supply of food on hand. That is still the counsel.
Our modern eating and cooking habits, though, have made it necessary to adjust that storage. The year-supply, long-term storage foods are ones that require cooking skills and time that many people don’t take. There are many reasons that food storage is a lifesaver—loss of employment, long-term illness, bills that eat up more of the budget than they normally do, natural disasters, and economic upheaval— but if your body is not used to eating whole wheat and beans every day, switching your diet suddenly is a recipe for another hospital stay. It can even be deadly. Having 3 months of foods you are used to eating provides a buffer for your time, your diet, and your skill level. Most family emergencies are over within 3 months. If yours isn’t, though, that 3 months buys you time to start gradually working the long-term storage foods into your diet, so your body adjusts to them. And it gives you time to try out new food storage recipes a little at a time.
The current counsel from our church leaders is to have a three-month supply of foods we normally eat, AND a year’s supply of long-term basic foods.

How much will this cost? Will it be as much as my monthly food budget times three?

Most likely, it will not even be close. To buy your complete three month supply within six months, using the strategies and habits I’ll share next week, will cost around $2/day per person, or $14/person/week. That may be less than you pay for cell phone service, to say nothing of the cost for the phone itself.
My experience has been that because of the way you ideally shop for this short-term storage, it costs considerably less than your regular-meals budget. Can you afford it? The way I see it, I can’t afford NOT to have a family storehouse. Most of my shelf-stable grocery items are purchased when each is on sale, usually at 30-70% off the regular price.

How often does this food need rotated? Do I store it and forget it?

That depends largely on what kind of food you get. Lettuce and cucumbers won't last.

One good storage method has you rotate food once a year, putting the soonest-to-expire shelf-stable foods in your pantry. Another method—the way I do it—is to treat it as your personal, well-stocked storehouse. Buy on sale, use what you purchased on sale. That frees up even more of your budget to get food storage! Freeze-dried, dehydrated, and dry-pack foods can be stored and left alone for a long time.

Don’t my regular foods have too short of a shelf life to store this long?

Again, that depends mostly on what they are and how you store them. The enemies of food are light, heat, water, oxygen, and pests (mostly insects and rodents). Many fruits and vegetables can store for months at a time in the right temperature and humidity. There are canned versions of most of them. And you can store vegetable seeds as backup for next year’s food. Well-packaged frozen foods can stay good for a year or more. (The biggest risk is freezer burn, but the food is still usable, especially when added to soups.)

What about those dates on boxed and canned food?

The date on the box or can is NOT the date by which the food will spoil; it’s an arbitrary date the manufacturer stamped on it for purposes of guaranteeing its quality. Boxed and bagged food-- including breakfast cereal-- when stored properly, can easily last 2-3 years before developing off-flavors. (High-fat foods can get rancid before then; it won't hurt you, but doesn't taste good!)

Are canned foods safe after their 'best by' date?

While canned foods do eventually lose some of their vitamins and texture, they remain safe and able to sustain life as long as the seal is intact. I know of at least two accounts of separate ships that sank with canned food aboard. More than 100 years later, the boats were found, the cans brought up and cleaned off. Some of the cans were opened and tested; the food was safe and still contained the protein and minerals.

Here is a statement directly from the Canned Food Alliance--
“Canning is one of the safest ways to preserve foods. To retain peak quality, the shelf life of canned food is at least two years… The food maintains its high eating quality for more than two years and is safe to eat as long as the container is not damaged in any way.”

If a can is damaged, bulging, or weeping, the seal may have been broken. Toss it out. The exception to this is tomato products; if they bulge slightly or spurt when you open it, this is not from microbial growth, but from electrolysis between the acidic tomato and the metal can. It forms gas as a by-product.

And the biggest question--

How do I know how much to store??
That question gets its own blog post.

What questions do you still have? Ask in the comments below, and your question may get added to the FAQs.

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Week 2 of 52-- Where Do I Store this?

4/19/2019

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Now that you've decided it's time to prepare for your family and neighbors, where in the world are you going to fit the necessary food into your house? If you have a cool, dark room available, that's perfect. If you're struggling to come up with a place to put food storage, read through these reader-generated suggestions:

Small spaces solution list

Click to set custom HTML

Wherever it is—a spare room, a spare corner of an occupied room, a corner of a basement, in an insulated garage or shed, in a closet—you will certainly want at least one shelf to store on. Find one and set it up. Strong shelves (ones that can handle at least a couple hundred pounds per level) can be purchased at stores like Lowe’s, Home Depot, Sam’s Club, Costco. One 4’x2’x8’ shelf will typically cost between $70-120.

If you'd like some ideas on earthquake-proofing your shelves, see here.

To sum up, your task this week is to find a place you can store shelf-stable food,

Get a shelf, and

Set it up.

That's it!

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Week 1 of 52- Food Storage: Why? What? How?

4/12/2019

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WHY?
“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 Doctrine and Covenants 109:8) so that, should adversity come, we may care for ourselves and our neighbors, and support bishops as they care for others.”
“We encourage 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, and do not go to extremes. With careful planning, you can, over time, establish a home storage supply and a financial reserve.” (See All Is Safely Gathered In.)

Personal preparedness and provident living are part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They allow us to handle more of our own needs, and to serve others.

An earlier Presiding Bishop declared, "The Lord will make it possible, if we make a firm commitment, for every Latter-day Saint family to have a year’s supply of food reserves by [a year from today]. All we have to do is to decide, commit to do it, and then keep the commitment. Miracles will take place; the way will be opened, and next April we will have our storage areas filled. We will prove through our actions our willingness to follow our beloved prophet and the Brethren, which will bring security to us and our families."

This 52-week blog series is designed to help you get your 3-month and year-supply over the next 12 months. If you already have your short-term storage, start at Week 26, with the long-term storage foods plan.

Spencer W. Kimball taught,

“Zion is a name given by the Lord to his covenant people, who are characterized by purity of heart and faithfulness in caring for the poor, the needy, and the distressed. (See D&C 97:21.)
‘And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.’ (Moses 7:18.) This highest order of priesthood society is founded on the doctrines of love, service, work, self-reliance, and stewardship, all of which are circumscribed by the covenant of consecration.” (General Conference, Oct. 1977; or Ensign, Nov. 1977)

What should you have in your food storage?
1- Food -- a 3-month supply of things you eat every day, and a year's worth of foods that store well for a long time. The 3-month supply will be used on a daily or weekly basis; the long-term foods can be used any time-- but do spend time learning to cook with them! Here's a little-known secret: Once you get your 3-month supply, you're more than halfway done; a year of long-term basic foods are cheaper and simpler to get.

2- Water-- at least a two week's supply. A gallon per person, per day, is the minimum. That's fourteen gallons per person, as a starting number. I like to keep some of it under each sink in the house. 2-liter bottles and plastic 2-quart juice containers, washed out and refilled, are the perfect size for this. This is great for the times the water is off for a little while, and the sinks are exactly where you'll want to have containers you can easily pour. Bigger water storage containers may be kept in the basement, the garage, or in a protected area outside.

3- Financial Reserve This will likely take a few forms. One is to have some cash on hand, in small bills, in event of short-term emergencies like widespread power outages. Another type of reserve is a personal emergency fund. A thousand dollars, sitting in a safe and accessible account, will be enough to deal with most emergencies. A third kind of reserve is to have is enough savings to cover bills for at least 3-6 months. A year is even better.

See the ProvidentLiving website for more details on these.

How do I begin?
First, be determined that this is going to happen, starting today. As Bishop Featherstone said, above, "All we have to do is to decide, commit to do it, and then keep the commitment. Miracles will take place"! Pray to see how to do this. Bishop Featherstone lists several ways to find the money.

The next step in getting your family storehouse is to take inventory of what you have. (All stores have to take inventory! At least yearly.) Get a notebook or a clipboard, and write down all the food you have in the house. Group them in categories that make sense to you. Put it in a safe place that you'll remember, whether digital or hard copy. You'll use this list in the next two weeks.

Go through your budget and see where you can free up some money; for food prices in my area, you'll likely need $12-24 per person, per week, to get the 3 month + year's supply within a year. If that seems out of reach, read the Featherstone talk, and remember that the Lord can multiply your efforts.

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Week 3 of 52- How much food is YOUR three-month supply?

Three Month Supply FAQs

Week 2 of 52-- Where Do I Store this?

Week 1 of 52- Food Storage: Why? What? How?

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Week 3 of 52- How much food is YOUR three-month supply?

Three Month Supply FAQs

Week 2 of 52-- Where Do I Store this?

Week 1 of 52- Food Storage: Why? What? How?

Need a Search bar?One day I may upgrade my website-- but until then, use your web browser search bar. Type in my web address and what you're looking for, like this-- www.theprovidenthomemaker.com pumpkin -- and you should get results.Author

Archives

Categories

Need a Search bar?
One day I may upgrade my website-- but until then, use your web browser search bar. Type in my web address and what you're looking for, like this--
www.theprovidenthomemaker.com pumpkin -- and you should get results.

Author