Your Week 7 assignment-- Going off your Inventory Shopping List and this week’s sales, buy the 3 months’ worth of as many different items as you can (= Buy For 3) as your new budget allows. Since this is the week of Memorial Day, ketchup, hotdogs, and other BBQ and quick-meal staples are on sale.
Since your food storage is intended for emergencies, and earthquake is a real possibility where I live, it's wise to protect the food from getting damaged or ruined in one. The biggest risks are food falling off a shelf—this is especially bad for glass canning jars!—or the shelf itself tipping over. (See minute 1:06 in the video above.) To keep food from sliding or shaking off a shelf, put something in front of the food—run a string, attach a bungee cord, or create a lip using wood or part of the shelf. To keep a shelf from tipping over, attach an L-bracket or earthquake strap on the wall, to a stud, and then secure the shelf to the L-bracket. There's a post here with photos and more information.
You’ll also need to protect your food from moisture-
Store in clean, dry buckets with tight-fitting lids or PETE plastic containers. In a dry climate like Utah, that’s enough. My sisters in Hawaii and Juneau, however, had to use Mylar liners inside of their buckets to keep moisture out. See this post on where to get new or used food buckets.
Don’t let buckets sit on bare cement floors or come in direct contact with a cement wall. Moisture travels through cement, and the bucket plastic also lets a little moisture through. If you have bare cement floors, stick something between the floor and the buckets—a piece of carpet, a rug, a board, even cardboard. That will allow air to circulate and evaporate that tiny bit of moisture. (NOTE- if you have a bucket of sugar that is exposed to moisture, that sugar will become a giant lump of sugar. It is still perfectly usable; you’ll just need to whack it apart.)
The other enemies of food are heat, light, oxygen, and pests (bugs and rodents). The darker, cooler, and more airtight you can store things, the longer they'll last. This is especially true for oil, which goes rancid quickly when warm and in a bright area.
Store things that mice might get into, in plastic buckets, bins, or tubs with lids. Mice LOVE chocolate. I learned that the hard way. One year, we had one mouse in our house, and he found the storage room. At the time, I kept all my baking chips in an open cardboard box. He chewed through most of the bags, eating quite a bit. He taste-tested the mint chips and butterscotch chips and then left those alone. (But not before chewing through those bags too!)
Since that time, I've kept my chocolate-- dipping chocolate, bags of Halloween candy, candy bars-- and other baking chips in small buckets; Smith's bakery gives away 2 1/2 gallon buckets. Just ask at the bakery counter if they have any that day, or will save some. The bakery gets its frostings and fillings in those buckets, and throws away buckets most days.
On another topic, if you didn't see it on the 52 Weeks to Food Storage list, you can buy popcorn by the pound and make it into your own microwave popcorn!
Since your food storage is intended for emergencies, and earthquake is a real possibility where I live, it's wise to protect the food from getting damaged or ruined in one. The biggest risks are food falling off a shelf—this is especially bad for glass canning jars!—or the shelf itself tipping over. (See minute 1:06 in the video above.) To keep food from sliding or shaking off a shelf, put something in front of the food—run a string, attach a bungee cord, or create a lip using wood or part of the shelf. To keep a shelf from tipping over, attach an L-bracket or earthquake strap on the wall, to a stud, and then secure the shelf to the L-bracket. There's a post here with photos and more information.
You’ll also need to protect your food from moisture-
Store in clean, dry buckets with tight-fitting lids or PETE plastic containers. In a dry climate like Utah, that’s enough. My sisters in Hawaii and Juneau, however, had to use Mylar liners inside of their buckets to keep moisture out. See this post on where to get new or used food buckets.
Don’t let buckets sit on bare cement floors or come in direct contact with a cement wall. Moisture travels through cement, and the bucket plastic also lets a little moisture through. If you have bare cement floors, stick something between the floor and the buckets—a piece of carpet, a rug, a board, even cardboard. That will allow air to circulate and evaporate that tiny bit of moisture. (NOTE- if you have a bucket of sugar that is exposed to moisture, that sugar will become a giant lump of sugar. It is still perfectly usable; you’ll just need to whack it apart.)
The other enemies of food are heat, light, oxygen, and pests (bugs and rodents). The darker, cooler, and more airtight you can store things, the longer they'll last. This is especially true for oil, which goes rancid quickly when warm and in a bright area.
Store things that mice might get into, in plastic buckets, bins, or tubs with lids. Mice LOVE chocolate. I learned that the hard way. One year, we had one mouse in our house, and he found the storage room. At the time, I kept all my baking chips in an open cardboard box. He chewed through most of the bags, eating quite a bit. He taste-tested the mint chips and butterscotch chips and then left those alone. (But not before chewing through those bags too!)
Since that time, I've kept my chocolate-- dipping chocolate, bags of Halloween candy, candy bars-- and other baking chips in small buckets; Smith's bakery gives away 2 1/2 gallon buckets. Just ask at the bakery counter if they have any that day, or will save some. The bakery gets its frostings and fillings in those buckets, and throws away buckets most days.
On another topic, if you didn't see it on the 52 Weeks to Food Storage list, you can buy popcorn by the pound and make it into your own microwave popcorn!
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