My first concern with the 2009 New Year is to begin changing the way I handle food. This is two fold. First, I need to save food so that my children will always have food to eat. Then, I need to change the way I interact with food. I'm overweight and I need to change that this year. I need to lose at least 25 pounds this year, to improve my life.
So, I have taken photos of the food in my house, and I am going to invite anyone else to take this challenge with me as well. I tend to keep junk food out of the house, but holidays usually see some yummy things. The holidays are behind us, and except for the children's healthy cookies, I'm tossing everything else. I know that goes against food storage, but I want my food storage to be healthy food. Something we can live on.
I'll post the photos here, and I plan to post new photos at the beginning of February. I have not been shopping yet, and you can see that we are low on our legume reserve, our rice, and we don't have any tomatoes, which we use all three of these. We are out of oatmeal (we eat it nearly every day). I plan to buy additional breakfast grains in small quanities to try out on the kids. We may be able to eat some other things like quinoa. Next, I'm going to shop on Monday, refill my stores of regular food, and start saving in one or two catagories.
As I work through my challenge to have enough food, it will be first a challenge to have at least 1 months amount of food. After that, I may make it to 3 months. I realize that it will take alot of effort to save this food, but my kids are counting on it.
We live on the New Madrid Fault Line! We could have any type of natural disaster, or we could end up facing a depression, and be the only neighbors in our area with enough food to weather out a month or more.
When I was at WholeFoods, I saw a potable water barrel, and I am going to check into buying that. I may start saving water in large quanity.
Also, we have some natural resources right here at home. We have two pecan trees and a nice fig tree. We also live over a very good and natural water system. If we need to drill for water, we could do that at some point, provided that we have a pump and a system for digging.
Now for the photos. I'm exposing myself here. I feel vulnerable, but I think it will help me get my goals right!
4 comments:
You go girl! I think it is awesome that you are determined to get prepared for your family! Food Storage is a way of life for my husband and I. I also am needing to loose weight and know that if there isn't junk in the house to eat then much of the temptation will be gone. I have found many great food storage blogs online. We got the water barrel 2 years ago and finally filled that 55 gallon drum the other day! I think our family has almost a 6 month food supply. Maybe more if we supplement it with some fresh veggies, fresh milk and eggs. I admire you actually taking photos. I have some on my blog of our garage where we have a preparedness shelf (emergency evacuation) but still need to photograph my kitchen shelves. I love to discover all the creative places for storing food.
Hi there Northlasvagasmom,
Wow, you are quite prepared. I'm amazed. See, I'm just now (in the last two months) getting into this, and so I need a challenge to really do this. Otherwise, I'll fall down on the job.
So, are you in?
Jyotsna
I certainly support you whole heartedly in your quest for healthier eating. In storing your food (you probably already know this) you've got to be so careful about it not getting weevils, going stale or rancid. In my pantry, any perishable food such as onions or potatoes starts to rot if I don't use it in a week. I wish I could join your challenge with food storage, but alas in an urban two bedroom apartment, we don't have the room. But we do our best. Keep us updated. :)
Hey Amy,
Obviously as you pointed out, potatoes and onions aren't going to be the things we store for long time. Also, it is recommended that any stored food is used and replaced, in other words, it needs to be rotated. Perhaps you can keep a 1 month supply of food on hand, excluding potatoes, onions ect.
And weavils can be stopped by keeping each thing you save in a seperate container. Obviously if you buy something that has weavils (yuck) it won't spread if you have each dry food seperated. I've been keeping dry foods in my pantry for years, and only once (recently) did I get some bugs in my rice. It came from outside obviously, since I have had good luck so far. Luck that is!
As for foods going rancid, yes, rotating again will prevent that.
Okay, thanks for posting. Hope all is going well for you Amy!
Jyotsna
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