2009 Food Storage Challenge

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!

Just Priya and Mom

Priya and I spent New Years Eve without Ravi and Lakshmi. That meant that we decided to spend the night in the living room. Priya slept in my chair, and in the morning she woke up and started back on her story she has been writing.

The story starts like this:

"Once upon a time, there was a very naughty little girl....". LOL. It includes things that we have done, like the little girl climbed a fence (we did that) and she saw a forest on the other side (we didn't see anything but our neighbors nasty yard). I'll post it when she finishes.

I thought she was cute because she was deep in though writing. While I miss Ravi and Lakshmi dearly, really can't stand to be without them, I know Priya gets something special having the peace and quiet that only a 1 child family can provide. She gets the best of both worlds.

Jyotsna