Preparation

We did it! We tackled the three month food supply and I'm happy to say, are still alive and still have our sanity!

Spencer and I had been thinking about it for a long time so as soon as our stimulus check arrived, we made our move. It definitely was not easy but inspired by a post by my friend Celia, I decided to list a few things that helped us and lessons we learned.

• Organization. I made a spreadsheet of foods that could be stored, organizing them by type (protein, veggies, grains, etc.). Then I gave them all a category: Requires Water, Requires Heat Source, Requires Power (power needs to be on in order to store), Requires Nothing. Our plan was to purchase those items that required the least.
• Research. Should we purchase freeze dried MREs, or the bulk staples from the church? There are a lot of great companies out there that offer a lot of choices. However, they are (in my opinion) VERY expensive. Also, they take up a lot of room, which we don't have. Therefore, our decision was the bulk staples. We also did some comparison shopping at Costco.

There were several conclusions from the above steps: First, you can not be prepared for ALL situations. You just can't, so get over it. You have to decide which ones are the most real to you and your area. For us, it was widespread food shortage and skyrocketing prices. Second, I've always heard "store what your family eats". To me, this is only partially true. You have to come to a realization that during hard times, you will have to eat things you really wouldn't chose to under normal circumstances.

• Research, continued. With the decision of what to buy decided, we then went about figuring out how much to buy. There is a great calculator on www.providentliving.org. We used that as a guide and added in other things. This does take some time and figuring. The church's site only does the calculations for rice, beans and water. You have to think about how many times one can of vegetables will feed your family and how often you would want to eat them. Once again, I made a spreadsheet.
• Go and Do! This was the easy part. Spencer spent a Saturday afternoon at the Bishop's Storehouse canning wheat, oats, potatoes, onions and beans. They were out of black beans and powdered milk so we'll have to go back for those. They do not offer powdered eggs or corn meal so we will have to purchase those elsewhere. Next we went to Costco and purchased our "extras". We bought rice, canned fruits and veggies and canned meat and fish and pasta. We also used our money to buy an extra bag of frozen chicken and butter. Our theory is that we would buy an extra one once, keep rotating it and buying another at the normal rate. Then we would always have one on hand. I also keep my eye on the grocery circular. Black beans and canned tomatoes where on sale last week and I bought ten of each. This is one time when it is very true to buy what your family eats. We eat a lot of both so it made sense for us.

We have some water but we still need to get more. We also need to purchase a grill or camp stove and a wheat grinder.

My biggest realization was that you can never be "done" with food storage. We made a big dent but I still need to keep my eye on everything and not get complacent. I had to apply the gospel to be okay with that. It is also true that gathering takes a lot of money. We found that spending the bulk on the big, sustainable items (wheat, rice, beans...) was the way to go. These items typically last for 30+ years. Everything else would be things we normally buy (or wouldn't mind eating) and rotated such as our frozen chicken.

I certainly do not think I know everything about food storage. But, I hope this can help some of you get started as we did.