Food Storage

The kitchen pantry

I've had food on my mind a LOT the last little bit.

The larger kitchen pantry

In the past week I've purchased:
25 pounds white sugar
75 pounds white flour
1 pound baking powder
36 cans vegetables
10 cans spaghetti sauce
25 pounds Krusteaz (umm...I grind my own wheat for goodness sake. Why do I purchase pancake mix??)
6 cans coconut milk
1/2 pound curry powder
16 pounds spaghetti
25 pounds jasmine rice

Bulk sugar and flour for immediate use, and long-term storage hard red winter wheat, canned

I received a challenge recently to write down 10 meals my family likes, and make sure I have the ingredients to make each meal THREE times. Then...BOOM. You have have a month's worth of food stored in your pantry! A few people scoff- "I only eat fresh food." Yes, that's very true. And it's very good for you, and probably the best thing you could do.

Last summer's canning, plus a few extras: rasberry jam, cantaloupe preserves, marmalade, mint jelly, strawberry jam, chokecherry syrup, apple butter, chow chow, apple sauce, and apple pie filling

But what do you plan to do if the grocery store has no fresh food, or you have no power and can't store it in the refrigerator? We know grocery stores only stock so much, and they depend on trucks coming through every day or so, and they depend on electricity flowing to their coolers.

Well, they WERE on sale...

We sat down to write our meals as a family tonight (well, Ernie just wanted chicken nuggets and rice for the rest of her life) and were surprised we could only come up with 5 meals I make on a regular basis. But you know what, we're OK with that.

Our meals:
pinto beans and rice (a nice, complete protein)
chili and rice (again, a complete protein. If we have company, I throw in half pound ground beef)
spaghetti with meatballs and homemade french bread
quesadillas
coconut curry (we've used prawns, but this could be combined with chicken, or even lentils) and rice

The best way to store things short-long-term: free buckets from the grocery bakery, plus a gamma seal lid.
This is the bulk wheat we use to make our bread, I fill a smaller kitchen container from here every two weeks.

So this week I'll be checking our pantry, making sure we have enough on hand to make each meal 6 times, along with enough to make our daily bread (wheat, naan, corn bread, biscuits, french bread) and breakfast foods like oats, cold cereal, and grits.

Oh dear- our stash of "prepared foods" plus quart-sized Ziplocs. I use SO MANY of those to freeze fresh produce during the summer.

Eventually, the goal is to have three months' worth of food stored in our cupboards, and a years' supply to long-term storage food. Did you know, properly stored, that wheat, rice, oatmeal, powdered milk, sugar, and beans can last over 30 years? At least well enough to sustain life?

We go through about 25 pounds of flour every month- I'm the family baker. We normally make two loaves per batch (about 3 batches a week), and one loaf goes out the door from each batch. I LOVE it! What good is baking if no one will eat it?? We go through 6 cups of wheat, and roughly 10 cups of white flour every week

What does your family eat? What do you store? Do you plan on storing more?