I know it's been a while since we had our Food Storage Preparation class with Karen Wilkinson, but I'm finally getting around to blogging about it. (Good things come to those who wait!) :) Anyway, the class was fantastic!! A big thanks goes out to Janine and the Provident Living committee for getting that put together for us! I wasn't able to take notes on the information and I had to leave a bit early to get a baby to bed, but you will get all the information I can remember (and anyone who wants to add their two cents worth of memory, please leave a comment or email me and I'll update it!). So anyway, here's some of the highlights of the evening as remembered by some of the sisters...
First, Deena is super excited to know that you can wax cheese and can beef. [And adding my thoughts to this, I thought it was super cool that when you wax cheese, you can store it at essentially room temperature (I think it may have been more like 65 degrees) for several years! And you can reuse the wax! That being said, I sense a fun enrichment activity opportunity! :)]
And then, Robin recalls that her "favorite things were her [Karen] stressing that it is a food SUPPLY, not food storage. That turns the whole idea into using and rotating the food... it's an action, not buy it and forget it. We need to rethink our purchases and what we will actually eat. Didn't we find that out after Hurricane Ike? I didn't want to eat the food that I had purchased [and stored]. I wanted "Good Stuff". So, we need to store REAL food... food that we actually eat. That is what we want in times of stress. "Good Stuff". "
And my personal inspirations from the night were:
-That we need to dedicate a space in our home to our food supply. The more centralized the food is, the more functional our system will be (and the more likely we'll be to use it). Granted, we don't all have a whole room we can dedicate to this, but do what you can! (We're working on turning half of our master closet and a third of our office/sewing/craft room into dedicated food supply space.)
-And our food supply should just be a years worth extension of what we've already got in our pantry. The concept that made it easy in my mind was simply this: make a rough outline of one month's worth of meals in your home. (i.e. we have pizza twice a month, beef stroganoff once, spaghetti twice, etc...) When you've got that outline, simply multiply each menu/recipe quantity by 12 (for twelve months) and write down what ingredients that would entail (so, if you have spaghetti twice a month, multiply 2 x 12 = 24 and you need 24 recipe's worth of ingredients to last the year). Then just work on getting those ingredients over the next couple months or so (a little here and a little there... or take one recipe per month and get a year supply of it during that month) and walah! Before you know it, you've got a year supply of meals! (Don't forget breakfast and lunch too!) The beauty of this is that once you've got your "year pantry" stocked, you're back to shopping as usual. Once you use something, add it to the grocery list, restock what you've used and you're always keeping one year's worth of everyday food on hand. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.
-Also, our food supply should not be an afterthought that we spend money toward after we have our hair done and our nails done and the latest Wii video games purchased for our kids, etc. It should come
before all that and probably right after our tithing (and bills)! It needs to be a priority! Karen pointed out that we, here in America, live with this little idea in our heads that the stores will always have food in them. That will not always be the case. She commented that 'we are not far from the time when we will have to live off of what's in our house.' That struck home with me. Especially when she commented that 'if we (the adults/parents) want to live off of rice and beans for a year, that's our right to choose. But we don't have the right to choose that for our children and force it on them'. We have a responsibility to provide them with healthy, nutritious food that they can and will eat. The thought of my little girls starving and possibly dying because I failed to "store" anything but wheat, rice, and beans really tugged at my conscience. (And if you think you can survive a whole year on just those things, check out her blog,
Kneadful Things Now, for information on
appetite fatigue. Also consider that young children can
develop an intolerance to wheat/gluten if they eat too much and therefore won't be able to eat it anymore.) Needless to say, my idea of food storage has taken a big turn.
Okay. This has gotten really long. Sorry. :) I'm wrapping up. I promise! :)
So, the idea of all this is not to scare us into action (although if that's what it takes, then so be it). The idea is to make us knowledgeable of what will and will not work when the time comes that the prophets have been talking and warning us about and for us to get our homes in order. (We have prophets for a reason!) If you want to think of it like this, Karen made a comment to the effect of that when the time comes that we'll be living on our food supply, 'if you want to be surviving on beans and rice, go ahead. I will be enjoying a nice pizza.' (Doesn't that sound so much better?!) It doesn't take much work, just a little bit of preparation and go-to power.
Anyway, take this info for what it's worth to you and do as you are directed by the Spirit.
And on that note... I'm done. :) We love you, Sisters!
Well, I am devoting this month to beans. For those of you who weren't able to join us, I will be trying out the recipes we received throughout the month and will post the finished results (along with the recipe) so that you can all enjoy them as well.
Use about 1/2 to 1 cup detergent for each load (depending on how dirty the clothes are). Oh, and you may want to give your detergent a little shake before you pour it in to help mix up the gelled/water parts again. 
