Posted on 12/31/2020 9:11:26 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Dear Sisters, We have car insurance in case we get into a car accident. We have life insurance should something happen to us and our daughter needs to be taken care of. We have house insurance should we have a fire or storm and need to rebuild. We have health insurance should we need to be hospitalized or see a doctor. But another insurance that is a necessity for us is food insurance. We have food insurance in case of sickness, unemployment, or a tough season. Both of my grandmothers always had food insurance living in N.H. with the threat of being snowed in for weeks at a time.
Food insurance is a well stocked pantry.
This verse has motivated me so much in preparing my pantry:
"She is like the merchants' ships; she brings her food from afar." Proverbs 31:14
What an incredible sentence.
Years ago when I began learning how to stock my pantry, I thought a lot about this verse as I shopped. I noticed that the Proverbs woman is likened to more than one ship when it comes to gathering food for her family. Also very large merchant ships at that! She seeks out food even from far away. So I suspected early on that if I was to take a look into her pantry or root cellar, it would be very well stocked. I also suspected that she would be doing the bulk of this gathering in the summer/early fall when the crops were plentiful. Food would have been stored in a multitude of ways. And I bet she took advantage of every opportunity to be ready for the winter months ahead.
So I got serious this past summer in building up my pantry. Instead of stocking my pantry for a few months' time, which I had been doing for many years, I decided to stock my pantry for six to twelve months. First, I made a list of all our most used grains/pastas/dried beans/flours. I looked at my supply on hand, figured out how much we would use in that time frame, and bought what I needed in bulk. I couldn't get everything in bulk, but I tried if I could as it was more cost efficient. I stored these items in large plastic containers in my pantry.
These are my bulk items:
Oats Rice Wheat berries Bread flour White flour Rice Flour Gluten free 1 to 1 flour Gluten free grain flour Gluten free pastas Beans beans Navy beans Red Lentils
I wrote everything I bought in a notebook with prices and location so that I would have a better idea next year what I needed. How did we afford this? Well, that is another letter. 😊 But essentially, I did a "no spend year" in 2019 so that I could build up our savings. It was an amazing year.
Some other dry good items that I stored including nuts, tea, and coffee which I got in larger amounts, but not in bulk were:
Cornmeal Cocoa Brown rice Sugar Corn masa flour Brown sugar Powdered sugar Chocolate chips Pamela's Mix Cornstarch Baking powder Salt Baking soda Yeast Nuts Tea Coffee
My next food items to locate and buy were anything in cans. I can some things from our garden, but these were other items that I wanted to have on hand.
Tuna Salmon Tomato Products Pumpkin Black beans Hominy Green beans Garbanzo beans Pineapple Olives
After I got all the canned goods I thought we would need, I turned my attention to anything in jars. Here are those items:
Applesauce Maple Syrup Honey Artichoke hearts Hot Sauce Olive oil Grapeseed oil Apple Cider Vinegar Braggs Liquid Aminos Peanut Butter Tahini Pasta Sauce Mayonaise Herbs & Spices
It really helped me to go in order and to do it in the summer as I was not homeschooling. I could build my pantry more efficiently as I paid attention to each group of foods that my family eats. In the middle of all this pantry building, my garden and my daughter's garden started to really produce. I had three dehydrators going many days as I dried so many vegetables from the garden. I put my dried foods into glass jars on my pantry shelves. While fruit was on sale in the summer, I dried a lot of fruit as well. This helped to build up the vegetable and fruit part of my pantry, along with canning things from the garden, too. I have many butternut squash and delicata squash stored as well in my pantry.
Meat was a bit more difficult to figure out. So I pulled everything out of my freezer to see what I had on hand, wrote it all down, and then bought from each protein group where I needed. My freezer is in my pantry, so I consider it part of my pantry as well. (I also dried some ground beef and kept that in my fridge.) In my freezer I keep:
Fish Chicken Beef Lamb Pork
Lastly, I turned to toiletries and cleansers. I knew this was the last group of things I was dealing with, so it was kind of fun by this point. I had so much hard work behind me, for building a pantry is a lot of work. Especially as you are preserving things from your garden in the heat of the summer. But there is something so wonderful about watching your pantry grow all summer in time for the winter season. I remember my paternal grandmother having an amazing pantry. As a young girl, it always looked like a little store to me in her small walk-in closet off her kitchen. She never had a garden or canned anything, but she knew how to build a pantry that would take her through the harsh winters on the east coast. My maternal grandmother, who also lived on the east coast, had such a large pantry that when she died it was dispersed among five families as there was so much stored food. She, too, never canned or had a garden, but what an amazing pantry that was stored on those shelves in her cellar.
Here is what I bought for my toiletries and cleansers:
Toilet paper Tissues Soap Shampoo Conditioner Toothpaste Dental Floss
Bar Keepers Friend Clothing detergent Dish detergent Vinegar Glass Cleaner Baking Soda
When I got to September, I was pretty much done. So the whole project took me about 4 months. I've never enjoyed anything more. I love walking into my pantry, which is a walk-in closet off my kitchen. It is my food insurance.
I feel like my grandmothers. I feel ready for winter.
Love, Laine
I would also recommend establishing a good business relationship with a local "food repair shop."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCxscU0hWok
Regards,
My food insurance is canned meat and a 1000 lb of Yukon golds in the basement every fall; a man can do pretty well.
I have hard time keeping more than three months food in pantry without argument from wife.
I was going to post this to the Garden thread & then I saw “you” had posted this .... LOL!
I’m sending this to my nieces/nephew. With canning supply shortages, beef processing shortages, plus all the other “shortages” this year, I think ‘some’ folks learned that they should keep food, things like toilet paper, cleaning supplies (FINALLY found alcohol & the shelf already had big gaps in supply), etc. stocked up. Two of my nieces are on “farms” and looking at more of a homesteading, being self-sufficient way of life. About two weeks before the panic buying due to COVID, I told my mom to make an effort to get what she needed in the next couple of days - I did the same. When people were going crazy over toilet paper, various foods, etc., we were ‘sitting pretty’ and had enough of certain items to make it through until months later, the shelves were being restocked, & even then the restocking was often limited.
Nice post - love the way she expresses feeling so good about having food insurance. I used to love my grandmother’s root cellar with all the jars of canned food lined up, bins of veggies, etc. To me, as a small child, it was a wonderful place. The one thing I do wish I had now was a root cellar.
batteries, bullets, and antibiotics.
With modern canning and packaging, and local retail sales events weekly, building a pantry could never be easier.
We ain’t our grandparents.
Buy what you buy, just buy some more when it’s on a particularly good sale. Build it over time, no need to go whole hog and buy all at once.
and Date Tag & Rotate, Rotate, Rotate.
** Airtight, moisture proof, critter proof and stable temperature storage is most important.
Had an LDS friend that kept a 40 gallon drum (food-safe, bagged and sealed) of red wheat. He dumped it after 6 months as it got rancid.
Spent the summer building up about a 3 month supply of food, toiletries, vitamins. Can’t do much more without more spousal buy-in, but I feel good about being at maintenance level with some baseline supplies.
" Instead of stocking my pantry for a few months' time, which I had been doing for many years, I decided to stock my pantry for six to twelve months.
First, I made a list of all our most used grains/pastas/dried beans/flours.
I looked at my supply on hand, figured out how much we would use in that time frame, and bought what I needed in bulk.
I couldn't get everything in bulk, but I tried if I could as it was more cost efficient.
I stored these items in large plastic containers in my pantry."
It goes on with examples of her larder, and indicates what supplies she has on hand.
How do your home supplies measure up ?
Have you looked lately and checked for expiration dates (which can be exceeded) and evaluated the extent of your resources ?
And have you restocked the shelves since you last drew some resources off with replacements ?
IE. : Dry goods, canned goods, freezer, personal hygiene and cleansers, bulk grains, canisters and containers, hand and power tools, etc.
If not just for yourself, there may be other family members who will be depending on you for supplies.
We are soon to enter into uncharted waters of civil, domestic, political, and economic disturbance .
The hour of preparation is late,.. but it can be done !
It's called 'Personal Responsibility' as well as prudence.
It is what sustained our forefathers - preparing for the unknown... and we are there now !
Sadly, she forgot to stock up on commas.........LOL!
Get some #10 cans of freeze dried, stash them and forget about them for twenty five years. Your wife is not too far off in her opinion of over stocking most foods because they do go bad, even canned goods.
I used the $1200 stimulus check to buy half a beef. Cheaper and better quality by far than buying the reduced for quick sale meat I had been buying for years at the grocery store.
I would like to buy a generator in case I need it to keep the deep freeze going. Anyone in TX who wants a half or whole beef, freepmail me. I will hook you up. $5.00 a lb, inclusive, for custom cut real choice+ TX beef.
“and Date Tag & Rotate, Rotate, Rotate.”
———————————————
Worth repeating.
and Date Tag & Rotate, Rotate, Rotate.
I see that this prepper sticks to the essentials.
“I have hard time keeping more than three months food in pantry without argument from wife.”
I had the same problem with hubby - until I told him he could make sure we were prepared with guns and ammo, if I could do the same with food and supplies.
Anyone in TX who wants a half or whole beef, freepmail me
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Better watch out, someone will charge you with discrimination and then tell you that if your ‘heart’ is in the right place you would GIVE it away.....
(SAD indictment for the world ‘they’ have created around us)
I used to laugh and threaten to ‘sue’ the trucking companies that carried the
“We hire Safe drivers’
sign. Kind of discrimates doesn’t it???? HA HA...
Oh, I am old enough to know that ‘gay’ used to be carefree and happy, a woody was a station wagon, and if a boy wanted to ‘be’ a girl (or vice versa) they didn’t stand in the middle of the town square and proclaim it. and charity was started at home and church.
Also wouldn’t really mind if the phrase ‘Under God’ were removed from the Pledge as I learned it without it.
On matters of raw survival, like owning a gun, storing food, etc, there can be no negotiation with a spouse. They need to just get told “that’s how it is” no matter how much you pout or bitch.
Those things are related directly to YOUR survival. Marriage is not a suicide pact because some idiot impedes rational prepping.
Yes, though I could do a lot more larger scale prepping with cooperation - for instance, stable water supplies, alternate electricity/heating options, etc. I’ve done what I know to the best of my capability at this time. God will have to take care of the rest.
Honda 2200
I miss John Candy.
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