1 – VARIETY
- Most people have inadequate variety in their housing. 95% of the people with whom I worked stored only the four essential things we listed earlier: wheat, milk, honey, and salt. Statistics indicate that for many reasons most of us are not going to survive on such a diet.
- Many people are allergic to wheat, and may not be conscious of it until after eating it meal after meal.
- To young children, wheat is too harsh. This can be tolerated in limited amounts but not as their key staple.
We get sick of consuming the same food over and over and several times prefer not consuming it than tasting it again. It is called exhausted hunger. Young children and the elderly are more vulnerable to this. Store less wheat than is commonly suggested and place the difference in a variety of other grains; particularly those which your family likes to eat. Shop a number of beans, too. This will add color variety, texture and flavor. Variety is the key to a successful warehouse program. You must store flavors, such as tomato, bouillon, cheese, and onion.
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Also, have a strong supply of the spices with which you want to cook. These flavorings and spices encourage you to use your grains and beans to do many creative things. You are seriously restricted without these. Some of the best advice I can give you is to buy a cookbook with adequate food storage. Go through it to see what your family really will eat. Note the ingredients just as you do. This will allow you to know what things to store, more than anything else.
2- EXTENDED STAPLES
Few people go beyond the four essential things being stored, but it is highly necessary that you do so. Never place all of your eggs in a single basket. Store dehydrated and/or freeze-dried foods, and store canned goods purchased from home. Make sure you add cooking oil, shortening, baking powder, soda, yeast and powdered eggs. Without those things you cannot cook even simplest recipes. I won’t mention all the items that should be included in a well-balanced storage system because of the limited space.
3 – VITAMINS
Vitamins are important, particularly if you have kids, because kids don’t store nutrient reserves like adults do. The most vital of these are good quality multivitamin and vitamin C. Others can be added as permitted on your budget.
4 – QUICK AND EASY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FOODS
Fast and easy foods help you through periods when you can’t prepare your essential storage products mentally or physically. No cooked foods like freeze-dried foods are wonderful, as they require little preparation. MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat), such as many preparation outlets carry, packaged goods, and so on are perfect, too. Psychological foods are the goodies that you should add to your storage – jello, pudding, candy, etc.
This may sound petty, but I’ve spoken to many people over the years who have lived entirely on their storage for long periods. Nearly all of them say that these were the most useful items in their storage to normalize and make their situations more bearable. These are particularly important when you’re having children.
Store a variety of beans. This will add variety of color, texture and flavor.
5 – BALANCE
I have seen families buy all of their wheat time and time again, then buy all of another item, and so on. Choose not to do it. Keeping your storage well-balanced is critical as you establish your storage. Buy multiple items, rather than one item in large quantities. If something happens and you have to live on your current storage, you’ll have a one-month supply of a variety of items much better than two to three items for a year’s supply.
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6 – CONTAINERS
Always store the bulk foods in containers for food storage. I have seen tons and tons of food literally thrown away because they were left in sacks, where they became highly susceptible to humidity, insects, and rodents. When using plastic buckets make sure they are filled with a plastic food grade liner available from companies carrying packaging supplies. Never use trash can liners as chemicals are used to treat them. Don’t over-stack them. They may stumble in an earthquake, the lids pop open, or they may crack. A better container is the #10 tin that most preparedness enterprises use when packaging their food.
7 – USE YOUR STORAGE
Some of the greatest challenges I’ve encountered in all the years that I’ve dealt with preparedness is people storing food and not knowing what to do about it. It’s important that you and your family are familiar with the items that you store. You have to learn how such foods can be prepared. You do not want to know that under stress. You need your family to get used to eat those foods. A stressful period isn’t a good time to change your diet altogether. Get a cookbook for food storage and learn how to use certain foods!
Such food storage problems are easy to solve if you know what they are. The lady that I talked about left at the first article knowing that what she had stored was a good start; but not enough. As she said, “It’s easier to figure out what mistakes I’ve made when there’s still time to make corrections.”
If you are one who has to make some changes, that’s all right. Look at these ideas, and add the missing items. Taking a simple storage is quick, and adding the necessities to make it livable, but it has to be done. I tried to include recipes that supported families irrespective of what they had stored when I did the research for my cookbook. As I put together the material it was fascinating to find out what the pioneers ate is the kind of things we store. But if you’ve only stored the 4 basics, you can do very little with that. By adding only a few items it significantly enhances your options and your family’s prospect of surviving thereon. As I studied how the pioneers lived and ate, my entire emotion for food has changed. I realized that what most of the world has always lived on is our storage. If it is put together the right way we will return with a few goodies thrown in to a good basic living.
