Self Sustaining Pantry week 5 and a Food Storage Challenge

I am adding something new to the self sufficient pantry for the new year. A food storage challenge are you prepared for an emergency ( a natural disaster, job layoff economic collapse or the rising cost of food) ? People have insurance for there homes cars, medical and life so why not have food insurance. There is a misconception that food storage has to an expensive thing to do. This is not true you do not have to buy all the freeze dried and foods specialty made for food storage these things are expensive and in a crises event you are not going to be wanting to introduce new foods you want food that your family are comfortable with.

I started to do this last year but was not happy with the list I had so I have done some more research and work on the list. I will try to hold the cost down to 20 dollars a week. For some this may even be difficult so I will add some hints to help with the cost. This list is for a family of four.

One thing to remember is to store what you eat and eat what you store. This way you are rotating your food storage and getting use to eating and cooking with some of the new food you may have in your storage.

To keep some of the cost down you need to learn to cook from scratch in hard times you will not be able to buy the easy foods. It really isn’t that hard to make most things from scratch and they are so much better for you.

There will be 2 weekly food items If money is real tight at least get the first item on the list it will be the bare bones of what you need the second item is needed as not absolutely necessary it will make for more of a variety

Then every month I will add an action item something that you should do to help in some emergency situations . These things I will also be doing I am no where near where I need to be on some of these things.

Then once a month there will be an item that if at all possible you should get because they will be very helpful in hard times.

I will post the entire list a littler latter on so if you find something on sale that week you can get it instead. I am going to try and brake this down in to three months if you do this for three months then you will have three months of food storage. As I said the first item is the bare bones and will be repeated every three months the second item will be different. I am trying to think of everything but if there is something not on the list that your family uses add it as you can.
Buy store brands they are a lot cheaper and most of the time just as good.

Week one is 6 pounds of salt / 10 pounds of dry beans.

I buy my salt at the farm store 50 pounds for about ten dollars it isn’t iodized but we take additional iodine pills. You can get this salt to use in preserving foods (canning ) and get the iodized salt for the table.

Get the beans that your family likes best we eat a lot of pinto beans so that is what we have the most of plus I can can them and make refried beans with them

The action item this two weeks is 72 hour kits as I said these are things I also need to do so I will be doing a post on putting these together in the next few days ( once I get it figured all out)

This months item to get is a wheat grinder. I have a hand grinder that I bought new for about 70 dollars. You might be able to find a used one for a little cheaper.

Now for this weeks self sufficient pantry

With the holidays I didn’t get much, I did get 2 boxes of oranges,2 boxes of lemons, ½ a box tangerines and ½ box of grapefruit’s ( I only got a ½ box because I still have some jars of grapefruit left from last year) the girls FFA class sells fruit every year as a fund raiser so I buy all my fruit then I will juice it , can it and dry some. I will not have to buy any of this for the rest of the year. I probably didn’t get these a the best price but it will mean coming up with less money when they get ready to go to the national stock show in Denver.

I did pick up some wrapping paper four half price I got three rolls and hopefully they will mark it down more a little latter then I will pick up a few more rolls. I try to get a few of them that are a solid color or not to Christmas looking then I can use it during the year on other gifts.

Don't forget to get things you will need for Christmas next year now while they are on clearance sale.

Found Corn Syrup for 1.99 for 32 oz I bought 6, I use it in cough drops, candy and carmel corn.

We ordered two hives of bees that will be delivered around march.

I didn’t get any canning done some I am getting a little behind. This next week I will try to get all the fruit taken care of ( they don’t keep to long)and if I have time I will work on the onions and potatoes.

So What did you do this past couple weeks toward a self sufficient pantry.