As stated in the introduction post to our “WHY DO PEOPLE BUILD A FOOD STORAGE?” series, we have found there are 5 main reasons people store food:

1. Natural Disasters
2. Economic Crisis
3. Health Benefits
4. Everyday Emergency
5. Religious Reasons

Today we will be talking about the fifth reason, Religious Reasons, and encourage you to visit our Facebook Discussion on this topic. We learn so much more from each others real life experiences and opinions, so come on over and join the conversation. (You don’t need to be a member of facebook to read the discussions).

If you start researching “Food Storage”, you probably know that it is a very common practice among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to have a food storage. Leaders of the Mormon faith have long counseled members to be prepare for uncertainties. Because of this, many members have or “try to” have food storage programs in place. Some examples of leader’s counsel include the following:

“Many more people could ride out the storm-tossed waves in their economic lives if they had their . . . supply of food . . . and were debt-free. Today we find that many have followed this counsel in reverse: they have at least a year’s supply of debt and are food-free.”

President Thomas S. Monson, “That Noble Gift—Love at Home,” Church News, May 12, 2001, 7.

“Everyone who owns a home recognizes the need for fire insurance. We hope and pray that there will never be a fire. Nevertheless, we pay for insurance to cover such a catastrophe, should it occur. We ought to do the same with reference to family welfare.”

President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008), “To Men of the Priesthood,” Liahona and Ensign, Nov. 2002, 58.

For more information on the LDS teachings and recommendations on food storage, here is a pdf you can download and read. Also, click here to read a Mormon woman’s perspective on why LDS women do food storage.

Whether it be religious based, self-reliance based, or just plain preparedness based, we agree that having a food storage is wise and great counsel.

Filed under: General, Getting Started | Comments
 

In our series featuring Why People Do Food Storage we touched briefly on allergies as one of the “health benefits” of doing food storage. (Please note: Our final article in that series will be posted later this week!) We wanted to go into a little more detail about that since we get quite a few readers asking us what to do if they have wheat allergies since wheat is one of the items we are supposed to store the most of according to traditional food storage calculators. We have two basic recommendations or suggestions for you:

1. Store extra of the other grains

According to food storage calculators, one adult should store 300 lbs of grains for a one year supply of food. Of this 300, half of it is supposed to be wheat. If you have a wheat allergy, obviously this is not going to apply to you. You may choose to store a lot more alternative grains which include oats, gluten-free quinoa, millet, amaranth, rice, or cornmeal. You can start to collect food storage recipes that use these grains instead of focusing on the traditional items like breads, etc.

2. Learn how to make substitutions

A lot of recipes that call for wheat flour can be modified for wheat allergies. For example, cream of chicken soup or any white sauce base recipe can be made using bean flour. You can make gluten-free bread using other flours such as rice flour, millet flour, oat flour, etc. If you own a wheat grinder then these types of substitutions are SO easy to make and you can store the bulk grains in your food storage, just like you would store wheat! For a great summary of different types of gluten-free flours check out this post on the Gluten Free Mommy blog.

We need your help!

We would love to compile some even more in depth resources for people who suffer from Celiac Disease or others who need to follow a gluten-free diet. If you have good food storage recipes or other tips on how to do gluten-free food storage please email them to info@foodstoragemadeeasy.net. We will be incorporating all of your feedback into a helpful handout that will hopefully benefit a lot of people who are trying to live gluten-free AND work on food storage!

Filed under: Beyond the Babysteps, Grains | Comments
 

So this is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE “food storage” recipe! I learned it at a class I went to about a year ago and couldn’t believe how delicious it was. What I love about it is how many “advanced” food storage concepts it has that I have tackled slowly.

At first I made this recipe with store bought tortillas, canned beans, and canned cream of chicken/mushroom soup – but I promised myself bit by bit I would make it using all the “advanced” techniques. Now that I have had a lot more experience using my food storage, I make it the real way and it tastes so much better – I wont make it any other way.

So here’s to sharing it with you and to giving you a special cooking challenge.

Ingredients:
1 can of black beans (*see below)
1 lg onion (*see below)
1 can of cream of chicken (*see below)
1 can of cream of mushroom (*see below)
¾ cup of milk (*see below)
1 (4oz) can diced green chilies
1 (8 oz) can mild enchilada sauce
1 pkg soft tortillas (*see below)
½ lb cheddar cheese, grated
½ lb monterrey jack cheese, grated

Directions:
Wash and cook beans. Mix next 6 ingredients with beans (Optional: add 3 chicken breasts shredded). Place tortillas in greased 9 by 13 inch pan. Top with half the bean mixture and half the cheese. Repeat the layers. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Cool slightly and cut in squares.

Try each of these techniques one at a time or all at once. They are things that used to scare me and now I love doing them this way in all my recipes.

1 can of black beans with 1 1/2 cups of cooked beans from your food storage. Need to know how to cook them? Check out Crystals post on pressure cooking dry beans here.

Onion with dehydrated onion. These are not only a time saver, but are great to store to have added flavoring in your food storage.

1 can of cream of chicken, 1 can of cream of mushroom, and the milk with the bean flour cream soup recipe found here.

Store bought tortillas, with homemade tortillas made from scratch using recipe found here.

Again if you’re new – don’t get overwhelmed by these “weird” techniques – try them one at a time and one day you’ll be amazed at how much you have learned!

Filed under: Bean Recipes, Beyond the Babysteps, General, Julie's Progress, Recipes, Wheat, Wheat Recipes | Comments
 

In a couple days, I’m going to be sharing with you my FAVORITE food storage recipe. It’s a recipe I would have never had the courage to try a year ago because of all the “food storage” techniques required, but after slowly learning how to use a lot of this food, I have been making this recipe ALL the time!

The recipe I’ll be sharing calls for whole wheat tortillas, so if you’re up for the challenge of trying it out when I share it, get a head start by trying these!

Ingredients:
4 cups of whole wheat flour (fine)
¼ tsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
1 cup of warm water (may need a little more – I usually do!)
¼ cup cooking oil

Jodi always mocks me for not being the “recipe” type, or having “clear” instructions when cooking (I’m one of those, a little bit of this and a little bit of that types…), so just to show I can be specific…

Directions:
1. Mix all ingredients together to make a nice pliable dough.
2. Knead 1 minute and let rest 5 minutes.
3. Roll the dough out so you can easily make equal pieces
4. Cut the dough into 18 equal pieces (I halved the recipe here)
5. Form into 18 balls
6. Roll thin (spray pam to help if there are sticking or dryness problems)
7. Fry on both sides, they cook quickly (no need to grease the frying pan at all)
8. Eat! It doesn’t take long to cook.

TRICKS:

I use a little hand roller that helps a lot and since I use tortillas mostly in recipes where they don’t have to look perfect, I don’t feel so bad when they don’t turn out in perfect circles… (Although I’m sure I could trace some lid from a bowl and cut around if I really cared)

My sister uses this kind of tortilla press and she says they are much faster and easier to make. I think one day I’ll get one. It’s only $13 on amazon, so to all my family members reading this… ahem ahem.  But for now, my handy roller works fine.


At a cooking class I was at once this lady had an electric press and cooker .  The thing was amazing! You threw a ball of dough in there and closed the lid, and voila! A perfect tortilla.  For people who love kitchen appliances (and have the room to store them) this could be something to check out!

Hope you like these!

Filed under: General, Grains, Julie's Progress, Recipes, Wheat, Wheat Recipes | Comments
 

As stated in the introduction post to our “WHY DO PEOPLE BUILD A FOOD STORAGE?” series, we have found there are 5 main reasons people store food:

1. Natural Disasters
2. Economic Crisis
3. Health Benefits
4. Everyday Emergency
5. Religious Reasons

Today we will be talking about the fourth reason, Everyday Emergency, and encourage you to visit our Facebook Discussion on this topic. We learn so much more from each others real life experiences and opinions, so come on over and join the conversation. (You don’t need to be a member of facebook to read the discussions).

While you would never think of STARTING to do food storage to prepare for “everyday emergencies”, it sure is a nice side benefit once you have some food storage accumulated. Here are a few every emergencies that we have found food storage to help with immensely:

Recipe Ingredients: Right in the middle of cooking dinner, you run out of one of your necessary ingredients. Instead of having to run to the store for that spice, egg, soup can, etc. … you run down to your basement instead.

Dinner Emergency: Do you ever have one of “those days” where all of a sudden it’s 6:00 and you have a hungry family and hadn’t planned anything for dinner? Food storage can help! Look into your three month supply foods and you’ll always have something quick and easy on hand from Mac N Cheese, to Spaghetti, Hamburger Helper or beyond.

Party Foods: If you get invited somewhere, it’s common to be asked to “bring something”. If your food storage is stocked up, you will always have some kind of item on hand to bring (even desserts!) This will help you from blowing your budget to go get ingredients to make something special to bring.

Convenience: Sometimes having that extra 5 minutes of time in dinner preparation can feel like it’s preventing an emergency Using dehydrated veggies can save tons of time on chopping and are just great for soups, stews, casseroles, etc.

Safety: Using powered eggs can prevent a salmonella “emergency”. Use them in your cookies and other batters and you can eat the dough, lick the beaters, etc. and know that you are safe. You also don’t have to be careful about washing your hands after cracking eggs into recipes. Who knew food storage could be so useful?

What other everyday emergencies have you run into that were helped by having food storage on hand? Let us know in the comments below!

Filed under: General, Getting Started | Comments
 

If you have read our blog for very long, you have often heard and seen us talk about how much we LOVE our WonderMill Wheat Grinders. We were lucky enough to get ours fairly early on in our food storage adventures, but we confess that we let NOT having a grinder really stand in the way of getting started with our food storage. Please learn from our mistake, buy a little bit of wheat, and try these 7 great ideas for using your wheat WITHOUT a wheat grinder!

1. Thermos Wheat
Recipe from author Rita Bingham

Bring 1 c. of wheat kernels, 2 c. water, and 1 t. salt to a boil in a medium saucepan. Pour into a heated stainless steel or glass-lined thermos bottle. Secure cap. Place bottle on side. In the morning, pour off any additional water, add butter and honey, and serve hot.

2. Wheat Berries
Add some of your plain dry wheat kernels to a pot of water. Bring it to a boil and cook for a few minutes. Then let simmer for about 45 minutes. Drain the wheat berries and stick them in a tupperware container in the fridge. These are delicious to add to yogurt or to use to replace some meat in recipes. You can also use it in place of brown rice in a lot of recipes.

3. Popped Wheat
Take 1 cup of your cooked wheat berries (see above) and add to a frying pan of pot with two tablespoons of oil in it. Cover with a lid and cook over a hot stove shaking the pan while it cooks. After about 4-5 minutes the kernels will be nice and toasted. Put the popped wheat on a paper towel to get the extra oil off, and sprinkle with your choice of seasonings. Try it with salt, seasoned salt, garlic, barbecue salt, onion salt, cinnamon and sugar or any combination you desire. These are delicious on salads as a topping, mixed with trail mix, or as toppings for a desserts or just as a healthy snack.

4. Wheat Grass
Most people have heard how healthy wheat grass is for you, but most people DON’T know that you can make your own wheat grass at home for free with just a little bit of your food storage wheat. Check out this step by step tutorial on Safely Gathered In if you want to try it yourself! It looks so easy. Then you can snip bits off and add them to your fruit smoothies, or if you have a juicer you can use them in other healthy juice drinks.

5. Cracked Wheat
You can crack wheat in a blender or a coffee grinder. To do it in a blender you simply put in about 1/4-1/3 cups of wheat and pulse it until it looks like little cracked kernels. These kernels will cook much faster than regular wheat, and cook up in the same way that you cook rice on the stove or in the microwave. You can use cracked wheat to make hot cereal, add it into bread, or cook it up and use as a meat filler. For more info in cracked wheat visit this post at Everyday Food Storage.

6. Wheat Sprouts
Making wheat sprouts is a different method than making wheat grass. You can sprout wheat just like any other vegetable seeds, legumes, or other grains. Make sure to review our tutorial on how to grow sprouts. Most people like wheat sprouts to be very small, just barely sprouted. These are delicious to throw on salads or to add into your whole wheat bread for a little extra texture and flavor.

7. Blender Wheat Flour
If you are cooking a recipe for something like pancakes or waffles, you can EASILY use your whole wheat kernels, mix the whole recipe in your blender, and pour it straight from there onto a griddle or waffle-maker. Just make sure to add the liquid for your recipe into the blender, then add in your wheat kernels and blend for about 5 minutes. Then add the rest of the ingredients. We blogged about trying Blender Wheat Pancakes and we also have a delicious Corn Cakes Recipe you could try in the blender too.

Please note: Don’t go trying all of these ideas all at once! If you add TOO MUCH wheat into your diet TOO FAST it can give you digestion problems, and we promise you don’t want to have that

Do you have any other ways you use wheat without a wheat grinder? Share them in the comments below!

Filed under: Grains, Wheat, Wheat Recipes | Comments
 

As stated in the introduction post to our “WHY DO PEOPLE BUILD A FOOD STORAGE?” series, we have found there are 5 main reasons people store food:

1. Natural Disasters
2. Economic Crisis
3. Health Benefits
4. Everyday Emergency
5. Religious Reasons

Today we will be talking about the third reason, Health Benefits, and encourage you to visit our Facebook Discussion on this topic. We learn so much more from each others real life experiences and opinions, so come on over and join the conversation. (You don’t need to be a member of facebook to read the discussions).

Here’s a confession – when we first started the blog, Julie was always a little bit sad that when it came time to start using and talking about the Long Term Food Storage Foods, she’d have to pretend to like it all.  She was under the impression that all Long Term Foods were for was making cookies and cakes – ya bread too, but mostly desserts.  While desserts are delicious,  you can’t live on them alone and they have a negative effect on fitting into some of your clothes… ahem… haha

Well now, she openly admits and is happy she was completely WRONG! Food Storage can be as healthy (or not) as you want it to be.  So don’t be so afraid of those Long Term Food Storage Items anymore – here are just a few ways they can have Health Benefits:

Grains- It’s recommended by the USDA that half of our daily grain intake consists of WHOLE grains. Storing grains such as wheat is one of the most effective ways of getting whole grains in your diet.  Here’s an example of how much better for you whole grains can be. When whole wheat is processed into refined white flour, the following nutrients are lost:
o Half of the beneficial unsaturated fatty acids
o Virtually all of the vitamin E
o Fifty percent of the calcium
o Seventy percent of the phosphorus
o Eighty percent of the iron
o Ninety eight percent of the magnesium
o Fifty to 80 percent of the B vitamins

We like to use our WonderMill wheat grinders to make pizza, pancakes, bread, and all sorts of things with our whole wheat.

Legumes- Legumes are the magical fruit. You can learn more about their health benefits in our post we did about them.   They are low calorie,  low fat, high in protein, high in fiber etc.  While they are a little more intimidating to get started with, once you start using them and learning more about them you’ll find how versatile they can be! You can use mashed beans to replace the fat in recipes, ground dried beans to make bean flour for a very low-fat white sauce, or even sprout legumes to provide a healthy vegetable options. Sprouting a seed enhances its already high nutritional value (i.e. Oats when sprouted contain 600% more vitamin C).

Misc Baking Ingredients- The beauty of these long term food storage items is portion control! When you buy baked goods or processed foods you have no way of controlling how much sugar, preservatives, or salt go in your foods. When you’re making your foods from scratch you can control how much, or how little fits your families tastes and lifestyle.

Allergies or Other Dietary Restrictions- If you or a family member has food allergies or other dietary restrictions, food storage is even more important for you.  You have complete control over what goes into your cooking.  By making it from scratch you are saving lots of money over specialized foods from the grocery store.  And also, in case of a food shortage, you will already have foods on hand that are ok for your family to eat.

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Our Why Food Storage? series post is going to be delayed just a little bit as we spent the whole weekend working on a HUGE project that we are very excited about.

If you have ever clicked on our Links Page you may have noticed it was sort of pathetic. We always had big dreams of making it into a very useful, one-stop-shop for all your food storage and emergency preparedness needs. However, it was always one of those projects that got pushed to the wayside for other more pressing projects. Well this weekend we finally snapped and decided to make the page into what we always wanted it to be. We hope you find it helpful in your search for food storage information.

We personally visited every site/blog, wrote the descriptions, and gave them our stamp of approval. We tried to limit the list to sites that are still being updated on a regular basis, and sites that are in line with our own philosophies on food storage and emergency preparedness. If we missed your site, please feel free to fill out the form on our Links Page and we will review it as soon as we can.

p.s. Make sure to check back later today for the post on Health Benefits of Food Storage. We have some amazing information to share with you!

Filed under: Networking | Comments
 

I have a confession to make … my husband HATES powdered milk. Even with Crystal’s delicious drinkable powdered milk tips my husband still refuses to drink it (he loves the fatty kind!). As one of the emergencies from our Seven Day Challenge, we had no power, and no fridge food and we decided to make a treat for our kids to keep them occupied in the evening. We happened to have some gummy worms hidden in a cupboard so I made delicious “Worms and Dirt” inspired by a meal at Boston Pizza in Banff, Canada. YUMM!

Worms and Dirt Recipe

1 box of chocolate pudding
Make with Powdered Milk!
Top with Gummy Worms

And my husband didn’t even complain that it was made ONLY with powdered milk! So at least I have one way to sneak it into foods that I know works now

p.s. What other sneaky tips do you have for using powdered milk?

Filed under: Baking Ingredients, Powdered Milk Recipes | Comments