What better of a way to celebrate National Preparedness Month then by having a Parade of Giveaways of ALL food storage and emergency preparedness products!

One of the great things about the Parade of Giveaways is that you get to learn more about all of these great companies and products and see how they can help you build your food storage. The BEST part about the Parade of Giveways, is that entering giveaways has never been easier, and is open for the whole month. So don’t be afraid to sign up for your favorite ones (or ALL of them!)
 

Here is a list of some of the great products (and we have a couple more coming, so check back):

• Shelf Reliance’s most popular Food Rotation System
• 3-Day Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials
• Chef’s Banquet Freeze Dried Fruit Variety from Ready Project
• 2 FREE 1 Year Memberships to Deals to Meals
• Quality spices from All About Food Storage
• “I Can’t Believe it’s Food Storage” by Crystal Godfrey
• Augason Farms Breakfast Pack
• “Gardening for Beginners” from My Square Foot Garden
• The new 16″ deep Shelf Organizer from Can Organizer
• Golden Flaxseed from HiStakes-Spelt
• Food Storage Made Easy Binders on CD
• JUST ADDED: WONDERMILL JR DELUXE HAND GRINDER

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This weekend there were a lot of stories about Hurricane Katrina as it is the 5 year anniversary. One of the stories I was watching talked about some of the businesses that have still not been able to be rebuilt. It reminded me that being prepared is more then just a household affair. This article is from the Division of Homeland Security about having your business prepared. I’m not implying that these suggestions will protect you from anything and everything, but I found that they provided a lot of good insight and recommendations to think about.

1. CREATING A PLANNING TEAM/CONTINUITY OF AUTHORITYParticipants will discuss the importance of creating a planning team and who should be included. Creating a chain of command with continuity of authority maintains leadership during any type of operational interruption.

2. COMMUNICATION
Maintaining reliable communication with employees, key personnel, customers, vendors and first responders can minimize confusion during any type of event. Options and solutions for a communication plan will be discussed.

3. RISKS AND HAZARDS
Learn how to recognize the risks and hazards that are the most probably for your facility and location. How should you plan against specific types of interruptions?

4. INTERNAL/EXTERNAL RESOURCES AND CAPABILITIES
Each business or organization has internal and external resources that can be utilized for emergency response and recovery. Participants will learn to identify what capabilities are currently available and how to develop others.

5. VULNERABILITY ASSESMENTS
What types of emergences within your facility or community are most likely to occur? This point will cover a vulnerability assessment tool to determine probabilities, estimate impact and assess resources using a numbering system to identify certain types of interruptions.

6. ESSENTIAL BUSINESS FUNCTIONS
Your bottom line could depend on how quickly you are able to resume normal business operations – but what needs to be operating first? Planners will learn how to focus on a company’s most essential business functions to retain the “what, who and how” of business resumption.

7. HUMAN RESOURCES
The human resources within your organization are likely your most valuable assets. Discover the skills and specialized training that cannot always be replaced with outside resources.

8. WORKPLACE EVACUATION AND SHELTERING IN PLACE
Training employees in a simple evacuation or fire drill plan prepares them to respond without confusion during an actual emergency event. Assigning responsibility to assist customers, clients, or patients out of the facility increases exit efficiency. Where should they go? What should they take/ How long should they plan to stay away? Or is it safer to shelter in place?

9. WORKPLACE EMERGENCY SUPPLY ITEMS
Emergencies are unpredictable and could happen during working hours. Is your workplace prepared with necessary supplies to sustain occupants for 8-12 hours if necessary? Receive a practical emergency supply list for workplace environments.

10. INSURANCE COVERAGE/REVIEWS
Would your insurance claim benefit be enough to keep you in business? Identify alternate types of insurance to cover possible gaps.

11. VITAL RECORDS
Could you provide vital documents or records upon request to an insurance provider, banker, or tax accountant? Recognize types of records that are vital to the survival of a business or organization.

12. DATA PROTECT/STORE/RECOVER
A major cause of business interruption is significant data loss. Human error, power failure, a facility fire –all could be the cause. What should an organization do to protect, store and recover vital records and safeguard their cyber system? (Check out computer back up with MozyPro Options)

Awhile back we did a fun post on 72 hour kits for the office. If you don’t have one already, you should check it out and get going on it!

p.s. Share what you know about your company’s emergency preparedness plans in the comments below. If you don’t know them, find out!

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The 7 DAY CHALLENGE is quickly approaching… When is it you ask?

Remember, on a SURPRISE day in September, we will email you (if you are signed up for the challenge – sign up here) and announce the challenge has begun. At that point, you will not be allowed to spend ANY money for 7 days, or go to any kind of store (for those of you who think you can use gift cards -you can’t). Each day we will present you with a different kind of challenge or emergency to deal with USING ONLY WHAT YOU HAVE ON HAND!

• You WILL need a 72 hour kit/Eprep Plan. That’s not a maybe, its a FOR SURE
• You will want your recipes printed (you may not be able to jump on the internet for a recipe)
• Make sure you have water stored
• Make sure you have a way to cook without power
• Inventory your storage and fill in the gaps of things you have forgotten to replace recently
• Make sure you are a fan of Food Storage Made Easy on Facebook -SO much discussion and learning goes on over there, especially during the challenge
• We will MAKE you use your long term storage – it’s not just for collecting dust you know. Do you have a Wondermill? They are on sale for one more week! Get one here.

A great way to make sure you are prepared for real life, AND the challenge, is to use the checklists and over 100 pages of information found in our Food Storage Made Easy Binder. The Binder is a downloadable file, so you can purchase it today, and get started RIGHT AWAY! Quit worrying about HOW to build your food storage, and just get started- we’ve done the hard work for you.

• The more you participate in the challenge, the more you learn, actually doing it really helps you learn
• You’ll have to modify some of the scenarios for your own family depending on diet, work schedules, marital status, kid status etc… We’ll try to be generic, but just relax and adapt
• Don’t skip out on work, or neglect important things just because you are doing the challenge -we can’t write “doctor’s notes” and excuse you from stuff
• Buying gas is up to you for the 7 days – if some of these things happened in real life, you wouldn’t be going to work at the same time using up gas etc…

Happy preparing! We’re so excited to SURPRISE you!

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To celebrate National Emergency Preparedness Month, along with our annual 7 Day Challenge we’re going to be hosting the First Ever “Emergency Preparedness and Food Storage PARADE OF GIVEAWAYS!” This event is going to be fun for all of us to learn about some great companies, products, and services WHILE winning some great stuff. Here’s how it works:

Emergency Preparedness, and Food Storage companies are sponsoring the giveaways on this index. Each sponsor is featuring their own product giveaway on their own sites. Visit each of the sponsors to enter. Don’t worry – we have rules for the sponsors to ensure entering will be EASY!

Check out the great products, sponsors, and giveaways for the entire month of September. Winners will be selected by each individual sponsor, and contacted by each individual sponsor. This is just an INDEX of all the giveaways (we’re not in charge of, or responsible for each individual giveaway).

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My computer crashed and I lost everything … I know you told us to back up our computers but I didn’t … Could you please resend my Food Storage Made Easy Binder file?

And that is the part where we say “I told you so!!!”. In our BabyStep Checklist program the VERY first thing we tell people to do is to have some sort of backup plan for their computer. This doesn’t seem like a typical recommendation from a food storage/preparedness site, but it is the MOST common “disaster” that people have and it is absolutely devastating when it happens. To lose all of your work and school files, not to mention family pictures and videos … it has happened to me and it is awful.
 

Well today I had a serious computer emergency myself. I was working on my laptop at a little table in front of my couch and had a nice full glass of ice water sitting beside me. My five year old son wanted a turn to hold my 2 month old baby, so he came and sat down beside me on the couch and tried to situate himself to comfortably take the babe. Well, in the process of doing that … he kicked the entire glass of water right onto my computer keyboard.

Needless to say I FREAKED OUT. I hurriedly put the baby down and tried to salvage the computer. I burst into tears because my MacBook is my other baby and it is only about a year old and it was FULL of WATER. My 2 month old was screaming because I scared him by putting him down so fast. And my five year old started crying because I was so upset and he was worried about the baby. Plus my three year old girl kept saying “What’s wrong, why is everyone crying?” It was quite a scene.

I thought the computer was completely ruined, as it kept doing crazy freak-out things whenever I tried to use the keyboard. But it appears to work ok if I use an external keyboard and mouse plugged into it. So I’m writing this blog post on my poor flooded MacBook and crossing my fingers that it will still function tomorrow.

The funny part about this is that I was not at ALL worried about my data. The very first thing to cross my mind was “Thank goodness I finally transfered my Mozy account to this computer (after procrastinating for almost a year).” I only had to be sad about replacing a $2400 computer, but all my non-replaceable files are safely stored in my Mozy account and were accessible to me all day while MY computer was drying out.

Use coupon code AUGUST for an additional 10% off your subscription!

So don’t let yourself be one of the people who emails us and says “I know you told me to get a Mozy account, and I should have, but I kept putting it off … and now my computer is fried … can you please resend my checklists?” (Have we mentioned that we have to do those manually and it is HARD to keep up with!) Those emails are the saddest because it is so cheap and easy to get an account and the amount of pain it can save is immeasurable.

Can you tell I’m a BIG Mozy fan? (Julie is too, you can read her story here).

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We have been at a family reunion this weekend so please forgive us for not having a post ready to go for today. However we do have a big hint for you about something EXCITING coming up this week!!!
 

COMING SOON!!!

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Want to know what we get asked most often when we talk to groups of people about food storage? Ok, we’ll tell you. People always say, “I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, how do I incorporate that into my Food Storage Plan?”.

Well we have been working on ways to answer that question. On our BabyStep 8 page, we talk about growing, canning, dehydrating, and freezing. Storing fruits and vegetables can be such a road block for so many people in food storage- ourselves included.

Today, Julie is going to share with you some things she is doing to get closer to having that part of her food storage under control. It involves GREEN SMOOTHIES, AIRPLANES, AND I TOLD YOU SO’S.

So for awhile now I have been into “Green Smoothies”. I got introduced to a website “Green Smoothie Girl” by my neighbor, and am just scraping the surface of some of the great stuff on her site. For those of you who make these, you know how amazing they make you feel, and how frantic you get when you don’t have your daily dose of fabulous fruits and vegetables. When thinking about WHY FOOD STORAGE, there are many reasons I have food storage. I choose to have food storage for emergency situations, but ALSO for situations where I might not have access to stores, or if money is tight. Having said that, I do a portion of freezer food planning in my food storage. Ideally I’ll have a nice, and fancy generator to power my freezer in case of no power situations, but we’re doing this ONE BabyStep at a time – remember!

Anyways, about a month ago, my sisters were trying to find airline tickets for a trip they were taking. I had a couple of free flights from points I haven’t been able to use for FOREVER, and offered to sell them my free flights for a discount of what they were going to pay for their tickets anyways. My points were good for something after all! So, I did something I rarely do- I SPLURGED! I have been drooling, and I mean DROOLING over Blendtec and Vitamix blenders for months. Each morning when I had been making my smoothies, I told myself- one day- one day- I would have an AMAZING blender. Well to make a long story short, with my free flights money, I bought a Vitamix (I did some SERIOUS research and debating on which one to buy, and finally went with Vitamix , but there are bonuses to Blendtec that might make it the right blender for you, I’ll do a post on just that later).

So with my Vitamix , I make so much fun stuff, smoothies being one of them. I went out of town without it, and barely survived – Ok- I’m being dramatic here, but seriously I LOVE it. Since I’ve made making smoothies a part of my daily life, I thought – I NEED to figure out how to store for this. This is where the “I TOLD YOU SO’S” come in. When I was a girl I would get SO embarrassed when I was grocery shopping with my mom and she would buy TONS of stuff on sale. Well, I’m going to confess. I’m turning into my mom. I am using Deals to Meals to buy my produce for so much cheaper then Walmart prices (I told you about this a few weeks ago). Earlier this week, I found myself buying huge amounts of fruits for freezing and I just had to laugh. Freezing this fruit when buying it for so cheap is a great way to build up my fruit storage, and save money at the same time. My plan is to keep buying 3-4 times the amount of produce I normally buy, when it’s at great prices, and keep on freezing. Ideally I would love to have fresh always, but just in case…

So here are some tips I have learned from readers about freezing fruits. Please share your tips in the comment sections below:

-Clean, wash and dry fruit first
-Place fruit on cookie sheets or platters to freeze (this avoids clumping)
-Put the powder that keeps fruit good on things like peaches
-Freeze for a few hours
-Place in ziploc bags
-Label the bag with the date (I need to do that part still)

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• Basement junk making it difficult to reach long term food storage buckets
• Bags of groceries dumped on the floor BESIDE the shelves
• Canning supplies scattered in multiple places
• Shelves for 3 month supply are hard to access, hard to see, and hard to reach

My big excuse is that I had a baby 7 weeks ago. So for probably a good 5-6 months I avoided going down to the storage area like a plague. My sweet hubby would refill my containers upstairs with my long term foods. And my sweet 5 year old son would run down and grab cans of veggies or soup when I needed them for a recipe.

The problem could no longer be ignored when I sent my son down to grab a can of tomato soup for a recipe. He told me there wasn’t any. I didn’t believe him, because I should have at LEAST 10 cans down there. The soup is normally on the left shelf (see above) so I had to navigate around that junk to look for the soup. To my dismay there WASN’T any TOMATO SOUP. UGH! This is not supposed to happen to me.

• A complete reorganization of my storage space
• Elimination of space hogging (and leak-prone) water jugs
• Discarding of multiple foods items that were long past expiration
• Re-inventory of my three month supply spreadsheet

Once I had reorganized and catalogued my foods I realized how much I had depleted my storage over the past months. My “three month supply” was more like a partial 2 week supply plus a billion stewed tomatoes and mandarin oranges.

• Print out my list of “Need to Buy” items
• Use Deals to Meals (LOVE THEM!) over the next few weeks to catch the items when they are on sale
• Put foods straight onto shelves as I purchase them
• Fill up my new water storage boxes
• Buy or build more Can Racks as needed to improve rotation
• Buy better shelves some day (these are second hand and kind of odd-sized)
• Keep stocking up on my long term food storage now that I’m using it so much!

We quite often get asked to see an example of a filled out sheet, but I’ve always been a little embarrassed to share what we eat. I’ve finally overcome my fear and I’m willing to share. Hope it is helpful for you!

Jodi’s Three Month Supply Spreadsheet

p.s. Have you been procrastinating filling out your spreadsheet? Fill it out … RIGHT NOW and submit it to us at info@foodstoragemadeeasy.net. We will do a future post where we share all the reader spreadsheets and maybe we can all get ideas from each other! If you already have yours filled out … YOU ROCK and you can still send it to us too

Filed under: Jodi's Progress, Preparing Your Space, Shelves, Three Month Supply | View Comments
 

My baby will be 7 weeks old tomorrow. Wow does time fly. As any mom knows, losing the baby weight can be quite a torturous process. I knew I didn’t want to go on some sort of crazy fad diet to lose the weight, so I decided to go with just eating healthy and exercising. That means lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean meat (i.e. chicken). Basically no processed foods, very little fat, and no refined sugar … if you know my love of treats this basically equals NO FUN! But he was worth it! And the best part is I am using TONS of food storage while I’m at it.

While this “diet” is very healthy, it can also be a bit of a pain to prepare the foods. But I’m going to show you a few tricks I’ve learned to make it easier to follow, and super easy to stick with even on busy days when you aren’t at home to cook the food. And the bonus part is, it uses lots of food storage, yay!

Whole Grains

I have started keeping a bucket of wheat, rice, and oatmeal upstairs because I’m going through them so quickly. I make two loaves of whole wheat bread (click here for my favorite recipe) every few days and my family has started snarfing it up. I should be grateful that they love the healthy food but then I have to keep making it more often. At least it’s really cheap since I grind my own wheat! I’ve also started cooking up big batches of brown rice in my pressure cooker and storing it in 1 cup baggies in the fridge. This has been an awesome way to always have a healthy side dish on hand.

Fruits and Veggies

I have been using my favorite service Deals to Meals to find the best deals on produce and stock up. If the foods look like they may go bad soon I just stick them in the freezer. Usually I can make the freezer foods last until stuff goes on sale again. Sweet! (To see how easy it is to use deals to meals for product, check out this post)

Chicken

I am choosing to avoid red meat and cheesy/pasta dishes for now, but I still make some of our normal family favorites for dinner. So I have started cooking up large batches of chicken in the pressure cooker and keeping it in 4 ounce baggies in the fridge. It’s so easy for me to pull out a baggie and stick it on a salad for a healthy dinner, while my family can still enjoy a good spaghetti dinner. I like to consider frozen meat as part of my three month supply so preparing this in bulk is great for that.

Pressure Cooking

Here is my confession, until a few weeks ago I was AFRAID to use my pressure cooker. Seriously! But I could never make my brown rice turn out very yummy so I decided to give it a whirl. Well I am officially in love. The rice turns out perfect and chewy and delicious every time. And the chicken … oh the chicken. Tender, moist, and cooks in such a short time. After eating plain chicken on a george foreman for a few weeks the pressure cooker chicken in marinades are divine.

How to Use a Pressure Cooker for Rice and Chicken

The Finished Product

I accidentally had to eat some of the chicken after working so hard to prepare it all

Garlic Lemon Chicken Recipe

2 lbs thawed chicken
1/3 cup olive oil
2/3 cup lemon juice
6 cloves garlic
2 tsp. thyme

Mix all the marinade ingredients up and pour in a gallon ziplock bag along with the chicken. Marinate for 15-20 minutes and then cook in the pressure cooker according to your cooker’s directions.

Our Favorite Pressure Cooker

Cuisinart CPC-600 1000-Watt 6-Quart Electric Pressure Cooker, Brushed Stainless and Matte Black
Reduce time spent in the kitchen preparing meals with the help of this 6-quart electric pressure cooker–it cuts cooking times up to 70-percent when compared to traditional stovetop cooking methods. The unit traps steam inside, which builds up pressure to create hotter temperatures, and its tight seal locks in heat, moisture, and flavor, as well as vitamins and minerals for exceptionally healthy, great-tasting meals like soup, chili, and other one-dish entrees. For safety, the cooker must be fully locked for pressure to build, and it will remain locked until the pressure inside drops to zero. It is so easy to use and we LOVE it! [Learn More]

Filed under: Fruits and Vegetables, Grains, Healthy Food Storage, Recipes, Recommended Products | View Comments