Ever since we started this blog we have been asked if we would be willing to come and teach classes. In the beginning we didn’t feel qualified, and in recent times we have been so busy with families, jobs, and blogging, that we could not fit it into our schedules. However, for the next few months we have an uncommon lull in our schedules so we are going to take advantage of it and get out and TEACH!

How to Submit a Request

1. Plan an event you would like to have us attend
Church groups, emergency preparedness fairs, office sac lunch seminars, etc.
2. Select your topic
General food storage overview, 3 month supply planning, using long term food storage, wheat/wheat grinders, water storage, etc.
3. Select 2 potential weeks from our schedule of availability (see below)
We will teach one class per week, we can be flexible with what day it is on)
4. Please EMAIL US your request including the day and times you are hoping for
We will schedule your event and confirm with you based on our availability

Schedule of Availability

March 14-20: AVAILABLE
March 21-27: AVAILABLE
March 28-April 3: AVAILABLE
April 4-10: AVAILABLE
April 11-17: Lehi–April 14th
April 18-24: AVAILABLE
April 25-May 1: AVAILABLE
May 2-8: AVAILABLE
May 9-15: SLC–May 11th
May 16-22: AVAILABLE
May 23-29: AVAILABLE

Limitations:

• Event must be located in Utah County or Salt Lake County
• Event must be held in a public location (i.e. church, library, etc.)
• We prefer events to be held during weekdays
• We ask that a minimum of 15 people be committed to any event we come to

We are so excited to have the chance to meet some of our readers in person!

p.s. PLEASE don’t leave requests in the comments. In order to schedule an event you MUST email us at info@foodstoragemadeeasy.net so that we can keep track of all requests more easily.

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When it comes to getting a 3 month supply of food together, we have found that a lot of people get so much anxiety over the whole thing that they don’t do it at all. We’re getting ready to help Grandma Lori with her 3 month supply in our Extreme Food Storage Makeover. In doing so we have compiled a list of questions to ask her that will help us formulate a plan. Ask yourself these questions, and as you do so you’ll see a plan start to form – with some resources on our site to help.

Are you storing a 3 month supply of food for a potential job loss? For a potential natural disaster? For meal planning purposes? Whatever it is that you are doing this for will influence how you go about planning, so first – decide – Why Am I Doing This? Check out our complete series on “Why Food Storage?”, if you haven’t figured this one out yet.

Are you the type that thinks your 3 month plan can only have shelf stable items? Do you think fridge and freezer foods count in your 3 month plan? Do you want to make a plan based on the assumption that you can still buy produce to fill in holes in your recipes? Once you have decided which types of foods you want in your 3 month plan, you’ll be able to filter your recipes to fit that criteria. ***disclaimer*** While it’s always good to have some shelf stable recipes, we think planning strictly shelf stable meals is a hard place to start for beginners-

• Some people find that buying foods they use often in bulk fit their goals for a 3 month plan.
• Some people like to plan their meals on our printable pdf forms with good old fashioned pens and pencils. (found on our BabyStep 3 page)
• If you’re really wanting to get detailed, you can use our 3 month supply excel spreadsheet and go to town including all ingredients for all your recipes and then watch it automatically calculate how many of each item you need.(found on our BabyStep 3 page)

While the end goal is to use foods daily from your pantry, and replace them with your regular grocery shopping, to get your supply kick started you may need to budget a certain amount of money to get your supply going. Figure out what you can spare until you have a supply built up and think of it as an investment.

When you have determined WHAT you need to buy, develop a plan to purchase. For some great info on this – visit our sister site The Food Storage Shopper. She is currently revamping her site, but you can still find some information to help you while it’s under construction. You may decide buying one extra each time works for you, or you might get into coupon and sale shopping and buy things only when on sale. Whatever fits your style, having a game plan in place will surely help.

Good luck, and remember there aren’t RIGHT answers to these questions. If we have learned anything in doing this for the last 2 years its that EVERYONE has a different style, and you need to figure out what works for you!

Filed under: General, Three Month Supply | Comments
 

One of the BEST and CHEAPEST ways to store fruits and vegetables is to garden and/or preserve them yourself. If this feels overwhelming to you, don’t worry, we understand! Check out Jodi’s Gardening Failures post from last fall for example However, if this is something you really WANT to learn more about, we are going to help you achieve success this year.

If you are a brand new beginner, here is a fantastic intro to Square Foot Gardening that we filmed last summer with our cousin Emily. We love love love the Square Foot Garden method developed by Mel Bartholemew.
 

How will we help you this year?
1. We will be posting periodic updates on how we are doing in our gardens along with details about what we will be doing next so you can follow along in your own gardens (ok we’ll be honest, JODI will be doing this, Julie hasn’t caught the gardening bug yet).
2. We will be having Emily from http://mysquarefootgarden.net do a series of guest blog posts on some of the more advanced gardening topics (leave a comment below if you have a specific topic you would like to have covered).

Jodi’s To-Do’s This Week
1. Make a garden plan
2. Purchase grow lights (Emily convinced me that these are golden!)
3. Purchase materials needed to start seedlings (soil, plant pots, etc.)
4. Catalog leftover seeds and purchase any I am short on
5. Start appropriate seedlings indoors and plant peas outdoors (yay!)
6. Convince dear husband to help me start prepping my garden beds

Helpful Hint
Are you worried about knowing when to plant the right things? Emily has a fantastic FREE service she offers that provides you with a custom schedule explaining what to plant every week for your specific region. Click here to sign-up for these weekly newsletters that are an invaluable resource for ANYONE planting a garden.

Happy Gardening!!!

Filed under: Fruits and Vegetables, Gardening | Comments
 

With the recent earthquakes, I have been thinking about my food storage and preparedness plan and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I am guilty of a little procrastination over here! It seems like anytime Jodi and I do progress updates, they turn into confessionals, but bit by bit we make improvements and feel much more prepared then when we started our blog!

Anyways, as my little picture story will show, I hadn’t put my food away since I bought it… ahem ahem over a month ago. I finally got around to it this weekend and I also got around to building (or having my husband build) these awesome cardboard rotating racks from Can Organizer. Check Them Out!(I like the shorter ones for my size shelves, but they have different options) My son shoots hockey pucks in our basement and is CONSTANTLY tipping over my neatly organized cans and it drives me crazy! I am just getting started on turning the tipsy stacks into perfectly sound racks and I love it already!

I’m also happy to report that while I was watching the news this weekend, I realized I actually do have a few things going for me! They were saying that the people should evacuate because of the tsumami threats and to take only important documents and GO! In our emergency plan we suggest this and even have a whole plan for creating an emergency binder. I was happy to know in case I needed to evacuate, I would have all my important stuff together – all ready for me to go!

Filed under: General, Julie's Progress, Shelves, Three Month Supply | Comments
 

One of the biggest concerns people have when getting started with their food storage is “Where do I store all of this food???”. A while back we posed this question to our readers and we got some fabulous results which we compiled into the Small Spaces Storage Solutions handout.

My husband (the handyman who helped us make our first rotating can racks) has come up with a fabulous new storage solution for our house. He was working as an airline pilot for a while and was based in Houston, Texas — the land of no basements. The apartment that he lived in during his “on days” made use of their ATTIC for storage space. Ever since he stayed in that apartment he dreamed of converting our attic into a functional storage area.

After a long time of deliberating, several Home Depot trips, and a gaping hole cut into the bedroom ceiling … we finally got a solution that works!

The magical ladder (pre-install)	Ladder installed, so cool!
The kids loved helping	Beautiful new storage space!

While it doesn’t necessarily work to store food (due to extreme heat and cold) … it’s a fabulous way to store everything else thus making room for more food in the other areas of our home. Isn’t my husband the greatest? And the best part about having the attic stairway is that I can actually climb up there myself and access our storage!

Filed under: Jodi's Progress, Preparing Your Space, Shelves | Comments
 

Last week we had a giveaway for a Trekker 2 Disaster Kit from Emergency Essentials. A 3 day supply for 2 people, retail value $99.95 on sale this month for $84.99. The lucky winner is the person with the username (we’ll email you to get your address):

We were so thrilled with the feedback we got on what topics you guys would like to learn more about, that we compiled it all into a spreadsheet (yes we love spreadsheets) to help us better analyze and categorize it. We wanted to share a summary of the results so you can get a sneak preview of some of the (much-requested) topics we will be covering on our blog in the future. (Don’t forget to use the search box at the top left to see some of these topics that we have already covered!)

1. Water Storage (for large families, in small spaces, filters, water sources, purification)
2. Alternative Cooking Methods (solar ovens, rocket stoves, dutch oven cooking)
3. 72 Hour Kits (people still have a LOT of questions about the best way to do these)
4. Emergency Preparedness for Special Situations (small children, pets, allergies, etc.)
5. Self Reliance (canning, dehydrating, gardening)
6. Rotation and Organization (tracking inventory, cooking with food storage, etc.)
7. Proper Storage of Long Term Food Storage
8. Alternate Heat Sources
9. Preparation for Specific Disaster Situation
10. First Aid Information

As you can see, that’s just a “small” list of items that you’d like us to tackle. Wish us luck! We are still learning ourselves but we will happily share what we learn with all of you as we learn it.

Filed under: General | Comments
 

Ok so this is TOTALLY stretching it – but when a sister gets married you have no time for coming up with new posts – so you’ll have to use your imagination.

IMAGINE – you have to make a wedding cake and you only have food storage items as ingredients – well YOU CAN! Last summer I forced myself to try fondant icing after wasting hours upon hours watching the cake decorating shows thinking it looked so totally cool.

Well it turns out I found this great recipe with really great instructions and it uses SHELF STABLE (that’s how I am making this post relevant) ingredients. The only 3 ingredients are marshmallows, powdered sugar, and shortening.

So I tried a little for fun cake and then my sister got engaged and she thought I should make her wedding cake -my very first wedding cake -. HELLO SCARY! Well it actually turned out and I had a blast doing it.

No one warned me how sad I would be when the bride and groom took the knife to my very first wedding cake masterpiece and RUINED IT!

Filed under: Baking Goods, Baking Ingredients, General, Julie's Progress, Sugar Recipes | Comments
 

GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED – RESULTS WILL BE POSTED SOON!

Our Grandma Lori Food Storage Makeover project has led to quite a few questions from readers on the different types of “ready-made” Disaster Kits that are available. We initially outlined three disaster kit options and chose our recommendations based off of Grandma Lori’s preferences. We asked our friends at Emergency Essentials to help us put together a list of all of the kits that they have available and when you might use each one. They gave us some great information for us to share with you, and also offered to do a GIVEAWAY of one of their great kits. Yay for one of our lucky readers!

To enter this giveaway, simply leave a comment telling us what aspects of Emergency Preparedness you would like to learn more about. The winner will be randomly selected from all of the comments. The giveaway will run until next Sunday, February 21st at 10 pm MST and the winner will be posted Monday.

A Trekker 2 Disaster Kit from Emergency Essentials. A 3 day supply for 2 people, retail value $99.95 on sale this month for $84.99. See below for more information on what the Trekker 2 kit contains.

Bottled Emergency Kits {more info}
Bottled kits are economical and contain basic emergency supplies neatly packed into a 32 oz. water bottle for easy transport. They contains items such as hand & body warmers, ponchos, emergency blankets, matches, flashlights, whistles, basic first aid kits, and more.

Starter Emergency Kit {more info}
This can act as a basic kit or an add-on to any other emergency kit for additional people. It includes food, water, light, warmth, communication, and more.
 

3-Day Lite Emergency Kit {more info}
This economical kit gives you the basics you will need in an emergency. It includes food, water, warmth, light, communication, and first aid all packed in a medium backpack for easy transporting.
 

Roadwise™ Emergency Kit {more info}
This kit includes items specially selected for storage in your automobile.
 
 

3-Day Emergency Kit {more info}
Calorie food bars and aqua blox allow this kit to be stored in varied temperatures so it can also be used as an auto emergency kit. It contains basic food, water, warmth, first aid, light and communication items all packaged in a medium sized backpack. Recommended for one person for up to three days.

Trekker™ Kits
These kits are designed for either one (Trekker I™),
two (Trekker II™), and four people (Trekker IV™). The Trekker II™ Kit was rated ‘Best Value’ by the Wall Street Journal. These kits contain calorie food bars, aqua blox, and over 120 (Trekker I™), 150 (Trekker II™), and 275 (Trekker IV™) additional preparedness items. Some additional items found in our Trekker™ Kits that are not found in our 3-Day Emergency Kit are fire starters, purification tablets, more extensive first aid kits, additional hygiene items, and larger backpacks for storing the additional items.

ReadyWise™ Kits
Our ReadyWise™ line combines portability with convenience and ease. In addition to calorie food bars, these kits include MRE’s and MRE Heaters providing additional variety and nutrition. They offer a more comprehensive first aid kit when compared to our Trekker options as well as some additional items including a wool blend blanket, flashlight with the ability to charge a cell phone, and some emergency tools. ReadyWise kits are available in either 1 person or 2 person kits.

Comp™ Kits
Comp™ is short for ‘comprehensive’ which is the word that best describes this line. We have combined the convenience and ease of MRE’s and MRE Heaters with over
280 (Comp I™) and 390 (Comp II™) emergency supplies. These kits offer improved warmth, cooking, light and communication, first aid and sanitation, storage and tools supplies when compared to other kits. Some additional items that are unique to this line include an emergency toilet and water storage kit, our finest first aid kit in any of our 3 day kits, survival book, sewing kit, tri-fold shovel, and Deluxe Hiking Pack.

We hope you find this information helpful when selecting your Disaster Kits!

Filed under: Car Kits, Disaster Kits, Emergency Preparedness | Comments
 

This is a recipe that Julie taught me one Mother’s Day several years ago. We were planning a dinner for my mom (the infamous Grandma Lori) and she popped out this way easy and way delicious recipe that his since become a staple in my family. In fact, last night when I made it my kids snarfed it up without one single complaint (if you know my kids you will know how rare that is). Without further ado … here is the recipe!

Catalina Chicken (from the kitchen of Julie)

Ingredients:
1 small jar of apricot/pineapple preserves
1 small bottle of catalina salad dressing
1 1/2 – 2 lbs diced chicken

Directions:
Mix the sauce in a 9×13 pan. Add in the diced chicken. Let marinade for several hours if you can, but it’s not necessary. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes or until chicken is cooked. Serve over rice.

I TOLD YOU IT WAS EASY!!!!

Variations

Meat
The only problem with this recipe is it calls for diced chicken. In my current state (5 months pregnant) I find it completely nauseating and cumbersome to have to thaw, trim, and chop raw chicken. It dawned on my that if I had some bottled chicken on hand, I could just open up a bottle and have this recipe ready to go in less than 5 minutes. This re-motivated me to work on one of my New Year’s Resolutions and break open my new pressure canner as soon as chicken goes on sale again.

Jam
While I used some jam from the LDS cannery, you can use any apricot preserves but it’s definitely the best with pineapple. If I have cans of pineapple on hand it’s also yummy to add in a few pineapple chunks too.

Rice
I am ashamed to admit this, but even though I have tried Julie’s magical tips on How to Cook Rice it STILL never works very well for me. In an emergency I will suffer through crunchy or mushy rice … but for day to day cooking I have admitted my failings and have started to use the rice cooker I got for Christmas (apparently my husband was a bit disappointed in my rice cooking skills too). I figure at least it’s better than relying on Minute Rice

Keep these few ingredients on hand and next time you are in a crunch for a quick and easy meal, you will have everything you need!

Filed under: Recipes | Comments