LIES about LONG TERM Food Storage Debunked!!!
As we began to think about building our LONG TERM food storage we started to come across some ideas that kept holding us back from really becoming serious about it. As we’ve been researching for our blog, and actually building our own storage, we discovered that a lot of things were not true for US. We’ve summarized them here into seven food storage lies that we have debunked.
Don’t be afraid to replace certain foods with foods you use more often. For example, the typical calculator may tell you to store way more, or less, of a certain ingredient then you would ever use. For example, Jodi likes to use her grain mill to grind corn for cornbread, so she’s not taking the cornmeal recommendation literally and is storing corn kernels instead.
We often hear people think they must cook meals with only shelf-stable ingredients. While these recipes can be useful and are good to know about in case of a severe emergency situation, they are NOT the be all/end all of food storage. The idea is that you will be learning to cook with your food storage and constantly rotating it. It’s okay to mix and match “food storage” items with “non-food storage” items.
TOTAL LIE! See our small spaces storage solutions post for ideas on how to start no matter how tiny you think your house might be.
NOT! Let’s be honest, unless you have tons of cash lying around, this isn’t going to happen. Start small. Commit yourself to buying food, little by little. Decide you will gather small amounts of a variety of long term food storage items. Once you discover which items you use most often, re-adjust and keep on buying when you can.
FALSE. Crystal at Everydayfoodstorage.NET shows you how you can use your food storage in EVERYDAY ways. She is great at teaching you to take the meals your family typically eats and incorporating food storage into them.
This is a lie that Julie thought was true until she really got into using food storage. She has always tried to cook with really “healthy” types of ingredients, and didn’t know how to incorporate long term food storage items into her typical meals. She learned that everyday food storage, means using your food storage in meals YOU would typically make. It’s surprising how you can adapt and start using your food storage even if you don’t cook the standard meals “everyone” else seems to be making. Stay tuned for some of Julie’s “health-conscious” discoveries that have had her dreaming about legumes.
While this is the reason a lot of people think you should get into food storage, it is one of the very last reasons why we LOVE having food storage. We have found that we use food storage for health reasons, self-reliance reasons, to weather against economic storms, and so much more. While it’s good to eventually make plans for how to survive without things like gas and electricity, there is no need to let that get in the way of you starting to use and rotate through your food storage TODAY!
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Filed under: Long Term Food Storage
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Don’t we all have excuses! mine was” I feel like I’ll never have it no matter how much i buy”, and” I feel so panicked by it all”. But slowly It’s coming together with the help of you ladies.
Thanks
Thank you so much for posting this! I have seriously thought about food storage as mainly big buckets of wheat and pretty much all dry goods that I wouldn’t know what to do with. I’m so glad I came across this site. I’ve been really wanting to start my food storage, but have been overwhelmed with where to start. Baby steps here I come!
Thanks girls! I too used to believe that tons of wheat and powdered milk were food storage. Now, we eat what we store and store mostly what we eat on a daily basis. No food is wasted this way and it’s more like having a little grocery store in the basement. Not necessarily for a huge emergency, but for everyday economy and convenience as well. I almost never need to run to the grocery store in order to make dinner.
I’ll be watching on the 4th!
Joyce
I can’t WAIT to get Julie’s health-conscious recipes. (By the way, I’m telling everyone who will listen about your funwithfoodstorage blog!!!)
I love this post! I always thought that food storage HAD to be the dehydrated kits and that I could never have food storage because I couldn’t afford to drop Thousands to get the kits! Thanks for your debunking! You two are awesome.
I love this post! Food storage seems so much more manageable when I think of it in a little-at-a-time and mix-and-match way. I love it when I suddenly realize that one of our favorite family recipes can be adapted to use some of our stored items or could be made only with stored items if we suddenly needed to. I’m looking forward to Julie’s recipes as I always love having new ones. Thanks!
This is my new favorite website. I can wait to get started using the meal planning excel sheet.
So I guess there’s 3 reasons to store food:
1. limit # of trips to grocery store
2. prepare for a personal financial emergency
3. prepare for a natural disaster or other calamity
This method works well enough for #1 and 2, but doesn’t really help you in #3.
The point of having food storage, for me, is to reduce your reliance of the smooth and effective functioning of global and national foodstuffs supply chains. You can’t do that unless you are prepared with shelf stable food storage.
Every time there is a major emergency (a good example is the big earthquake in Japan in the 90s) there are millions of tons of “emergency food storage” that goes bad when the power stays off for a week.
If you have extra food, but aren’t prepared for a disaster, you’re just plain foolish. More of your money is tied up in food (some percent of which will spoil), and in a real emergency you have less cash to barter with for usable goods.
Dun,
Your point is completely valid. We tried to make it clear that it is indeed something to consider down the road how you would store and cook these foods in case of a severe emergency situation. But we found that sort of thinking to be the exact reason why we didn’t even START our food storage. To think that you have to have a generator, wheat grinder, solar oven, etc. before you should even start storing food is silly in our opinion.
We want to encourage our readers (most of whom are beginners at food storage) to think of food storage in every day terms, think of the short term benefits, and think of the economic benefits. There is a much higher chance of you losing your job than sustaining a long 6 months without electricity or access to fresh foods. So if people get started, start storing some food, start learning to use them, start saving some money … then they will have the confidence to tackle the larger issues like what to do if you had to rely purely on your food storage with no access to power, gas, etc.
As we make it clear throughout our site, we are still learning the basics and as we learn more we will share it with our readers. We never profess to be experts, we just want to share what we are learning along the way as it seems to help others who are just getting started. We will be getting to more advanced topics as we learn them, but we also want our readers to know that they CAN and SHOULD get started even if they haven’t thought through all that difficult stuff yet.
I agree that any action is better than no action at all. I thought food storage was all shelf stable foods, then realized my freezer can be part of my food storage, too. If the emergency is my own finances, I can use precious cash for something other than groceries! I decided a good barbecue grill is an excellent emergency cooking device is the gas/electricity is out, and we can have fun in the summer, too! Just be sure to have spare fuel (whether propane or briquets)available. There are lots of ways to be prepared for emergencies whether they are personal or affect the entire community. You ladies are providing a wonderful service! Keep up the good work.
I would just say one thing to you and that is, “FANTASTIC”!! Keep it up and wish to get more details from your blog.
regards
charcoal grill