Jodi's 2014 Food Storage Resolutions

Last week, Julie shared her 2014 Food Storage Goals with you, and now it’s MY turn. I have always loved setting goals, but definitely struggle with the follow-through. So this year I’m going to be using these cute worksheets to help me come up with steps to start working on them asap and to really detail WHY I am doing these goals. I hope this will help me to keep referring back to them and working on them throughout the year.

Try one new recipe per week. Sometimes I get in a cooking rut. I actually LOVE to cook and love to try new recipes. But I HATE how stressful it feels with four little “helpers”, busy busy afternoons, and picky eaters. It sort of zaps the fun out of it so I resort to a lot of “easy dinners”, or just making the things I know the kids will eat without complaining. This year I want to focus on trying new recipes, especially ones that use food storage foods. I figure planning it once per week on a day I know isn’t too busy and making sure I have the right ingredients for it in advance will make it easier to follow-through on this. I’m also going to not let picky eaters dictate what we eat. I WILL make them try something new once a week, that won’t kill them right?
Get my gardens and fruit trees installed. We moved into a new home last year and spent the summer working on getting a functioning sprinkler system and a lawn and we didn’t get any of our gardens in 🙁 This spring I am planning to be READY. I have my garden plan laid out and the garden area is ready for an irrigation system to be installed. We will be planting 9 fruit trees, three large garden boxes for smaller veggies, a flat garden bed area for corn and sprawling veggies, and three smaller garden boxes for some fruit bushes. I know it will be expensive and time consuming to get it all installed so we are saving up for it now and will be making a schedule of when to get it all done so we don’t miss out on another garden season!
Implement my three month supply rotation plan. I have a lot more space upstairs in my new house so I end up keeping a lot of food upstairs and don’t use my downstairs supplies as much. This becomes a problem when I think I have things in the basement but I don’t. So my new plan is to do my meal plan at the beginning of the month (including my one new recipe per week as per my goal above). Then I will “grocery shop” from the basement for all pantry items that I will be needing that month. Then I’ll go to the grocery store and buy all the fresh ingredients I need as well as whatever pantry items were on the list. When I come home I will take those items immediately to the basement. So I will always have a three month supply of those pantry items downstairs, but I will constantly be rotating and restocking them without worrying about depleting them. I am crossing my fingers that I can keep up with this plan. I think it will ease my stress a lot!