For all the new readers that are just finding our site we wanted to give you a little recap of over 50 of our favorite posts we’ve done over the last year and half since we started our blog. For all our current readers, hope you enjoy this blast from the past!

TOP POSTS/TOOLS OF ALL TIME

Small Spaces Storage Solutions
Food Storage Made Easy Binders
How to Build Your Own Can Rotating Rack
Emergency Preparedness Plan
Our Favorite Wheat Grinder
How to Grind Wheat VIDEO
Three Month Supply Spreadsheet
Three Month Supply Videos: Basic Tutorial | Advanced Tutorial
Long Term Food Storage Calculator
Long Term Food Storage Tutorial Video

GREAT POSTS FROM THE PAST

Our Beginnings: Julie’s 1st Month | Jodi’s 1st Month – June 2008
How to Make a 72 Hour Kit – June 2008
72 hour kit outtakes VIDEO (HILARIOUS!) – October 2008
Interview with Crystal from Everyday Food Storage VIDEO – October 2008
Homemade Applesauce Recipe and Canning – November 2008
Cheap Holiday Baking – November 2008
What’s a Tweet? – November 2008
Top 10 Christmas WishList Items – December 2008
How to Create an Emergency Binder – January 2009
Julie’s love affair with Mozy – January 2009
Water Purification – January 2009
Alternate Water Sources – February 2009
Valentine’s Gift Idea – 72 Hour Kit for the Office – February 2009
How to Grow Sprouts – February 2009
Food Storage Myths Debunked – March 2009
All About Wheat Grinders – March 2009
Let’s Talk About Wheat – March 2009
Beans, the Magical Fruit! – March 2009
72 Hour / Disaster Kits for Babies & Toddlers – March 2009
Make Your Own Newspaper Plant Pots – April 2009
Cleaning Supplies Using Food Storage Items – April 2009
Food Storage and Money Savings – April 2009
How to Make a Coffee Can Heater – April 2009
Food Storage Shelf Life – April 2009
Emergency Chemical Toilet – May 2009
Types of Wheat – May 2009
More 72 Hour Kit Food Ideas – May 2009
Let’s Talk About Barley – May 2009
What to do With Spare #10 Cans – June 2009
Food Storage Labels – June 2009
Water Evaporation Still – June 2009
Let’s Talk About Oats – July 2009
Let’s Talk About Beans – July 2009
How to Cook Rice (Without a Rice Cooker) – August 2009
Let’s Talk About Powdered Eggs – August 2009
SPROUTING – August 2009
Non-Food Items Inventory List – August 2009
Seven Day Challenge Summary – September 2009
Food Storage Substitutions – September 2009

OUR FAVORITE RECIPES

Buttermilk Cornbread
Corn Cakes (YUMMM!)
Fruit Smoothies
Whole Wheat Bread (from start to finish)
Food Storage Pizza Tricks
BEST Rice Krispie Squares
Granola Bars
Honey Whole Wheat Bread (Jodi’s favorite!)
Lemon Bars with a Twist
Homemade Mac N Cheese

We hope you will start (or continue) to follow along with us by subscribing to our RSS Feed, Twitter, Facebook, or adding our button to your blog. We love getting to know our readers, hearing about your food storage experiences, and learning from all of YOU!

So you can use me as an example, just because I wasn’t able to do what I had hoped I could do, I was still able to have somewhat of a success with my garden, and I will have more than NOTHING. You just can’t give up. If everything feels overwhelming take BabySteps and do it at your own pace. As long as you are progressing you are achieving success! I won’t have lots of tomatoes and cucumbers to can this year, but I am still planning to buy some peaches and apples so at least I can get a little of my canning itch to be satisfied

How is your garden coming along this year? Share your successes and failures in the comments below! And don’t be ashamed, at least your garden can’t look worse than MINE!

p.s. If you can’t get ANY sort of garden this year, all is not lost. You can still achieve success by getting some fresh veggies from friends or family, or even buying it from the corner stands or a farmer’s market. Julie has a story and recipe to share about that that she will be posting soon as well!

5 lbs C&H sugar
3 Stouffers frozen dinners
1 tube colgate toothpaste
2 lbs Land O Lakes butter
1 bottle Krogers syrup
2 cans evaporative milk

The regular prices of these items would have been $27.94 … BUT … using the fresh values sales prices I saved $9.44 and I printed some coupons and clipped old coupons I’ve been saving and saved another $8.85. Including tax, the total I paid was only $10.26! That is WAY cheaper than it would have been even at Walmart with all generic brands.

I am only beginning to skim the surface on how great this system is. Within a few months I hope to have a lot of food stockpiled, do most of my monthly “shopping” from my pantry, and only hit Walmart for things I’ve run out of before I have a chance to restock. View the video below for tips on how to use this great resource.

How to Use GrocerySmarts.com

For more tips on saving money on your groceries and food storage items visit The Obsessive Shopper. She also includes some general couponing tips for people outside of Utah.

SPECIAL NOTE – After the cameras stopped rolling and it was clean up time, we found that the WonderMill was WAY cleaner. The Nutrimill blew out more flour and was a little slower in a side by side test.

Do you own one of these wheat grinders or a different one? What do you like/dislike about it? Stay tuned for our Wheat Grinder Article coming soon!

How do you decide what to include in your 3 Month Food Supply?
How do you determine how MUCH of each item to buy?
How do you keep track of your current inventory and what you still need to buy?
How do you make sure you are stocking up when items are ON SALE?

We couldn’t find a solution for these questions, so we created one!

We have developed a 3 Month Food Supply Worksheet that will help you outline meal plans, convert them into the number of items you need to buy AUTOMATICALLY, and then track your inventory including current prices for each product.

View our instructional video before you get started!

Let us know what you think of the 3 Month Food Supply Worksheet and how it is working for you. How is your step 3 coming along?

While preparing the blog post “How to Make a 72 Hour Kit” I pulled out my own kits to take some pictures. I realized the date on them was July 2006 so I decided I better rotate the food out since the recommendation is typically to rotate it every 6 months to a year. I opened the kits up and discovered that if we truly would have had an emergency these would not have been very pleasant to eat.

Top Ten Reasons I Needed to Rotate My 72 Hour Kit Foods:

10. Didn’t even have a kit for my youngest daughter (and she’s almost two!)
9. Stew expired July 2007.
8. Tang powder turned into crystallized lumps.
7. Beanie Weanies tasted rancid (yes I sampled them) and expired in 2007 as well.
6. Expired oatmeal although it didn’t taste too bad.
5. Raisins as hard as rock. Even my kids wouldn’t eat them.
4. Fruit roll-ups were smashed flat and REALLY sticky and gooey. I should NOT have let my kids attempt to eat them!
3. Expired noodle soup which also didn’t have any directions on the envelopes … hmmm.
2. Beef jerky was so hard that it killed my jaw to try to chew it and also had white powder on it that I am suspicious was mold. I hope I don’t get sick from tasting it!
1. The jolly ranchers melted all over the entire kit! Must have gotten overheated when we moved.

So not only would it have been gross in an emergency but now as I’m rotating it, the food is going to waste because it is so nasty and old.

Solution

Today I decided enough was enough. I took my kids to Walmart with my Printable Shopping List in hand. I bought enough stuff to make 6 kits (Julie likes me to get hers at the same time I’m doing mine) and it cost $49.50, so approximately $8.25 per kit. We didn’t need to purchase the stove, fuel pellets, matches, or spoons so to make a brand new kit would cost a few dollars extra. It took me about 30 minutes to empty out the old kits and put in the new food items. So I procrastinated for a whole year on something that took me less than 2 hours and about $30. I make myself mad sometimes.

Bonus

While I was redoing my kits I was finally able to make the “video instructions” I have been meaning to put together since I did the original 72 hour kit post. Hopefully this will help you out if you are working on your kits for the first time!

Do you have your 72 hour kits prepared yet? When is the last time YOU rotated your 72 hour kits? What is your goal for when to get them replaced (if you have been a slacker like us)?