This is yet another “Eat what you store / Store what you eat” post. I had a few experiences in the last week or so that has worked me up to this article.
Eat what you store
First. A few weeks ago I went to get some cooking oil from our storage area. I discovered to my dismay that well over half of my oil had gone rancid. I’m not sure if I had a tempurature fluxuation or what happened. Bottom line: I was almost out of oil. Fortunately it didn’t ruin my dinner plans, but imaging discovering that your oil was bad in the middle of a crisis? The oil was out of date, but my previous experience has lead me to believe that generally oil has more longevity than is stamped on the bottle.
Second. I was really craving a pot of beans. I soaked the beans over night, and gave them plenty of cooking time. At dinner time I had a nice tasting but crunchy bowl of soup. I was really bummed. Not only did the beans not turn out, but now I need to replace that bucket, because the beans were too old.
These two stories are related in that I discovered old/past date food, but not in a time of crisis. I’m eating my food storage, so I have the ability to find these kinds of things before I’m in a serious pinch.
Store what you eat
This brings me to my second point. It is really important to store items that you will eat on a regular basis. There are a number of reasons for this, most of which have been brought up before, but which probably are worth repeating:
- Keeps your food storage fresh.
- Makes sure that you don’t have dietary issues when you suddenly switch your diet in a time of emergency.
- Gives you the skills to make and prepare your food storage items.
- Lowers food costs. It is sort of silly to have two complete sets of food in your house. Make those bulk sales work for you.
I’m sure there are more reasons but this is why I use my food storage.
To finish up this post I thought I would share a funny article I came across today. Disclaimer: I seriously doubt this would actually store well, but it proves my point of storing what you will eat.
Everyone loves pizza right? Why not store pizza in a Jar?
I keep reading that when you beans get hard like that, if you add baking soda to the soak, it’s supposed to make them work as good as new. I’d at least give that a try before dumping them!
I was talking to group of women from my ward back a year or so and the topic of rotating food storage came up. One of the women commented that she goes to the cannery every couple years, buys what she needs, then it sits in her garage until it expires, and she goes and gets more. I was a bit startled to find that quite a few other women agreed with her, and a few others commented that that’s why they haven’t bothered with food storage! I admit that I suck at rotating my dry milk (I hate that stuff), but I do really try to rotate everything else.
The thing that frightened me a bit after talking further with these women, was the fact that not a single one of them knew how to cook dry beans, and yet most of them had dry beans as a large portion of their storage! Some of them have wheat stored, but don’t have a grinder of any sort… If these people ever need to use their storage, they could really be up a creek!
I think that knowing how to use your food storage is a very important reason for eating what you store. You don’t want to be in a emergency situation, trying to cook a brand new food that you’ve never cooked before, to serve to a family that hasn’t eaten it (especially things that kind-of mess with your digestive system)!!! That just seems like a recipe for massive stress, and if you’re needing your food storage, you probably don’t need any extra stress!
Anyway, thanks for the reminders!!! Such simple concepts, but far too easy to forget.
Love the pizza in a canning jar idea. haha great point though.
My dad used to have an excel spreadsheet of everything that we regularly ate. Each item had it’s own shelf space, and every week or 2 when my mom would go shopping, she would just take one of those sheets out to the garage, and count how many of each item were missing.
We literally ate off those shelves during the week. Although I have yet to implement a system as efficient or exhaustive as he did, it was a good example to me that food storage really is an active living thing.
Great post guys.
I have also had the problem with dry beans going hard. A way to keep using them is to cook 2 cups dry beas as usual, then add some oil or fat, about 1/4 cup. Then put them in them in the blender or use a mixer to make them in to refried beans. Add what spice you like and make a burrito.