Week Ten

I am so sorry to have missed last week. I have been in and out of town for the last month and I just could not get it together to post here last week. That said I hope there are a few benefiting from this. It has really helped me to get focused and organized.

I talked last week about 72 hour kits and when I was working on another project I realized I left off something important from the list. Personal hygiene items. I have saved over time the small bottles of soap and shampoo from hotels that we have been to. I usually take my own stuff so I don't use it while staying at the hotel. My mom also saved stuff for me. So now everyone has there own personal hygiene kit and the girls also some feminine products added to theirs. If we had to evacuate to a shelter I know this would really be a blessing to have. Sample size products also are the right size but the ones from the hotels are free! (Well, sort of if you don't count the cost of the room, he! he!) I will get to the larger kit but will save that for later. I have not had time to get all the information together.

School is getting ready to start and there have been great sales for the back to school stuff. I picked up extra crayons and pencils and stuff for the 72 hour kits for pennies! Storing things is so fun when there are bargains involved! I also saw that snacks and things like that are on sale right now. I picked up a few things to add to the food storage shelf that would be fun treats. Those are easily rotated because David always thinks we are in an emergency situation if we run out of treats - that said storing the basics really is the priority but when sales come along it is fun to see some treats on the shelf along with the basics.

WEEK TEN: 4 cans of tuna, 4 boxes of macaroni and cheese

Week Nine

This week I want to talk a little about individual 72 hour kits. There are many ways to put one of these together. Our family has used 5 gallon buckets in the past and that was good and easy to store in their closets. I have been saving older backpacks that the kids don't use for school anymore and that is what I am using now. I think it is a little easier for little ones to carry and they seem to store pretty good. They are not air tight so your food needs to be in zip lock baggies. Generally speaking what you put into a kit you probably already have around the house. This is an activity that we do at a FHE. I make a game out of gathering the items and we have prizes for who finds things the fastest. Here is a basic list that I use:
1. One outfit, generally a pair of sweats and t-shirt and sweat shirt. (I have them get things that are play clothes out of their drawers. I never buy anything new for this, also I try to do this around September when they have all their new school clothes and shoes so it is easier for them to find something they don't want to wear for a while.)
2. 3 pairs of underwear, (diapers & wipes if you have a baby) 2 pairs of socks, and a pair of tennis shoes.
3. 3 bottles of water
4. A small first aid kit
5. Color book, crayons, a pad of paper, and pen. (kids will get bored while in a shelter if we have to be evacuated, so some type of thing to keep them entertained works good) If you have a baby a couple of baby toys and maybe some kind of blanket for them to snuggle with.
6. Food: this usually is granola bars, fruit snacks, instant oatmeal, individual cracker or cookie pkgs. This part of the 72 hour kit is more for snack type foods. We put together a larger kit that includes more dehydrated type things that can be put together for meals like when we go camping. Remember this is the individual kit and your kids have to carry them.
7. A small mess kit.
8. If you are on a certain kind of medication it is possible to be able to store some of that as well. Talk to your doctor and let them know what you are doing. My step dad has done this with his medication and sealed it with one of those food sealing machines.

This is a real basic kit. Next week I will go into more detail as to what to put into the larger kit. This is one that generally can be carried by mom and dad along with the individual one.

If you have any suggestions or ideas to share please do, we all could benefit from other's experiences. I have never had to use our kits for anything so if you have had to use yours and thought "I should have had this or that" please share. We do rotate the food every year during a family home evening. We eat what is in the kits for dinner and add new food. This has been interesting as we have found out what the kids absolutely did not like to eat and what they did like. This is also the time that we rotate the clothing - children grow and sometimes what I had for one child could be passed down to the next.

Week Nine: 5 lbs. of honey, 1 lb. of yeast (by the way store your yeast in the freezer - and keep in the refrigerate after it is open - you can store it quite a while this way!)

Week Eight

I have been on vacation and even while vacationing I have been thinking a lot about our food storage. What prompted the thinking was the fact that I was in California when they had their "little" earthquake. My immediate thought was how do you store things that you can in Southern California (glass jars would break when they fell from the shelves) Where did I put all my jam I just made and would it be safe if an earthquake hit here at home? But I did not think about that very long but asked myself these other questions. How can I make my storage grow faster? When is the next order going in for the cannery? Am I buying the right kinds of food that my family will eat? OK , so I have gone a little overboard with the fixings for taco soup. My family loves this recipe and it can be made without the meat. But I am sure they will get tired of that so I do need to move on to a new recipe:) Seriously, that is such an important aspect of food storage. You need to store what your family will eat. That takes a little planning. Sorting through recipes for meals that don't have to many perishable ingredients can be tricky. Taco soup is a perfect example of that:

TACO SOUP
1 pound of browned hamburger
28-oz. can crushed tomatoes
151/4-oz. can corn, undrained
15-oz. can black beans, undrained
151/2-oz. can red kidney beans, undrained
1 envelope dry ranch dressing
1 envelope dry taco seasoning
1 small onion, chopped
tortilla, or corn chips
shredded cheese
sour cream
1. Combine all ingredients except chips, shredded cheese, and sour cream in slow cooker.
2. Cover. Cook on low 4-6 hours.
3. Garnish individual servings with chips, cheese, and sour cream.

You can leave off the garnishings but if you have the other ingredients stored in your food storage then you can buy only those things if times are hard! Hopefully things will not be so bad that we can't get our sour cream and cheese! The secret ingredient though is the ranch dressing so don't leave that out! I would love to hear of other recipes that you can just make from a can. Campbells soup has a great recipe book that has lots of ideas!

Next week I"ll be sharing some recipes for things you can make ahead and freeze. The storage life is not as long as shelf food but it is always nice to have something in the freezer for unexpected dinners needed for a neighbor or on a night you just don't have time to think about making dinner. Plus once you start cooking like this you save lots of $$$ on your grocery bill and that extra cash can go for more food storage. See I have been thinking lots about this:)

Week Eight: 5 lbs. of powdered milk

Week Seven

Sorry this is a little late. Getting caught up after trek has taken me some time. Anyway, I can't believe how well I have done in just six short weeks. My storage is really beginning to look like a food storage! This week is item is a little more costly than the $5. I know that I have talked to a couple of people and they were having a hard time finding some wheat. The cannery did not have any when they called and so they went to another cannery and purchased quite a bit and split it with people.

For myself I have my wheat already so I am going to be working on my 72 hour kits. I will have a longer post on this in a couple of weeks so I will wait to tell you all what and how to get this going.

A sister has been emailing me and giving me great advice about bread making. You will want to learn this skill as practice is what makes great bread! Storing your yeast in the freezer and then the refrigerator will extend the life of your yeast. She has been using hers for 1 1/2 to 2 years now and it is still making great bread. Personally we are still working out the balance with the white flour and the wheat flour. My goal is to get into the habit of bread making once a week and then only using our homemade bread. At $3 a loaf at the store for the good bread it only makes sense that I can save in our food budget by making my bread. I am not there yet but we are working up to it. We have been using our bread maker but that only makes one loaf at a time. By September it is my goal to a full time bread maker! A little side note: We use honey in our bread and the kids also like honey for their sandwiches. If honey sits a little while it starts to crystallize and all you have to do is heat it in a pan of warm water and it will remelt. Anyway, Taylor saw my jar of honey and thought it was bad so she threw it out. It was not very old and not much had been used. When I asked where the honey had gone - she said oh, it went bad so I threw it away. I had to laugh because one time when I was little my mom had bought some bread that still had flour looking stuff on the crust and I kept throwing out the bread and she could not figure out what was going on. I thought it was bad, it was just flour on the crust. Anyway, it was a good opportunity for me to teach her about honey and we had a good but expensive laugh!

WEEK SEVEN: 100 lbs of wheat

Week Six

This last week I was thinking about how to use my dehydrated refried beans from the cannery. Also, that I had never tried the soup mix I purchased - how was that going to go over with the kids? The beans are not that bad when reconstituted but my children did not want to try them just as they were. I have a great recipe called "Tostado Pie". My children gobbled it up and did not even know I had used the dehydrated beans! Yeah for me! Next I am going to use the soup mix - of course, I am waiting until it is a little colder out:) Learning how to use some of the foods that we are not that familiar with before we need to is very helpful. I feel like they will eat it because they will be hungry but children can be stubborn so if they have been introduced to it before hand then you can learn a lot of things. 1. You will know if you even want to purchase it again. 2. They end up loving it and you need at least another case of it. 3. They sort of like it and with the right recipes you can get them to eat it. Again, as always this will help with the rotation of the food.

Tostado Pie -

1lb. ground beef
1 chopped onion
1 pkg. chili seasoning mix (I only use half)
1 can refried beans ( I reconstituted enough to equal 1 can)
1 can crescent dinner rolls
1 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 c shredded lettuce
tomato chopped

Brown beef and onions. Stir in chili seasoning and beans. Place roll dough in ungreased pie plate (push dough together until it looks like a pie shell). spoon in hot meat mixture. Sprinkle 1 cup of cheese. Bake @ 375 degrees for 15-25- minutes (until the dough is cooked) Top with lettuce, tomatoes and remaining cheese. (For my family I now double this recipe and cook it in a 9x13 pan)

Taco Dip-

1 lb. ground beef cooked and drained. Add 1 pkg. taco seasoning.
1 large can refried beans
8 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese
8 oz. shredded cheddar cheese

Layer hamburger first in a 9x13 pan, then beans, then cheese's. Put in oven until cheese melts. Spread sour cream on top after removing from oven.

Happy Cooking!!!!

WEEK SIX: 1 bottle aspirin (500 tablets) or what you use for pain relief medicine.

Week Five

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July celebration! I have heard from a few people with some suggestions and feedback. Thank you for all your comments. If you cannot leave a comment here on the blog, please email me @ motherofeleven@msn.com I will answer the best I can and pass on your wonderful suggestions. This week some of the questions were on where to store all the food you get. Storage can be a problem but there are some very creative things we can do. Three suggestions that came to me from Bobbe Trommlitz (thank you) were #1. purchase risers that can go under the bed and that will lift up the bed enough to store quite a bit of food. You can also make a longer dust ruffle or add fabric to your existing one to lengthen it so you can't see what's under the bed. If you don't want to buy risers you can use wood blocks or cinder blocks. #2. In some closets there is wasted space above the top shelf. Shelves can be added or taller bulkier things can be stored there. #3. Stack the cases of food in a corner and cover with a table cloth. You can purchase small round wood table tops that could sit on top of the boxes and you would have a cute but functional side table. I know of families that have stored food all over the house in the children's closets, under beds, you name it if there was a space there was food stored there. I have purchased shelves for my garage. I also have put shelves in the closet that is under my stairs. I think for me I will rotate it better if I see it. We don't use our garage for cars so we are making use of the space out there.

Did you work on your water storage. We got our barrels out and cleaned them up and now have our water for cleaning or what not (not drinking) for everyone. I am almost there with the drinking water. It is so fun to see it all coming together when you work a little at a time on it!

WEEK FIVE: 4 cans of tomato soup, 10lbs. powdered milk.

WEEK FOUR

It is strawberry season. I hope everyone got to enjoy the strawberries in your areas. I made jam with mine and the girls had so much fun helping. I like to make cooked jam but a lot of people enjoy freezer jam. It is not a hard thing to make just a lot of stirring! That is why letting the kids help really made it easier. I have always used the recipe that comes with the pectin. So no secret there. It is one of the things I actually enjoy making. There are a lot of different opportunities for us to get fruit. I am looking forward to peaches coming in August. A little side note - why you keep an inventory of your storage - I thought I had lots of sugar from the cannery so did not purchase any. It turns out that I was going by the label color instead of reading and what I had was white flour. I did find 2 cans of sugar but had to stop the process and go back again to the store and purchase more sugar. Good advice: make sure you have everything on hand before you start.

News: Water storage. It is recommended that we should store 1 gallon per person per day for 2 weeks, and another 1/2 gallon per person per day for other limited uses such as hand washing, teeth brushing and dishwashing. (This is a total of 21 gallons per person for 2 weeks.) That is a lot of water when you have a large family. I look at my few gallons and realize that I do not have near enough. We have purchased large plastic drums that are for storing water. Stored water must be clean water. Use the best quality available for water storage. Water must be from a system with a Division of Drinking Water "Approved" rating. Water stored in thoroughly clean plastic or glass containers can be chemically disinfected for long term treating each gallon with 4 to 5 drops of liquid chlorine bleach (Clorox containing 4% to 6% sodium hypochlorite.) One teaspoon of bleach disinfects 5 gallons of water. Allow 20 to 30 minutes before drinking. The level of treatment will prevent growth of microorganisms during storage. Most municipal water storages are already disinfected so no additional treatment is necessary. Fill clean food grade container with tap water and screw on lids. It is not recommended using milk containers. They are generally manufactured with non-durable plastic that promotes biodegradability and is undesirable for long term water storage. The water may become toxic over time from breakdown products from the plastic container. I have been purchasing a couple of gallons of water every week. They will store in those containers for 1 year. My plan is to start to rotate the drinking water and then I don't have to worry about contamination. But water can be disinfected:

1. Boiling

2. Liquid Bleach

3. Iodine Tablets

4. Halazone Tablets

Boiling is the safest. It is preferred over any method of chemical disinfection because most disease causing microorganisms cannot survive the heat of the sterilizing boil. Bring to a boil and hold at a vigorous rolling boil for 5 minutes minimum. Let the water cool before drinking. Pouring the water back in forth between containers will improve the taste because you are putting oxygen back into it.

I bet this is more than you wanted to know about water. Happy storing:)

WEEK FOUR: 1 bottle of multiple vitamins