How Much We'd Need For A Year

I deleted the original post because it wasn't formatting correctly. Visit http://lds.about.com/library/bl/faq/blcalculator.htm to find out how much food storage you would need to sustain life for a year (we are a family of 4, entered all as 7+ years old). It is rather eye opening thinking of so much food at once. I know it would be bad for us. Since we can't can our dry goods at a cannery, most of that would go bad before it got used. Trust me, I'm in a situation where I got too much of what we never used simply to have storage and now I will be giving most of it away.

I love how the church emphesizes store what you eat and eat what you store. They focus more on just having storage and not so much wheat, wheat, wheat now. Everyone is at a different place with their storage. 1200lbs of grains, yeesh! What are we, cattle? lol! It is hard building storage when most of what you eat is fresh (or try to). That is why gardening and preserving skills are very important to home and food storage. I hope to sharpen my skills a little more this summer :)

Finding My Way

It has been quite a while since I have posted. I have come a long way and want to go a long way yet! I have had Traditional Foods on my mind lately. Local eating is a big concern. Organic...well, we can't afford it but when we can, we try. Food storage and emergency preparedness is still on my mind.

We have had a big problem I am having to deal with. Our food storage. There is a lot of food we will never eat. Remember to store what you eat because you will be eating what you store!! Now grated, I did not know I would be gluten free. I didn't know when I stored BPA would be a big concern. I didn't know a lot of what I canned we would never eat. I didn't know that I would buy too many beans and my intentions of using them would go awry.

I have been going through our stores and picking out what we won't use that is still good to donate to the food bank. This still leaves us with a lot.

Today, I went through our basement freezers and condensed all the food into one. I have a lot to toss that is no longer any good. I also kept track of everything so that I can meal plan. I want to eat the freezer down so we can invest in the side of beef and side of pork again this fall. I don't want to keep relying on the grocery store for our food and want to get it from the farmer where ever possible!

So, here are the contents of our freezer. I didn't write every little thing down (like the popsicles, juice and seed/nut meals).

Fruit

1 large bag of woods strawberries

2 bags raspberries

1 bag jumbleberry mix

2 jars strawberry freezer jam

Vegetables

3 1kg bags of broccoli

4 1kg cauliflower

1 1kg peas

1 1kg peas and carrots

4 bags of veggie blends (500-600g)

2kg bag california mied veggies (I don't know if these are still good)

300g package of spinach (may not be good for use)

Cheese and Dairy

4 110g packages swiss cheese

2 pkg provelone

3 blocks cream cheese

6 180g pkgs organic feta

1 jar 100% fresh parmesean

2 large packages of mozza cheese strings (I use these to make low carb garlic "bread")

2 200g packages of organic sharp cheddar

1 cup grated mozza

3 500g blocks mozza

5 1lbs blocks of butter

Pork

3 shoulders, approx. 1.5kg each

2 small packs of pork chops (0.5 lbs each)

5 large packs of pork loin chops

11 packs of loin roast (these are all about a pound each)

4 smoked shoulders

1 rack of ribs (2kg)

1 pack larsens sausages

13 packs of bacon

Beef

Hamburger, 2lbs natural, 0.5lbs pack, 2kg pack and 1.40kg pack from store

2 packs of liver (about a pound each)

1.125 pot roast

1 small steak

Chicken

1 large pack of breasts (1.25kg)

2 small packs of breasts (0.65kg each)

3 bags of 4 quarters

4 small whole chickens

Turkey

4 whole turkeys

1 pack of 2 small turkey drumsticks

1 small pack of turkey tenderloin slices (1lbs)

Other

Hot Dogs 5.5 packs of 12

1 1lbs package of moose meat

1 3.5 oz pouch of scallops

1 small whole wild salmon (2 or 3 lbs)

1lbs pack of wild salmon

2 frozen pizzas

1 small garlic fingers

4 tubs of 150g slivered almonds

1 pouch minced onion

Whew. That doesn't include what is in the fridge freezer. I know there is some in there I need to toss.

Here are some things that I have learned today:

Today I have learned today is not to prepare food for the freezer unless it is part of a meal plan. I am going to have to toss a lot of soup and other things I made that didn't freeze well.

Another thing is that some foods do not freeze well. For instance, I bought and froze a lot of cottage cheese over a year ago. It doesn't freeze well (unless you use it in a recipe, but I know I won't. Good thing it was really cheap).

Only buy items out of the ordinary to freeze if we plan to use it soon. Sometimes Mark or I will buy something different and it never gets used. We will save a lot of money by doing this.

Use older things first. I have a lot of food that is a lot older than recent items that we have eaten. Rotating is especially important for freezer food.

Only buy frozen veggies as I need them. These get freezer burnt pretty fast. I have a lot of cauliflower as I planned to make a lot of cauliflower crust pizza. I probably still will. It is yummy :)

I couldn't help thinking of my Great Grammy D who used to joke about having food that was old enough to vote, lol! I hope I never get anything that old in my freezer. She would of happily used up any old thing as she let nothing to waste.

So I need to come up with a meal plan to make sure we use our food before we start bringing more in.

I also want to be more accountable for what we buy and use as food. I need to keep better track of how much money we spend. I have been doing a lot better. We cannot afford to waste food.

I have so much to write about so I won't write it all today. This will be fun again!

Freezer Fun!

I'm going to write about this here since I sometimes wonder if people are getting tired of reading about food storage in my main blog, lol!

We got a second freezer last night! I can never again complain that we have nothing to eat, lol! It may just take some time and preparation, but I plan to really take advantage of our new situation.

I spent some time sorting the freezer out this morning and boy, were there some treasures! A gallon of organic milk! (yay! Our favorite. It's one of the few things I can really tell the difference between conventional and organic) Raspberries, yum! Chicken strips. Our poor turkeys stuck on the bottom. Tons of ham, chicken, bacon, hamburger I forgot about, hot dogs galore, tons of veggies and on and on.

I am dividing the different types of food into bags. I have a bag of single type frozen veggies, a bag of mixes (like California, winter, peas & carrots, ect..), a bag of hot dogs, chicken, ham and so on. I tried boxes and baskets, which were hard for me to get a hold of and shopping bags break. So I'm using some of our reusable shopping bags since they have handles, can hold a lot and are flexible.

Even if I don't buy anything for a while, we'll be good. I was thinking of buying a side of beef (actually a quarter), but I think it will just be too expensive. It would be about $900 for 300 lbs of hanging weight, which works out to under 200lbs of meat. First of all, that's a lot of meat! Second, that's a lot of money and a lot per pound. I'll keep buying the store stuff and try not to think about where it came from, lol! When Emin's has another side of pork sale, I think I will take advantage of that. $99 for a side of pork is much more doable and a greater value. Plus Mark likes pork products a lot better, I think.

So I'll probably be busy sorting for a while. I also want to keep a list on the freezer of what we have and keep track of what we use. That way we will no longer have any lost food.

I also plan on making lots of freezer meals. That way when I don't feel like cooking, I can just pop something out of the freezer and we have something good quick! I just need to find a day where I feel like cooking large quantities of food ;)