Spelt, Wheat and Food Storage

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Please follow along and we would love to hear from you as we continue our venture on food storage. Thanks for reading…

Too bad more of us cannot include gasoline in large quantities in our food storage. We are paying close to $4.00 for unleaded and almost $5.00 for diesel. That expense cuts into our actually saving money and putting it towards buying extra food to have for that “rainy day” situation.

I heard about this petition today… check it out. I think it is worth a look and a signature, if you agree. It talks about lowering gas prices. (I’m really wanting to have lower gas prices so I can put more money towards food storage.)

I thought I’d take a break from food storage for a minute and share my beautiful success story from yesterday. It was a day to make bread. We were almost out and life gets ugly if we don’t have bread available. So? I made bread. It was cold and dry inside my house and as I was making it, I had to keep adding flour - more and more flour! The texture was not right. And when it was all over, it just felt heavy. I wonder how much the inside environment plays on creating great bread.

Needless to say, I was a little worried about my bread turning out really heavy.

We decided to make Navajo Tacos or Scones with taco toppings on them with some of the bread. Those were wonderful. So, I had 5 loaves, lunch was scones/tacos and decided to make cinnamon rolls with the remaining dough. I rolled them too thin and then, one thing after another, I ended up cooking them perfectly so they were not doughy, but still soft. (20 minutes). We ate them for dessert and for breakfast and they were divine! One of my best batches yet. The bread didn’t turn out heavy. (Not sure how I salvaged that one… blessings from heaven?) It was a happy miracle to have wonderful bread turn out and be so yummy and versatile. (Scones, bread and cinnamon rolls - all from the same bread dough.)

In case you are wondering, I use the bread recipe made for BOSCH Universal - the very first one on this recipe page. Contact me if you need tips. It is my most favorite and forgiving recipe for bread.

So there is this new book I have found. I think it is so great, I have agreed to put it on my website and offer it to you all (for a price, naturally). It is called “Confessions of a Butcher - Eat Steak on a Hamburger Budget and Save $$$” written by John Smith- a real life butcher who knows what he is talking about. Click the link to purchase it or even just to read more reviews.

I thought since I wanted to discuss meat this week, this would be a great way to kick off the BBQ Season, Memorial Day Weekend. Confessions of a Butcher has great suggestions and ideas for alternate ways to do things (I can’t give away his secrets!). And he even includes some of his favorite recipes in the back of the book. It is a fun read and great reference. You won’t want to miss out on this one.

There you have it, my blatent plug for reading this book. I was really impressed with it! Happy BBQ-ing, and roasting, and frying, and …. whatever and however you decide to prepare it.

You know, when you look at a food storage calculator and it has no recommendations on meat and how much to store, what do you do? I have no references other than my own opinions. So here goes…

I believe we should have canned meat - shelf stable - just in case we have power outages or other similar problems. I am a carnivore, not a vegetarian, so I suppose if you call yourself a vegetarian, you can check back tomorrow as I think about discussing storing other sources of proteins.

Easy shelf stable meats include: tuna, chicken, and I have now found pork chunks. I have family members who bottle (can) their own venison, or other wild meat. So those are all good resources and cannable meat ideas. Can you think of any others? (I’m trying not to include beans or other proteins, just meats, here.)

Now comes the real opinion. I would like to have on hand one can of meat per day for the year - just in case. Or maybe a can of meat for every other day might suffice. That would add up to somewhere between 182-365 cans of meat - your choice. To build that continually, you should probably purchase 20 cans of meat per month - some to use, some to store. I think one can per day should suffice a small family. If you have a large family, you might want to store more meat.

Wow, that seem like a lot of meat. Although, I suppose if I were only living off of canned meat and not fresh pork chops, or tender juicy steaks, or even hamburger from my freezer, I might need that much.

Feel free to adjust those numbers according to your own circumstances - remember to calculate for larger families, alternate energy sources (able to maintain refrigeration without electricity from power lines), storage space available, etc.

If you ever lost refrigeration, would you still be able to eat meat? I think about that every once in a while. I really prefer to have hamburger stored in my freezer, as well as many other meats. If, one day, we had no more electricity, we would have to have a really large tailgate party to use the meat before it went bad. I would hate to waste it all.

So, what would you use? I recently heard of bottling or canning pork. Like chicken chunks, only pork. Interesting. At least that would add for variety and spice to life if I only had canned foods to live from. I think I might get some - just in case for food storage. I have tuna fish, canned chicken chunks, and,  well…. maybe a bottle of venison or antelope. Not much in my storage for meat.

I am wondering - anyone have any brilliant or interesting ideas on storing meat? what kind of meats do you have or would like to have in storage?

If you are a vegetarian, what do you plan to use for a good source of protein? Since I may have to become a vegetarian someday if I don’t figure out how to bulk up my supply of meats. I love your comments on food storage!

I’m going to take some pictures soon and show you what my food storage area looks like. (maybe I’ll tidy up a bit first.) I’m really kind of proud of it. It is a great room - perfect size for me and my family with room to grow. I don’t want to show you to brag, but more to give you ideas. Look forward to that soon…

I also want to confess that I cannot think of anything else to tell you about storing water. I know we should do it. We can live without food, but not without water - so it is really, really vital to store water. (Now my real confession:) I prefer to purchase a rotating supply of bottled water. That way I know it is good for drinking, it was processed and bottled correctly. I worry about how I bottle my water sometimes - not adding chlorine, or not boiling it before I stick it in storage. Not that we have dirty water, I just think it tastes really funny and can hardly bring myself to drink it if I store it in a semi-washed (empty) 2 liter Sprite bottle. I do continue to store water that way, because it will be good for flushing toilets and taking care of some of those necessary, hopefully available evils.

p.s. I just thought of something… you should use juice and soda pop containers to store water in. Using milk cartons to store water is not a good idea - something about the milk protein never really gets washed out of the container and contaminates the water.  How is that for a tidbit of wisdom I learned somewhere?

As promised, I will talk about water. I had a little help finding this, but I think it is pretty condensed yet comprehensive when discussing water, filtration and treatment. Do you know when you should chemically treat your water versus just filtering it? Boiling it is probably the best idea… Read on to learn more.

By the way, you will probably want to save this and print it out so you can read it. It is worth the effort. I learned a few things from it. And a big thank you to Basic Living in Rexburg for their contribution.

Have you ever hear of such a thing? Actually, it is kind of cool - with TONS of resources and ideas and well… it will take some time to catch up, but if you are interested, they have prizes and contests for this week of blog fest.

For those of you who are checking us out for the first time, we are here to address food storage and how to be more productive and successful at it. Welcome! Comments are welcome.

I think it is a toss-up. I’ve been trying to decide - If I were to go on a ride (or need my emergency supplies or even food storage) I would take…. (have you ever played that game?  I can’t decide if I would want water or toilet paper first. I suppose it would depend on how much water I had been drinking before the need for toilet paper arises?

I decided to write about both this week. Most other food storage reference tables do not provide ANY  information about how much toilet paper you should keep on hand and keep in stock. (Is it that you don’t realize it until you are out? Maybe that is why I am concerned about it right now - we are almost out.  How do you like that confession?)

Anyway, I am going to venture an educated guess - please FEEL FREE TO HELP EDIT AND COMMENT  on this educated guess of how much toilet paper (tp) one should keep on hand for our “emergency” supply. If you are male, you would need less tp than if female. So, I am going to venture that each male per household should have at least 24 rolls. Each female should have 52 rolls of their favorite tp to last a year. I am guessing 1 roll for every 2 weeks per male and 1 roll a week per female.

What do you think?

(Well talk more about water tomorrow.)