Shopping

Where do I do my shopping?  Wherever I can get a good deal. :)

Sometimes I'll have a friend post on Facebook about being able to get chicken or something for a super great price.  Recently it was chicken breasts for $1 per pound.  I couldn't pass that up and purchased a freezer full.

Sam's Club will sometimes have a good deal on meat when you buy a case of it.  I always make sure that when I buy a case of meat that the price per pound is cheaper than what I can get at the grocery store I normally do my shopping.

Normally I will only shop at one store each week when I stock up on milk and fresh produce.  If I find out about a sale or special deal on something that my family eats at another store - like Walmart, Meijer, or Aldi - then I will go get some.  I don't have a lot of extra time and Saturdays are my only day to get things done, so I generally only shop at Kroger.  

I take advantage of digital coupons regularly.  I used to get the Sunday newspaper just to get coupons, but there were rarely any that I would actually use.  We don't eat a lot of processed food, and that's what the coupons were mainly for and the processed foods we do eat never had coupons.  I do have a lot of friends who shop very successfully with coupons.  This is one of those areas where you have to find what works best for you and your family.

When shopping with coupons, it works well when you can stack coupons - apply a discount to a buy one get one free - or when you can apply a coupon to an item that is on sale.  That helps maximize the discount.  My family loves Barilla pasta and Classico pasta sauce.  A couple of weeks ago there was a digital coupon for both items and they were both on sale!  I was giddy with excitement!  It's always fun to get an extra discount on an item.

My advice...check adds and, if you can, use digital or paper coupons.  It does help reduce the cost of groceries and helps you to stock up on items that you normally buy.  Don't be afraid to buy in bulk...if you have a way to store the food when you do.

Homemade Bread and Rolls

One of my most favorite things in the world is homemade bread.  Knowing how to make bread has been a huge blessing many times in my life, especially earlier this year at the beginning of the pandemic when there were some shortages at the grocery store and when we needed some comfort food.

This is the recipe that I use.  It's from the Betty Crocker Cookbook.  The whole process takes about three hours, but you're not working on the bread the entire time.

I use dry yeast, not yeast cakes (I don't even know where to find yeast cakes).  If you use dry yeast, put 1/2 cup of the water needed in the recipe in a separate bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the water and let it sit for 5 minutes.  It will get a little foamy as the yeast "activates" and is softened to use in the recipe.

I mix my flour into the wet ingredients using my hand.  It's messy, but I get a good feel for the dough and can start to knead the dough in the bowl.  If this freaks you out or you don't like being super messy, use a wooden spoon.  :)

Once it's starting to form a ball and pull away from the sides of the bowl, I'll dump it onto the counter and knead it.  You want to knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic.  Too much kneading and the dough will be tough.  Hopefully the video works...I tried to get a video of me kneading the dough so that you can see how I do it.

After kneading the dough, I spray the inside of a bowl with cooking spray, drop the dough into the bowl, loosely cover it with plastic wrap and walk away.  After I mixed this batch, I went and dropped of a treat to a friend.  When I got home, the dough was ready to be shaped.

The dough should rise.  If it doesn't...the yeast probably has gone bad or the water was too hot and it died.  That happened to me on Thanksgiving; my yeast had gotten too old and my dough just didn't rise.  I was so sad.  I tossed it and started over.  My second attempt was a little better, but not much.  I'm pretty certain that the yeast is just too old.

My favorite part of bread making...punching the dough.  Once it's risen, you literally punch it to deflate it before shaping it into loaves or rolls.

I decided to make rolls with this batch of dough.  It was pretty easy.  I divided the dough into 24 "equal" chunks, then rolled the dough into balls.  I set all 24 dough balls onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet, covered it with plastic, and then walked away for 30-60 minutes to allow the dough to rise again until it was about double.

If you make a loaf of bread, roll the dough into a small rectangle.  Roll the dough into a log, then place into a loaf pan.  You'll want to let the loaf rise until it's about double in size.  

After the second rising, bake the rolls in a hot oven (425 degrees Fahrenheit) until they're golden brown (about 11 minutes-ish).  If you're making loaves of bread, you'll bake them for 25-30 minutes.  The top will be golden brown, and when you tap the top or bottom of the loaf it will sound hollow.

As soon as the rolls/bread comes out of the oven, rub some butter over the top.  This softens the crust...and adds a delicious buttery taste to the bread.

This batch of rolls turned out pretty good.  I could have let them rise a bit longer, but I was impatient.

And that, my friends, is how it's done!  If you give some bread or roll baking a whirl, share how your batch turns out!

Building Your Food Storage

 A few people have asked for lists of how much of each kind of food to store.  It really depends on how many people are in your household and dietary restrictions you have.

You'll want to plan for at least 2,500 calories per person for each day. Some suggested amounts (for a 1 year storage) are:

• 300-400 pounds of grain
• 60-80 pounds of beans
• 60 pounds of sugar
• 10 pounds of salt

You'll want to store a variety of canned, dehydrated, or freeze-dried fruits, vegetables, and meats.  For vegetables, I mostly have canned green beans.  I had a ton of frozen vegetables, but my freezer died and I lost them.

I found a blog post from the Provident Prepper (https://theprovidentprepper.org/the-provident-prepper/action-plan-food-storage/) where they provide an Action Plan PDF.  It's really cool and helps to document your goals and plan for how much food to save for a whole year.

I broke the suggestions down into smaller chunks:

Where it says grain, you can store the whole grain or you can store this in flour, mixes, pasta, rice, etc.  Beans are your dried beans, peas, lentils, etc.

With new lockdowns looming and panic buying starting up again, we decided to invest in some meat yesterday.  I picked up a variety meat.  I forgot to check ads before I went to the store and was surprised to see beef roasts were buy one get one free.  I love finding deals like that!  

Remember to store water too!  You never know when a boil advisory will happen.  Plan 1 gallon of water per person per day.

Food Storage - Where, What, and How Much?

This week I want to talk about food storage.  That can be a scary phrase.  It can bring to mind images of extreme preppers who have basements full of supplies.  You might be looking around your house trying to figure out where you're going to store that much stuff.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret.  You do not need to store enough food and supplies to feed a village for a year or more.  Set a goal and work towards it.  Everyone is different and everyone's family needs are different.  You might not be somewhere where you can have a large storage.  I have a lot of military friends who cannot keep large food stores because of moving frequently or where they're living doesn't have a place where they can fit a storage in; they generally keep a small storage (1-6 months).  

For my family, it really depends on the item for how much we are storing.  Some items we have a months worth, some items we have 3 months, some 6 months, and some 12 months.  It just depends on what it is.  Our goal is to have 3-6 months of storage.  We have an attached garage on our house that was converted into an extra room; half of the room is dedicated to our storage and the other half is my office/craft room.  It's just enough space to meet our storage goals.

Maybe you only have enough space to store food and supplies for a month.  That is OK...store one month of supplies.  Once you are comfortable with that, maybe stretch to two or three months.  It's OK if you only ever store one month of supplies.

I frequently think back to our early years of marriage.  We lived in an itty bitty apartment.  There was a closet that we could spare to store our meager food storage.  My mom threw me a pantry shower (some call it a "pounding" or a "kitchen shower") and I was gifted a lot of food items to help us get started.  I plan to do the same for my daughter and my future daughter-in-law when the time comes in the future to grow our family through the marriages of my kids.

We were so ridiculously broke in those early years and could only spare $1-5 per week to build our storage.  We'd look for sales and buy a little extra.  I didn't use coupons then - I really don't now, but we'll talk about couponing another day - so everything that I got was a sale item.  If you watch at the stores, you'll notice that they run on cycles.  If pasta is on sale this week, it will be on sale again in 8-12 weeks.

One of the blogs I found through Pinterest had a list of suggested items that you could get for $5 a week.  If you know how to bake - or are willing to learn how - this is a pretty good list that you can follow or use to create your own list.  If you click on the image it should take you to the blog.

You might have more than $5 a week that you can spare to build your food storage, so you can adjust the amount.  You may also want to save your budgeted amount of money for storage and use it in combination with another week to buy a bigger ticketed item.  For example, a package of toilet paper at Sam's Club (45 rolls per package, depending on the brand - we like Member's Mark) is $20.  If my budget is $10 per week, I might save my $10 from one week and save it for toilet paper week so that I have $20.

Another question that I have been asked is what should be stored.  I will answer this with a question...What do you eat/use today?

If you don't bake, and aren't willing to learn how to bake, then don't store flour and yeast.  If you are allergic to peanuts, then peanut butter would be a really bad idea to keep in your food storage.  If you eat your weight in pasta, then you might want to keep a few boxes of pasta, some jars of pasta sauce, and a canister of Parmesan cheese (if that's your thing) in your storage.

When I started my food storage, we were given a list of items that we should store.  On the list were items listed out by pounds.  So we should have so many pounds of flour, sugar, rice, oats, wheat, etc.  We don't use wheat.  I do have some, and I have a manual wheat grinder, but if I needed to rely on this wheat for survival, I would get sick and I'd be really hungry.  Our mantra - when it comes to storage - is "buy what you eat and eat what your store".  

I did see a funny meme on Facebook this week...

Before you laugh too hard, if you need chocolate to survive and emergency, by all means, store it!  I have jars of chocolate chips that I have sealed with my Food Saver.  I'm thinking that maybe putting some M&Ms in a variety of flavors into some jars would be a good idea.

One thing that you definitely want to store is water.  Water is essential to a food storage set up.  You'll need it to mix powdered milk, add to pancake mix, drink, etc.  It seems like once a year we enjoy a boil advisory for some reason - water main break, something weird happens at the water treatment plant, etc.  Having water stored allows you to have drinkable water in case of that kind of emergency.  We did a great job with water storage for awhile, but are low right now.  The rule I have always heard is to store one gallon of water per person for a day.  We do not have space to store 3 months of water.  To be completely honest, if we didn't have water for 3 months there would be a much bigger problem.  Our family goal is to store 1-2 weeks of water.  That means making space for 28-56 gallons of water.

Hopefully this helps you to start thinking of what and how much to store.  If you have questions, enter them in the comments or contact me.  Next week I'll talk more on what to store and how to use some items that we keep in our food storage.

You've Got This!

 I have been thinking all week about what to post today.  I have a few thoughts, so we'll see how this goes.  There are some recipes at the end of the post today...giving you some enticement to either scroll quickly or read to the end. :D

Starting this blog has been so good for me!  I set a goal this year to work on my Emergency Prep Skillz (yes, with a "z"...it's much cooler that way) and I haven't done the best job.  It is still 2020, so it's not too late to work on this goal, right?  I am now consciously thinking about emergency prep and talking with my husband and kids about what we need to do.  This leads me to my thoughts for today . . .

#1 - Make it a family affair!

My husband and I made a choice to have a food storage and learn how to use what we were storing.  From the beginning emergency prep has been a team effort.  I tend to do more than he does, just because I'm a major planner and he's a more laid back, go-with-the-flow, take it as it comes kind of a guy.  Despite my tendency to give in to my control freak personality trait, we have learned, as a team, to adapt to our environment.  (We actually talked about this yesterday.)  Over the last 14 years, we have had plenty of practice adapting and learning new skills that have blessed our family.

We have involved the kids from the time they could stand on a chair at the kitchen counter.  Many moons ago, my, now 12 year old, daughter helped me can dill pickles.  She stood on a chair at the counter and dropped garlic and peppers into quart jars while I added quartered cucumbers and brine.  She was the cutest little helper!  Both of the kids LOVE harvesting veggies from the garden.  They're also learning how to cook and bake.  We desperately need to update our 72 hour kits, and I think we're going to let the kids lead the initiative to get that done.

As you work as a family it does a lot of different things.  It teaches kids important life skills - gardening, cooking, planning, financial management, basic sewing, etc.  Working as a family is good for family bonding.  In this crazy, unpredictable world, that family bond is so crucial.  When my not-so-littles fly off on their own in the near-ish future, I want my kids to want to call home and come visit often.  While I'm looking forward to seeing if I have done a good job raising my little humans, I am absolutely dreading the day when they go off to conquer the world on their own.

#2 - You can totally do this!!!

When you think about all of the things involved in emergency preparation it is overwhelming.  Incredibly overwhelming!!!  However, it's 100% doable on any budget with not a lot of effort.  When we started our food storage and savings, we had next to nothing and it took awhile.  It was well worth the sacrifice and effort as it has saved us many times.

Over the next few weeks I will share some tips on how to get started with your own home storage.  A note of caution - the tips I share are really just things we have done and have found that work for our family.  I am not a professional in emergency prep.  Every family will have different needs, so do what works for your family.  As you determine your needs and start making goals, you will be able to get a solid plan in place.

One of my friends does a fabulous job with food storage and has some great tips.  I'm going to invite her to write a post or two and share some things that have worked for her family.  Having ideas from multiple sources will help you find ideas to help your family.

#3 - Play with fire!  Or at least learn how to cook with it...

The hubby and I just got home from a short getaway to celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary.  We stayed in a cabin off of Highway 50 in Bainbridge, Ohio.  It was so fun!  We decided to take advantage of not having kids with us and experimented with some different techniques cooking over a fire and on a grill.  Believe it or not, but cooking without electricity is an emergency preparation skill.  I realized this as it was our only source of cooking for two days.  We made some tasty food!

On Friday, we grilled burgers and asparagus.  I even got brave and cooked some bacon...on the grill!!!  I put down some aluminum foil and threw some bacon strips on it.  Not gonna lie, I was shocked that it worked.  After the bacon was done cooking, I cooked the asparagus on the bacon greased foil.

Saturday morning I made a quick breakfast hash with potatoes, sausage, jalapeños, cheese, and eggs.  I cooked it up in a cast iron skillet on the propane camp stove.  It was quick and easy...and quickly turned into breakfast burritos because we had some tortillas left over from the night before.

For dinner we got a little crazy.  Have you ever made pigs in a blanket over a campfire?  Until Saturday I would have answered "no" as well, but, we were being crazy and gave it a try.  We partially cooked brats over the fire and then wrapped refrigerator crescent dough around the brats before placing them back over the coals.  The hubby tried it with a slice of cheese between the dough and brat...it turned out pretty well.  One tip...part way through cooking the dough, turn the brats on the roaster so that you evenly cook the dough.  They were pretty good.  I can't wait to do this with the kids!

I also made some Brussels Sprouts to go with our brats.  I lightly buttered a piece of aluminum foil, piled on some halved sprouts, sprinkled on some seasonings (salt, pepper, and onion powder), and added some chopped up bacon.  Then I made a foil packet by bringing opposite sides of the foil together and rolling the foil towards the sprouts and then rolling the two open ends closed.  I repeated this with another sheet of foil (so that I had a double layer) and popped the packet on top of one of the logs in the fire that hadn't quite lit yet (it was wet, hardwood and took awhile to catch fire...totally worked out to my benefit).  I did flip the packet over a couple of times so that I didn't burn the sprouts.  These were the best sprouts I've eaten in awhile...they were so good!!!

Friday night for dessert we made S'mores Burritos.  We make these frequently at home.  They cook well in the oven or on a grill.  Spread some creamy peanut butter on a burrito size tortilla; I spread it thin, I can still see the tortilla through the peanut butter.  Sprinkle on mini marshmallows and chocolate chips.  Fold up as a burrito and then wrap in foil.  Cook in the oven at 350* F for 15-20 minutes or on the grill for about 15-20 minutes, turning every 5-ish minutes.  They're done when the chocolate and marshmallows are melted.

I have been getting messages all week with questions about canning and other food storage related questions.  It has been so awesome!!!  Keep the questions coming!  They are sparking ideas for what to write posts about in the future.

This week, I want you to think about your family.  

• If you don't have a place to store food now, could you make a place, even if it's just for a shelf to put food on?  
• What does your budget look like?  Could you spare $1-5 or $20 a week to start a food store or rainy day fund?
• What are your food storage / emergency preparation goals?

Until next week!!! :)

Emergency Preparedness . . . Why I Do It . . .

 I figure that the best place to start is introducing who I am and why in the world I feel like I can share anything about emergency preparedness with others.

The phrase "emergency preparedness" sounds alarming and makes me think of the people with bunkers full of supplies.  It doesn't need to be that way.  I have a family of 4 living in a small house in a normal suburban town.  We have designated a place in our house to store 3-6 months of supplies - food, water, hygiene items, etc - in case of an emergency.  An emergency for us could be a mountain of unexpected bills or job loss so we have to cut our budget for a short amount of time, a global pandemic and our local store is out of toilet paper, chicken nuggets, and pasta, or the power in our area goes out for a week due to a natural disaster (tornado, straight line winds, ice, etc.).  In our 14 years of marriage, my husband and I have experienced all of those things together and relied on our small storage to help us get through.

We are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Our church leaders have been encouraging us to prepare for a "rainy day" since before I was born.  My parents and my in-laws have a small storage.  Our grandparents had amazing pantries - my husband and I tell our kids about our grandmother's pantries almost as much as we do about the amazing women we get to call grandma. 

One of my most favorite places is my grandma's pantry. The simple shelves - made of planks of wood and cinderblocks - held hundreds of jars of canned goods.  Grandpa was a fruit farmer, so there was a ton of peaches and cherries.  Grandma also grew a large garden and canned tomatoes, tomato juice, several kinds of pickles, apples, and a variety of other vegetables and meats.  Metal trash cans in the middle of the room held boxed goods (crackers, rice, cereal, etc.) and served to protect the packaging from mice.

Shortly after we got married, the Church had another big push, encouraging us to establish good financial habits (reduce debt and have money set aside in case of lean times) and build a food storage.  We were so broke at the time, but we both felt like we needed to make sure that we had a few months of food and some cash set aside.  At the time, we really didn't know what we were doing, but we slowly started a small storage of food and a tiny cash reserve.  When we'd see something we liked to eat on sale, we'd pick up an extra.  For example, if macaroni and cheese was on sale, we'd buy 2 or 3 boxes instead of 1 box.  Slowly we started building up our storage.

The financial reserve was a lot harder for us to build.  We started by saving our change.  At the end of the week, we'd clean all of the spare change out of our wallets and put it in a jar.  Some weeks we only saved $0.50 and other weeks we'd save $3.  We also started making an effort to put money into our savings account.  At first it was only $50 a month, but it was something.  There were several times when we needed that money and would drain the account to pay off medical bills or an automobile repair.  As soon as we were able, we'd start again to build that reserve.  We still keep a small amount of cash at home too, because you never know when you need to do a cash only payment at the store (because the credit card system goes down) or your kids need $5 for a thing at school.

When the COVID-19 pandemic made it to the U.S. my kids were terrified.  My youngest was convinced that we were all going to die; it took us awhile to talk the kid down and help him feel more at peace.  We watched as store shelves emptied.  It was so strange going to Kroger or Walmart and seeing bare shelves.  It was alarming, not because we didn't have food, but because there was so much panic buying.  It took us a month to find chicken nuggets - we wanted to have some comfort foods for the kids and they love their nuggets.  We had food in our freezer and in the pantry, so we were fine.  Once a week my husband and I would go out and buy fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy products.  We could have lived without it (we had frozen and canned produce), but it was nice to be able to get them when we could.  After 6 months, we have some bare spots on our shelves, but we have a better idea of what we use and what we need to do better.

I have been taught my whole life that if we are prepared we don't need to fear.  That applies to tests at school and preparing for unthinkable disasters.  Never did I think that I would see empty shelves at the grocery store.  That drove home the importance of food storage.  I never thought it would take me a month to find toilet paper...I had a 4 month supply at the beginning of the pandemic so we were good.  It was trying to get another pack at Sam's Club when we started running low that took a month (you have to go at the right time).

Now that it's time to restock the shelves, I feel like I need to share my knowledge with others.  I have been thinking and pondering for awhile on how best to do this.  Once of my friends started texting me this morning suggesting that we work together and plan how we can help our friends and neighbors.  This friend is so amazing!  She has a better system set up than what I have and she's so full of knowledge!  

My plan for now...until it gets refined and becomes better...is to do weekly blog posts with some tips on a subject of preparedness.  There may be extra posts here and there sharing recipes and other little tips, but plan on one post from me each Sunday.