When I was a little girl, the ecclesiastical leader of my local church extended a challenge to some of the families in the congregation. My family was chosen.
We were to only eat from our food storage for the next month. No groceries, no late night Taco Bell indulgences, and certainly no fancy restaurants (although this rule didn’t stop my dad and I from going to Costco and sampling all of the tasty foods, of course we did not buy anything, perhaps we rationalized the sampling though). Traditional food storage items such as spaghetti, potato pearls, and hot cocoa would be my family’s staples for the next month.
Turns out we loved it! My mom took a big sheet of paper and wrote down the majority of meals that we would be having for the next month. This was great for the kids, who always liked knowing that we weren’t going to starve several weeks in advance.
My family stuck to the challenge very well. The most important thing that we learned was that if we had an emergency we could actually eat our food storage! This is very good news.
Several years later, married with a kid on the way, my husband and I are both college students, but we’re still trying to build up our food storage. My husband emphasizes the following principal to anybody when he speaks about food storage. Always purchase what you will actually want to eat. Now there are some limitations. We cannot all eat our favorite juicy hamburger and fries during times of emergency, but we can all eat some very healthy and tasty alternatives. Your kids might be begging for another emergency, just so they can eat from the family’s food storage.
The great thing about food storage is that you can personalize it. Be creative and choose items that your family would actually want to eat. A simple way to do this is to conduct a family planning session and get the kids opinions on possible food choices. Write on a big sheet of paper some very simple, yet yummy meals, that even the kids like. This could include pancakes, macaroni, and canned soup. The sky is really the limit with food storage options these days.
Having a yearly tradition of eating from the family’s food storage would also be a really good way to constantly keep your food storage fresh. Emergencies, as the name implies, don’t happen every day. Sometimes a natural disaster only occurs once a lifetime. A periodic check-up on your families food storage will help keep the food storage fresh, in case a disaster occurs only once in a lifetime. That way your family will actually have food to eat when an emergency actually strikes. Purchasing non-perishable foods might be a cheaper alternative than restoring foods yearly.
Give it a try. Eat off your food storage for a month and see how the family reacts. Consider it an experiment. Write down the family’s favorite and then stock up on them for real emergencies. I guarantee it will be an experience that your family will never forget.
Submitted by Erynn S., a Food Insurance™ Guest Author
