Ten Principles of Preparedness Part 8
“Food. It’s what’s for dinner.”
“Home is Where My Food Storage is.”
“Hunger is the best sauce.”
Yup, it’s time for us to address the
Principle of Preparedness that so many think of first and foremost—food. Keep
in mind, though that it is indeed the 8th Principle of Preparedness
in order of prioritization. All of the other Principles I’ve addressed leading
up to this one will indeed demand positions of greater prominence before you
get to this one. As I always say, I strongly doubt that a person who’s just
been hit in a car accident makes their first phone call to Dominoes Pizza.
Nope. Regardless, it is a critical Principle of Preparedness. So let’s do it
right, shall we?
The various aspects of this
principle are Acquisition, Nutrition, Shelf-life, and Preparation.
When it comes to Acquisition there
are many who feel that a year’s supply of appropriate food for their family is a
financial burden that can’t be carried, when in fact a little old fashioned
ingenuity will prove that the exact opposite is true. I don’t purchase large amounts
of chicken and
pasta when it goes on sale because I’m some kind of a hoarder, I do so to stabilize
my food budget because when I take that $1.50 a pound chicken home and can it,
when I take it off of my shelf 5 years from now it STILL will have only cost me
$1.50 a pound—no matter what happens on Wall Street. I don’t purchase freeze-dried food because of “food storage” I do
it because it’s less expensive, more nutrition, less waste, AND lasts longer.
Contrary to the gargantuan efforts you see on TLC’s Extreme Couponing, a modest
amount of couponing
discipline applied each week—only 2 hours—will yield an enormous amount of
results for your food pantry for FREE or at least really, really cheap. When
the Acquisition of food is thought to be the barrier, I find that it’s not the
expense, but the spending habits that are really getting in the way. Instead of
going to the store and purchasing what you want each week, try getting ahead of
the game for a couple of weeks then allow yourself to only purchase items that
benefit your family that are on sale. If you plan your meals based on what you already
have, not only will you find money in your budget that you didn’t know you
had, but you’ll also handle a real crisis of living solely off of what you’ve
got much better mentally.
With so many “food storage”
advertisers selling stuff that barely passes for flavored cardboard—a sin
regularly committed by our own grocery stores as well nowadays, providing
appropriate nutrition for your family all
year round is a legitimate concern. But don’t worry. There are plenty of
solutions. Sprouting, freeze-dried
produce, and learning to make a lot of your standard items from
scratch will take care of that concern in a jiffy, with even better nutrition
than you’ll get with the more traditional foods found in the American Standard
Diet (SAD). For example, when I do make bread, I
make it from whole wheat and honey along with other standard ingredients—standard,
of course being a relative term. But the point is, I am not making it with the
need to have it last for nearly a month on the shelves of the store, thus no
nasty preservatives or other ingredients. (Believe it or not, quality grain
bread is very simple to make. Just check out my “Kick-Butt Bread Recipe. You’ll never fail.) I
make it a point to be knowledgeable of the source of each of my ingredients,
including the growing conditions and time of harvest.
Continuing on, by canning my
own meats, butter, and fish, I also can feel confident about nutritional
content, and more importantly, I’m comforted in knowing what’s NOT in my food.
There’s also a world of opportunities out there to create delicious dishes with
less mainstream ingredients and without the standard hormones, anti-biotics,
etc. such as making “wheat meat”
aka seitan from vital wheat gluten or adding beans to
baked goods such as cookies and brownies, or adding sprouts to casseroles and soups. I personally
love my pumpkin and black bean soup recipe. By the way, there’s also a great
book out called “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kid Eating
Good Food” by Jessica Seinfeld. (I might add that it helps with husbands too.)
I’ve found it very helpful in increasing the nutritional value of many dishes.
By educating myself on what’s real nutrition (coconut
oil, for example) and what’s harmful for my family (canola oil,
for example), then I can provide better
nutrition for them than they can get in any restaurant all year round. None of
these strategies require extensive time in our busy lives. With the development
and availability of so many wonderful tools, it hardly takes anymore time to
make bread or homemade pizza than it does to go and pick it up. Once again, we
come to the conclusion that meeting the demands of the aspect isn’t the
problem. Our way of thinking about it and addressing it usually is.
Shelf-life can be a bit tricky if you’re
accustomed to consuming highly processed foods. Ironically the foods which
provide very little nutrition usually end up having a much shorter shelf-life
than those we would want long-term—well, except for Twinkies. I understand
those babies will last
for EVER! Chances are, if you’re stymied by getting a necessary staple food to
have a long shelf-life, you’re simply lacking in some easy-peezy tidbits of
knowledge that will make extending your shelf-life a snap. Brown rice, nuts,
chocolate—you know, those essentials of life—have received an unnecessary bad
rap for going bad quickly, when in fact it’s all in how such items are stored.
Cool, dry, dark, and void of oxygen
is all that’s necessary for keeping such items palatable for nearly a decade.
And if you’re only bringing home foods that your family will enjoy, nothing
should be sitting around for 10 years anyway. Rotation, rotation,
rotation is one of the easiest fixes to shelf-life concerns. Come on. Even the
military rotates their MRE’s. If you’ve acquired any of those “30 year foods”
that you’ll only eat if you “had to” then in my opinion you’re preparing
to be miserable. If you want your shelf-life problems to go away, then
I suggest you stop purchasing items you have no desire to consume now.
Otherwise, there are several articles on here which address the proper preservation of foods
such as the use of the FoodSaver
combined with Mason jars,
canning, oxygen
absorbers, waxing cheese,
bottling butter,
preserving eggs with mineral oil, etc. which will
help you establish a food pantry of real foods for you and your family, not
cardboard which is supposed to taste like fettuccine alfredo.
Lastly I’m going to address the
preparation of our foods. Obviously, most folks are competent with the stove,
oven, toaster oven, microwave, etc. but will we still be able to prepare our
family’s favorite dishes with no traditional power sources? Dutch ovens, solar ovens,
pressure
cookers, rocket stoves,
small Korean cook stoves with butane, pressure canners—all of these are tools
which will make your present way of preparing meals easily replicated in such
events. In fact, I dare say that such alternative methods have merit now. For
example, I love, love, love my pressure cooker. It’s one of my favorite tools
in my house. I can make great beans
in minutes, not hours; perfect rice or risotto
in under 10 minutes; and even a tender and juicy pot roast
from zero to perfect in less than an hour. Solar ovens
allow you to cook anything you can cook in your inside oven with the kiss of
the sun and without having to pay to cool off the house after you’ve done so. I
love the taste of any frozen meat I cook in it without any seasonings! It’s
delightful! The great news is you won’t have to envision a life of cooking in
an open fire pit while you endure a crisis. I think that’s the last thing
anyone needs under such circumstances, don’t you?
One last bit of advice I’d like to
share as a part of this Principle. We are emotional eaters to some extent or
another. Some folks have their breaking point sooner than others, but the fact
of the matter is, we have a very emotional relationship with food. It’s
emotionally trying to even imagine enduring a shortage
of food for ourselves, let alone watching our children suffer
for a want of food. Keeping in mind the emotional aspect that we have at
present; understand that if you are ever required to endure a more trying time
such as a financial collapse,
massive power outage,
earthquake,
etc. you will be even more emotionally in need of the foods which are familiar
and comforting to you and your family. As such, it’s imperative that you plan
for such dishes. In fact, I believe that everything you plan on feeding your
family under such circumstances should already be familiar and acceptable to
them. I usually put it this way: Be sure that you have found a way to make your
spouse’s and children’s favorite meal that they would want you to make on their
birthday. Doing so will put you so much further ahead mentally and emotionally
in your efforts to thrive in whatever circumstances get thrown at you.
Applying all of these strategies to
your Food Preparedness will definitely result in you experiencing the peace in
your preparedness efforts which I continually discuss. I assure you, peace is a
significantly better way (and a less expensive one) to prepare for whatever may
come along than a panicked one.
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