Spelt, Wheat and Food Storage

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.)

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.

Would you like to know a really interesting fact? Let me tell a story to illustrate it.

Once upon a time in the future, we had a major world food crisis. War was going on, and life was not pretty. We needed food to survive and could not grow it ourselves. So? We took the world wheat supply and rationed it out to everyone. (Those who had wheat allergies could share their ration with whomever they chose.) You only got a little over 2 pounds of wheat. WHAT??!?!?! TWO POUNDS!!?!?! How are you going to live on 2 pounds? The world wheat reserves are not what they should be, they won’t last us very long if we each had to live on just over 2 pounds of wheat. How do you feel about that?

I just read a news brief from a few days ago saying that we should have a larger wheat crop this year than last year, but don’t expect prices to drop too much. Prices will be moderated, probably. The article suggests that prices will  not collapse. That is good because costs of production has increased a lot. And a lot of countries most likely will be wanting to develop more of a strategic reserve than what they have, so should be considerable buying from them - particularly if prices moderate.

What is the moral of the story? Don’t count on your government to bail you out - they do not have the food reserves. Maybe you want to become better friends with neighbors and divide the food storage responsibilities. (I’ll get the grain, you get the fats, someone else get the…. and so on.) Or if you are able, get your food storage ready - you never know when you are going to need it.

More current events from Idaho. It rained today - a lot. Stopped us from finishing planting the grain. We enjoy the rain, but would really like to finish a “project”, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of grain, I checked and my friends are back in the business. They just received a new shipment of grain and will have it packaged and ready for Monday. Anyone want any?

Current prices are as follows for both red and white wheat:

• 45 lb buckets (ready for long term storage) $30.00
• 50 lb bags (ready for use) $25.00

Did anyone get milk or stock up on their current supply? I love the feedback.

Next week, we’ll focus on …. maybe I’ll surprise you. The element of surprise is always good! Looking forward to it.

What do you think? Would you rather have a forum where people can more easily input ideas, or just keep reading my input?

(First, where have the days disappeared to? I can’t believe my lack of writing!)’

I finished eating a container of Planters Peanuts - Party Size - the other day. No, I didn’t eat them all in one sitting or even over the course of a week. It took a long time to empty that container. But, after I finished and wondered what to do with the container (throw it away, recycle, reuse it?) I figured out that they are really similar to those expensive food storage containers you buy empty at KMart or wherever. Eat lots of Planters Peanuts and get a free food storage container! What a deal! Unless, you happen to be allergic to peanuts, then you’ll probably want to go and buy your own unused containers.

What do you use them for, you ask? Well, this container I decided to devote to my dry bread collection. For making bread crumbs. I have children who do NOT eat the heel (ends of the loaf)of my homemade bread. So I cut the smallest, thinest slice I can possibly cut off of the end and make the next slice appear to be a middle slice. Tricky, eh? Then I usually leave that thin slice on the counter for a day to dry out, then I put it into my dry bread container for the next time I need bread crumbs.

I also have other containers that house rice, chow mein noodles, chocolate chips, and cereal.

Just make sure you get the party size peanuts that come in the clear plastic container with the cool hand grip on one end. They don’t just have those in Idaho, right?

I figured out that I have access to Food Paks for a decent price. The short definition is Food Paks are dehydrated foods in bulk. Here is an example of one food pak that would cost $599.00

If you are interested in this pak or more comprehensive ones, contact me at info@histakes-spelt.com and I will get more accurate shipping rates for getting it to you. Or if you just have questions about it, just ask - I am happy to talk to you about it. By the way, if you are anxious to get a good easy start to your food storage, I think this is an excellent way to go.

So, I’ve been thinking about building my grain storage and rotating it - how do I do it? I just do… I’ll try to put it into words and ideas, but I am totally open to more ideas and what works for other people. (So feel free to leave comments and give me ideas.)

I think that buying a 50 lb bag of grain - once a month might be more cost effective than buying several hundred pounds at one time - buy do what you can afford. To keep it rotated, you need to know how much grain you go through a month. I find that purchasing two of the same item and writing the date on them helps me with keeping track of how long it takes me to use and item as well as keeping track of rotation (using the oldest one first). Glad my mom taught me that trick.  =)

Also, if you buy one grain item per month, it also gets you in the habit of keeping up with your food storage and making sure you have enough in stock and not waiting until you run out of it to take action and buy a bunch of “whatever” to build your supply back up. Make sense?