This will be a "looking back" about how I started all this, and the techniques and tips that helped me.
My first thought was I needed more food. I was mostly planning for an economic collapse. We all see it coming. When they put a new Aldi's in our town (right across from the WalMart), a couple years ago, milk was 99 cents. Now it's $2.09. I remember when it went to $1.09 last year. I'm a mom, and I do most of the grocery shopping. I can't afford to go to Kroger anymore unless they have a really big sale. I have to go to the places like Aldi's that cuts down their expenses by not packing anything for you, and not paying their staff to round up carts. You "rent" the cart for a quarter. When you return it yourself, you get your quarter back. I think it's a great idea. It cuts down on their expenses and most people will return the cart to get the quarter back, so there aren't carts all around the lot. Plus, they don't have to put up the cart return places, taking up valuable parking spaces. By not packing the stuff into bags they save twice. They're faster in the lane because you bag at a counter after you're done, plus they don't have to double bag because the cheap little plastic bags won't hold much and they don't waste money when 2 bags come off the little package and the clerk just tosses it. They do have bags at the produce section. I bring my reusable bags (and wash them about every third trip).
But, enough on that. My first stop was the Internet, trying to figure out just how to build up enough food for an extra 3 months. I was thinking if I could get by for 3 months without buying food, I could catch up if our dollar suddenly tanked. I think this was the first site I found. That's when I realized the Mormons have been doing this for a really long time. At first, I tried their method.
They do it a bit differently than I like. They stock up on basics, intending to figure out how to use it later...you know, buckets of raw wheat, buckets of rice and beans, sugar, flour, the ingredients you need to make stuff from scratch. I stocked up on sugar, salt, my flour (me and both my kids have celiac disease, which means no wheat, barley or rye, and only gluten free oats). I started buying canned goods that I knew I would eat, like canned potatoes, green beans, corn, etc. At first, I bought number 10 cans, you know the really big ones. I have several, but I got to thinking, what happens if the power goes off? We'd have to make a meal on green beans because we couldn't refrigerate the left overs. I also started putting away canned meat.
I thought about buying the already canned stuff, but I can't really afford that. When I started this, I was paying 2 mortgages and borrowing my in-laws van for a second vehicle. We had moved in together (a discussion for another time) and it didn't work out so well. We bought another house just as the housing market crashed. It took 3 years to sell the other one. It took my in laws 3 months to find another house.
This method, crude as it was, ended up helping us out a lot. I had powdered milk, canned vegetables, all sorts of things put away in boxes. At first I organized everything together (all the beans, all the tomato products, etc.), but when my husband broke his leg and was off work for 2 months and we started eating out of those boxes, it proved to be too difficult. So I tried organizing the boxes by meals. Even that was difficult. Finally, I came upon a windfall. Someone gave us 9.5 ft x 12 inch x 1 inch lumber and a bunch of cinder blocks. We emptied one wall and built shelves along that wall.
This was a great solution to our problem. I could easily see everything and the living room is the only large area in our house. I ended up putting a white duvet cover in front of the shelves, with some of my rarely used cooking stuff...caste iron skillets, pressure cooker, canning pots, etc...on the top shelf to hold the cover. It blends right in with our wall. We put the cinder blocks about a foot in from the end of the boards so we can put decorative stuff there. My husband's chair is right near there, and he stores his snacks at reaching level.
I sat down with my recipe file and tried to find recipes that I could make totally shelf stable (canned goods with a few extras thrown in if I had them) and researched new recipes that had shelf stable ingredients. Then, I put them in the forms that the Foodstoragemadeeasy site had on their site. I basically menu planned for a couple weeks. Then I figured out how much of each ingredient I needed for 3 months. I also bought a great book called 100-Day Pantry by Jan Jackson. The reason this is great, is because they're common ingredients, not using raw wheat, etc.
I also started dehydrating in earnest. I had dabbled in it before, but now I started looking at what raw vegetables I COULD dehydrate. Mostly dehydrated veggies can be used in soups or other things you cook. You can't really rehydrate them and eat them. I've dehydrated potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, carrots, celery, parsnips, rutabaga and bananas. A whole stalk of celery, leaves included if they're in good shape, will dehydrate down to fit in a cheese jar. It takes up a lot less room, and you'll have it when prices hit the roof.
I have dabbled in gardening. Last year my garden was bigger than this year. I have a small city plot of land, not even a quarter acre, plus the house takes up most of it. I put in a raised bed garden and planted what my mother always called a salad garden. I planted tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, corn, zucchini and peas. That was last year. The cucumbers did well, as did the tomatoes and green beans. The peas dried up on the vine in the Texas heat. I can't seem to grow lettuce. Also, the zucchini got bigger than we expected and I had planted it too close together. It did well considering we transplanted it.
This year, due to battling cancer and my husband having a broken leg to deal with, we did a much smaller garden. I planted 2 zucchini plants, and had a bumper crop. I planted 6 tomato plants, one came up and produced not a single tomato. I had cucumbers coming out my ears, and a volunteer cantaloupe that cross pollinated with the cucumbers. It was funny. It looked like a cantaloupe, smelled like a cucumber and had no taste whatsoever.
Last year, because of the tremendous amount of green tomatoes on the vine close to frost, I made lots of green tomato relish (canned). I also started canning watermelon rind relish this summer. Normally, I can stewed tomatoes, but we didn't get enough last year at one time to do that. I'm hoping a sale will go on for tomatoes and I still can do that this summer.
So, to recap this very long article. We learned that shelves are better to store your canned goods (easier to rotate with your regular pantry, too), it's easier to put away what you'll actually eat, according to recipes and grow a garden and dehydrate or can your produce.
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