Stockpiling A 3-Month Supply of Food and Water- Getting Ready

***I have more to say about this topic in this weeks Cooke's Frontier Podcast. Take a listen and plan on listening in each week as I'll cover more emergency food storage basics.***


Are you guys ready to follow along as I re-stock my 3-Month Supply of Emergency Food and Water? I'm going to break this down, step-by-step, and show you how I decide how much and what to store. It's important to take a lot of things into consideration and I think I've got a great way to figure it all out.

Let's face it- it can be very scary to have something happen and not have anything in the house to feed your family. If you follow me through the next few weeks, you'll see that that never has to be a situation that you need to face.

There are a million sites out there that tell you what you should store, and how to store it- but I haven't seen very many that teach you how to independently figure out what to store OR give you any ideas what you should do with the stuff you have sitting on the shelves (menus anyone??). Because of this, I pretty much just figured things out for myself. I also found out what DOESN'T work for us. I'll share it all with you.

This week we're going to focus on GETTING READY. This takes a little bit of time and probably some creative thinking. I stockpile my 3-Month supply a little differently:

1. Emergency Food- This is a 30-Day emergency supply of foods. I know that at our house, we have the fuel in storage for me to be able to cook four different ways; BBQ, Open Fire (I'm not good at this yet), Coleman Camping Stove and on the flat top of our wood stove. I always imagine that my 30_day supply will be for an absolute emergency where we have no water, no power and we must rely on just getting food into our bodies. This stockpile often contains foods that we wouldn't normally consume, or not very often, and they are all VERY simple to prepare so we won't be using up more of our fuel to cook them than absolutely necessary. 
2. Short Term Food Storage- This is the next 60-Day supply (so together they make up 3 months). For figuring what to store in this stockpile, I figure that whatever has happened to force me to use this food isn't a major emergency hasn't effected my power or water, so I begin to store more in the way of "normal" foods. These will have a lot more variety and be more complete, whole meals rather than focus on just getting food into your body. 

Like I mentioned before, some of these foods may end up being ones that you wouldn't feed your family. That's fine! Make substitutions, create your own meal plan. For me, it's more important that we DO EAT and not so important what we eat in the case of an all out, absolute, full blown emergency. Such may not be the case for you and it's easy enough to customize it to your family and what your goals are for your stockpile. 

Here is my 30-Day Emergency Menu-

Breakfast-

• Oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar
• Scrambled Eggs & Hashbrowns with Pepper Gravy
• Pancakes with fruit
• Spam and Hashbrowns

Lunch-

• Chili with Crackers
• Soup With Crackers
• Macaroni & Cheese (velveeta cheese type)
• Tuna Salad with Crackers
• PB&J with Crackers
• Top Ramen
• Mashed Potatoes with Brown Gravy

Dinner- 

• Stew with Crackers
• Soup with Crackers
• Chili Mac, veggie
• Refried Beans & Mexican Rice
• Mashed Potatoes, Brown Gravy, Spam, veggie

Snacks-

• Popcorn
• Hard Candy

Personal Items-

• Toilet Paper
• Deodorant
• Soap
• Toothpaste
• Feminine Hygiene 

Now, as you can see, these aren't exciting meals on the face of the planet. However, these items are often on sale and paired with a coupon, don't have to cost and arm and a leg. This is just a basic, get food into your belly kind of plan. After you have your supply in place, you can go back and add extra items to round out your meals OR replace store bought meals with homemade and home canned alternatives, essentially expanding the realm of possibilities to endless. 

This week: create a basic menu, use mine or make adjustments to the one above. Next week, we'll make our first purchases and start stocking up!!!  

*Read my Disclosure