3 Month Menu

We recently found a blog called Safely Gathered In which gives practical advice on how to create a 3 month supply of food that you will actually eat. It breaks the process down into steps that I can actually do, and that's half the battle! Here's what we worked on for FHE tonight.

We made a chart that has spaces for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, for 14 days. Then we brainstormed 14 dinner recipes that can be made only from nonperishable items. We tried to do a few vegetarian meals, a few with canned chicken, a couple with tuna, and even a couple with beef (one using jerky - we'll see how that works out!). Here's our list:

Spaghetti
Chicken Pot Pie
Taco Soup/Black bean soup
Jerky Curry
Chicken Salad w/ homemade bread
Thai Chicken w/ rice
Chicken/Tuna w/ egg noodles
Chicken & Rice casserole
Pasta & Sauce
Beef Stew
Bean & Rice Soup
Tomato Basil Soup
Coconut Curry Chicken
Chicken & Biscuits

Some of these came from recipes from the Safely Gathered In blog, others were ideas we had ourselves.

The next step will be to compile a list of all the ingredients for these meals, and multiply by six to cover three months.

After that we'll do the same for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Once we've got our complete shopping list, we can start looking for really good deals on these items. And before you know it... Three months' supply! Voila!

Do you have any ideas for "pantry only" meals? What kinds of system do you have for building food storage?

2 week supply

In my one and only week in relief society in the last 3-1/2 years, they emphasized that even having a 2-week supply of food and water in your house is very helpful and attainable for any circumstance...small spaces, small budget, etc.

We have had several times the last few years that we have had to use what we had on hand--like the President's Day snowstorm in 2003 that closed down life for a week. Or especially when the remnants of hurricane Isabel (also in 2003) came through and our area didn't have power or phone for a week.

We were very grateful for our :
Extra batteries
Cases of bottled water (since water treatment plants were also without power)
Grill with extra propane
Non-perishable, easy to prepare food
Candles
Flashlights

These items tend to be the first to disappear off the shelves during the emergency situation, not to mention the fact that many emergencies don't give lots of warning, so it just makes sense to keep them in the house and you won't have to be one of the crazy ones looking all over town for batteries during a huge snowstorm.

Fruit Punch Anyone?

About two months or so, my very awesome wife ordered some food from the cannery. She ordered very useful things like flour, wheat, sugar, spaghetti and fruit punch. Well, I went to pick up the order at the cannery the other day. They were out of the sugar, we will not be eating sugar in an emergency situation (actually we will probably just buy a big bag from the grocery store).
Well at the cannery, I also realized that the fruit drink mix that we bought was actually about 50 pounds worth. So we have plenty of fruit drink mix. Also if I ever forget English, I will still know what I am drinking. If anyone of you need fruit drink, you can have some of ours.

Then the problem was we would not have enough water for the mix. But today we received somewhere between 1000 and 4000 gallons of water by FedEx (we received ten of these things, although only two are pictured).
Thanks for idea for the water bottle thingies. I think that they will come in handy in an emergency. I also ordered MREs from Emergency Essentials (there are various meals besides this one) and I will post on how they taste in a later post.

I've Got Water on My Mind

Slowly, but surely, we have been working to get our food storage built up. It is going . . . . slowly . . . . but . . . . surely (did I already say that?). The main concern we have had recently is water. We are very limited in the space we have to store water. Water takes up TONS of space and weighs . . . well, TONS. Side note: I just started giggling when I noticed what the word "tons" is backwards. Back to the topic -- plus, I get a little freaked out about the idea of water sitting in our basement for an extended period of time. I realize there are ways to treat water, but I just assume that any water left sitting for a long time will turn green and grow mosquitoes. For those of you with plenty of storage, you can go back to whatever you were doing in your gigantic house with a 3-car garage. For the rest of you, I have found something that, we think, will work for us. And might could work for you. (that last sentence was for those of you in Oklahoma).



We found a special on these water bottles that are supposed remove up to 99.9% of pollutants and contaminates found in most water sources (i.e. rivers, streams and lakes) and comes with some free water chlorine tablets. The site claims that between the filter and the tablets you have a portable "mini-municipal bottled water plant". The site also claims that each bottle filters up to 100 gallons of water, so one small, lightweight bottle takes the place of one of those huge, heavyweight water barrels (that may, or may not, turn green and grow mosquitoes). On another site, a reviewer claimed that the bottles worked fine up to 400 gallons. We live exactly 0.62 miles from a large creek and 1.25 miles from the Potomac River. Each of these bodies of water contain exactly 9.7 gazillion gallons of water that has the potential to be drinking water (if only we had a mini-municipal water plant). Here is a link to the website where you can get one water bottle for $16.95. However, if you buy 10+ you can get them for $10 each, which includes shipping and tax. We bought 10, which means that for $100 we now have at least 1,000 gallons of drinking water and at the most 4,000 gallons. That is a lot of barrels (or old 2-liter Diet Mountain Dew bottles) worth. If some of you want these, but do not want 10+ you could always coordinate to buy them together.



The big downside to these is that we have to lug the water at lease 0.62 miles to get to our house. Our hope is that in the event we have to use these water bottles, the plumbing will still be working in our house (it just may not be safe to drink). If not, we will get to perfect the art of balancing a big water jug on our heads like in third-world countries . . . and who has not dreamt of that?

Follow Up to Thumb Drive and Bucket O' Food

Since no one has updated this recently, I thought that I would write a post to say that we received our Bucket O' Food in the mail a while ago and we feel a little more prepared now. Also I had a good idea for the scanned documents and credit cards and stuff. In many programs (including Adobe, Word, Excel, etc), you can password protect each document so that even if the flash drive fell into the wrong hands, they would have a hard time trying to access the information.

Thumb Drive

I have just been reading about some creative uses for thumb drives that I thought would be worth sharing.

1. For insurance purposes inventory your house and belongings with a digital camera including owner's manuals and receipts then download it onto a thumb drive.

2. Scan important documents like passports, credit cards front and back, driver's license, bank account info , etc.. Put all that on a thumb drive and put it in your 72-hour kit.

3. As the cost of thumb drives go down use them to back up your computer.

Survival Kit for your Pocket

As I was going through boxes in the basement the other day, I found some preparedness papers that we colected in Minnesota. I thought this was an interesting one about a survival kit for your pocket.

Your container should be waterproof and small enough to fit in your pocket.

1. Emergency food, like boulion cubes or ration bar.
2. Matches waterproofed in wax or nail polish. Or just buy waterproof matches.
3. Fire starter made from tightly rolled paper soaked in paraffin.
4. Compass.
5. Whistle.
6. Small knife or one sided razor blade.
7. Nylon fishline, heavy.
8. Fishing lures that work in your area.
9. Wire, 5-10 ft. long, light and flexible for snares.
10. Adhesive tape, 1-inch wide in strips 12 inches long.
11. Pencil and paper for messages.
12. Aluminum Foil, heavy duty, two sheets 12 inches square to make drinking and cooking
utensils.
13. Tablets to purify water.

I have no idea how or why we received this. Maybe Dad got it when he was scoutmaster, and they were doing a lot of camping.

Bucket O' Food

I have told most of the people who check this blog about this already, but we have been buying these buckets of emergency food from Costco. We originally found them for $50 on the shelf at Costco, but have not been able find them since. We checked on the company's website, but they were selling for over $100 -- so we gave up for awhile. Then we decided to check on Costco's website and found them for $79.00 ---- which is more then we originally paid, but seemed like a good deal after seeing the company's website plus it includes shipping in the price. We now have a total of 7 buckets.

The buckets have 275 servings each and have a 20 year shelf-life. In case you are interested, here is my take on the pros and cons of the bucket o' food. Let's start with the CONS: limited variety of food (only 8 different meals), unknown quality, and most meals require cooking (which may be difficult in an emergency situation - side note: I have read that freeze-dried food is the best for emergency situations because they generally require little or no cooking). PROS: very compact, long shelf life, pretty affordable, easy storage (hard plastic buckets that can be stacked in a garage without worrying about rodents), and you can wear the buckets on your head after you eat all of the food.

3-Month Supply

As Kristina was reading some of the ideas that she had for her lesson tomorrow, I really liked this one. I like it because it's something simple that even I can do, a poor college student. I am quoting from the brochure "All is Safely Gathered In: Family Home Storage" by the church. "Build a small supply of food that is part of your normal, daily diet. One way to do this is to purchase a few extra items each week to build a one-week supply of food. Then you can gradually increase your supply until it is sufficient for three months. These items should be rotated regularly to avoid spoilage."
When I go to the store now I can buy one or two extra cans of corn, which I like, and start builiding a small supply of food storage. I don't have to be overwhelmed by the thought of getting food storage. I just need to gather it little by little.

Preparedness Lesson

I would like to share some random quotes from my upcoming RS lesson about financial and spiritual preparedness:

Regarding work, J Rueben Clark said, " All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but all play and no work makes Jack a useless boy"

"Work brings happiness, self-esteem, and prosperity. It is the means of all accomplishment; it is the opposite of idleness."

"Financial peace of mind is not determined by how much we make, but is dependent upon how much we spend."

Cool website: personalfinance.byu.edu offers an LDS perspective on wealth and has 3 courses to teach finance

"It is much better that a plastic credit card should perish than a family dwindle and perish in debt." Elder Joseph B Wirthlin

Here's an example of how credit card debt brings financial trouble: If you have $3000 on your credit card and you make the minimum payment of 2 1/2 % each month and you pay 19% interest, it will take you 23 years to pay off your card!

Here's the most important part of the lesson from Henry B Eyring, "But there is another even more important preparation we must make for tests that are certain to come to each of us. That preparation must be started far in advance because it takes time. What we will need then can’t be bought. It can’t be borrowed. It doesn’t store well. And it has to have been used regularly and recently.

What we will need in our day of testing is a spiritual preparation. It is to have developed faith in Jesus Christ so powerful that we can pass the test of life upon which everything for us in eternity depends."

Ok, now I need to go and really work on my lesson!

Nobody is Visiting

Since nobody is visiting, I can pretty much say whatever I want. So here it goes. I think that in order to be prepared, we should all buy three thousand ketchup and mustard packets. That is all that we will need. Nothing else.

Let's see who the first person to get on here and comment is.

More Useful Items and Future Purchases

I forgot to mention some other items that we have that will come in handy if needs be.

Camp Stove ($20) with two cans of propane ($5 for both)

Plastic eating utensils ($5 at Walmart)

Warmers (open the package and shake and they warm up) ($1 for a large one)

Emergency Blanket (it is in the First Aid Kit) ($1.50 or so)

Respirator masks (better than the normal dust masks) ($2 for 2)


Also I have a list of future purchases:
Lantern ($10-25)

Better Walkie Talkies (to use certain frequencies you are supposed to have a FCC license but in an emergency I think that it would be okay) (between $20-80)

More Food (of course, we have more food than what is pictured below but we want to continue adding to these items)

Energy bars that last longer than the breakfast/granola bars that we currently have

Shovel

Sunscreen


Sorry, this is a boring post. I am just trying to keep things going on here until other people decide to post.

72-Hour Kit

Our 72-Hour Kit is larger than our individual emergency kits. I think of the emergency kits as part of the larger whole. Here is what we have:
The whole kit together


The food items:

12 packets of food including oatmeal, pudding, canned meat, cheese and peanut butter crackers, canned fruit cups, ramen, granola bars, trail mix, breakfast bars and more water. We have another two cases of water but they, of course, are not going in the backpack.


Non-food items:

Larger First Aid kit (including water purification tablets) ($10 at Walmart), mess kit, toilet paper, duct tape, cough drops, wind-up flashlight, socks, more flashlights, lighters, camp axe ($6.50 at Walmart), medicine, batteries, hand sanitizer, compass, camp saw (a few dollars at Walmart) and a rope. Many of these things double as my Scout stuff.

The backpack:


Am I missing anything important between the emergency kits and the larger 72-hour kit?

My Emergency Kits

Just to get things started, I will post what I have in my kits.
Karey and I both carry emergency kits in our cars. They are not as extensively stocked as our 72-hour kits but they have many useful things to help in a real pinch. Here is mine:
This is what is inside of my emergency bag

Here are the food items:

Two Granola bars, two breakfast bars, two peanut cracker packs, pack of dried fruit, two water bottles and some Werther's candy.

Here are the non-food items:

Pocket knife (I got a nice Swiss Army Knife at Walmart for $20), rope, latex gloves (for medical emergencies or for use during a pandemic), toilet paper, bandaids, stomach medicine, wind up radio, fork (this was accidently left in the bag but I decided to keep it) , flashlight, batteries, lighter, another knife ($.97 at Walmart), dust mask and walkie-talkie.

This is what I keep it in:

A bag that I got for free from Cricket.
In addition to these items, I have some quick reference guides on what to do during a tornado, after a nucleur blast and how to deal with a flu pandemic, etc. In addition, we have maps to various points and the family emergency plan. We also both have sleeping bags in our cars and I have a tent.
I also went last Saturday to the local American Red Cross and got CPR and First Aid certified. I had never had formal CPR training, so it was good. It cost $45 for both courses and it lasted from 8:30 am to about 2:45 pm. I am trying to be better prepared as it pertains to training (of course, being the Scoutmaster gives me extra incentive).


Our 72-hour is a little bigger and in depth and will be covered in the next post.

Welcome to the Family Preparedness Blog

Karey suggested that I start a preparedness blog for the family, so that we can all share ideas on how to be prepared. Kristina also suggested that we might share when one of us finds outstanding deals on preparedness items. Anyway welcome to the blog.