Pantry Meals

In the Home Food Storage pamphlet put out by the church.  We are told that in addition to our year supply of long term storage items, we should:

"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."

It has been hard for me to get my head around that.  Because if I have food in the house, I'm going to use it!  Or someone else would use it and then I would have 10 meals that I wanted to make and they were all missing 1 thing!  But last year I was introduced to "Fast Food in a Bag".  This has helped me get my head around this concept and see how I could actually have 3 months of meals in my house...and have everything for each one!  I have adapted the system to use boxes instead of bags because they stack and store better.

So for my 90 days of dinners I have 13 meals that I will store 7 each of.  They are:

Hawaiian Haystacks
Chicken and Rice Bake

Shepard's Pie
Taco Soup**
Green Chili Beans**
Krysti Casserole** (named for Marshyl's sister.  i.e. Macaroni and Tomatoes)
Green Chili Burritos
Beef Barley Soup**
Tamale Pie**
Chicken Enchilada Soup**
Spaghetti
Creamy Chicken Enchiladas
Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup**

Most are a meal on their own, those that aren't, we will eat with cornbread (**).

Okay, that is actually only 14 meals.  We are trying out new meals to see what we like and want to add into the rotation.  I have the book "It's in the Bag" that is full of recipes.

Some of these meals we got the recipes from our friends.  I was a part of a "pantry meal swap"  (PMS group!) and we would choose a pantry meal and make 12 of it and then take it to the swap and return home with 12 different meals.  It was great.  That gave us different meals to try out and if we liked them, add them to our rotation.

As we find more meals that we like that can be converted into pantry meals, we will add them in, increasing our number of pantry meals.