The notes on pantry meals that are here on my blog are a suppliment to the presentation that I gave for my ward and stake. They assume that you were there to hear me speak. But some people weren't able to attend, so here is my presentation, in my words, as if you had been there. Hopefully it will then make all of the other pantry meal posts make more sense....
Being raised in the church, I know all about food storage. And as an adult I have worked on having what storage I could under the circumstances that I found myself. But I always found myself a little uneasy about what I had stored. Was it really enough? Could I really make things that were good to eat out of what I have in #10 cans? All of these thoughts were always going through my head. And I found myself going down to my well stocked pantry and still thinking that there was nothing to eat! Or for the 10 meals I can think of to make on any given night, I would be one item short on all of them.
I try to make up a monthly meal plan to use in my home and then purchase the shelf stable things for the month. But I was always finding that by the end of the month, I was short things I thought I would have. They had been used for other things. I never could calculate things out right and then use the food how I had calculated it. All of these things have weighed on my mind looking at my food storage.
But over the last couple of years, the Lord has put people and ideas into my path that have "turned on light bulbs" in my brain until I finally had a method that I could get my head around and that works for my family. These ideas might not work for everyone's families. But I hope you get at least a few ideas from all of this. I use this method for my "90 days of food that are part of my normal, daily diet" and still have all of the longer term storage in buckets and #10 cans. You can use this for as few or as many meals as you would like to store this way.
Why pantry meals?
-Our stake asked us to. The stake presidency issued the challenge to have every family in our stake prepared with a 90 day supply of food and needed items by Nov. 1, 2011. This is one way to get there.
- The general authorities asked us to. "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." ---
LDS Home Food Storage Pamphlet
- I have full meals packaged in the boxes and I know that everything I need is there.
- I am often in a hurry or running behind at dinner time. These meals make easy "grab it off the shelf and have dinner on the table in a 1/2 hour" meals for those nights when there just isn't time to think of what to make.
- My kids can grab a box off the shelf, read the directions and make the meal!
Wendy DeWitt's food storage method can be found
here.
A few key points from Wendy's seminar:
- Eat what you store and store what you eat. Wendi bases her food storage off of the meals that she eats all the time. and has it figured out down to the last teaspoon of salt.
- A year supply of food for one person fits under a twin size bed! (It doesn't take as much space as we think it does!)
- Wendy goes through her food storage once a year (usually over a General Conference weekend) and pulls out all of the food that expires in the next year. She puts that food in her pantry to use and buys new for her storage. That way she never has food meeting or exceeding its expiration.
Judy's method:
- Judy's
website and
cookbook, "Cooking from my pantry" is the basis of how I put this system together for my family. You can find all of her information on the blog and in her recipe book. The
full book is online and is FREE!
Bags vs. Boxes
The pantry meals that you put together can be put in boxes or plastic gift bags to keep all of the ingredients for each meal together. Whether you use bags or boxes is really just a matter of preference. I personally prefer the boxes because they stack well. Others prefer the bags. Here are thoughts on the pros and cons:
- Price. The boxes cost around $1 each and have to be special ordered online. The bags can be purchases at Xpedx stores for about 45 cents each.
- Space. 2 boxes stacked on top of each other take up the same amount of space as 2 bags set next to each other.
- Both are reusable. Once you have used the meal inside, you can set either aside to be refilled after you go to the store again. The bags will fold down flat when empty and take up much less space. The boxes are boxes and take up the same amount of space full or empty.
- The boxes are sturdier.
- The boxes only come on one color. But the bags come in all sorts of colors so you can color coordinate you meals if you would like to. Red bags for beef. Yellow for chicken. Blue for breakfast, etc.
Canned vs. bottled food:
- You can make your pantry meals out of whatever you have on hand. I bottle a lot of tomatoes and chicken, so when one of my recipes calls for tomatoes or chicken, I put in a bottle instead of purchasing canned. Use what you have and what you like.
Water
In the book
"It's in the Bag", the author includes in her bags enough water to make the meal. She never wants to be without water. If a recipe needs 4 cups of water to prepare the dinner, she puts 2 bottles of water in the bag. When she is at home, she just uses her tap water, but if she ever does use a water bottle, she saves it and refills it and puts it back in the bag.
I'm not so worried about keeping the water in with my meals because of the water I already have stored. . I have about 100 96 oz. apple juice bottles full of water in my basement and 8 - 55 gallon water containers in my back yard. If I ever had to evacuate and take my pantry meals with me, I will have to remember to take my apple juice bottles filled with water with me.
Cornbread, Bread & Tortillas
To supplement my meals in a box I plan to make cornbread to go with some of the less filling meals. I store my ingredients to make cornbread, tortillas, and bread separately. I have a container for each one that holds all of the ingredients for each.
Why cornbread and not always just regular bread? I think that we often think that when we are in a crisis all we will have is time on our hands. But the opposite will be true. We might not have the 2 hours or so that it takes to make a batch of wheat bread. But cornbread can be make and baked in a 1/2 an hour and can be ready to eat with any meal without much for-thought. I store popcorn to grind into cornmeal to make cornbread with. For my favorite recipe,
click here.
Breakfasts & Lunches
The pantry meal concept can be used for breakfast and lunches as well as for dinners. In my house, I store bulk items for breakfast. Like 50 lb. bags of 9-grain breakfast hot cereal, 25 lb. bags of oatmeal, or 5lb. bags of Krustez pancake mix. I could separate them out into meal size portions, but I don't bother. I know how much I have of what and I'm okay leaving it in the bulk package.
I am working on my lunches. Most of my breakfast are carbohydrate heavy (there aren't very many traditional breakfast proteins...eggs, ham, etc... available for long term storage.). So for lunches I would like to have protein. That also doesn't leave a lot of choice. Tuna, canned ham, canned chili and bean spreads. But they don't really need their own boxes. So I haven't done lunches in boxes. But you could also just do more of your dinner meals and use them for lunches.
Rotation
I really like
Wendy DeWitt's "pull out everything once a year and use and replace what is about to expire" method. Once a year is about all I have time to think about it. Maybe not even that often! It's a good thing that canned goods are good for several years!
How to buy it:
Instead of buying cases of food one at a time and then needing to eat it and realizing that you only have cases of cream of chicken soup, pineapple and green beans. (What are you going to make with that??? Yuck!) I like to choose one or 2 pantry meal recipes a month and buy all of the ingredients for those recipes, put them in the boxes and then I know that I have full and complete meals ready to go at all times.
The PMS Group:
Several friends and I found out about pantry meals at the same time. So we decided that since none of us had very many meals that were shelf stable and ready to put into boxes, we needed to try some out. There were about 12 of us that would get together once a month and swap pantry meals. Hence the name:
Pantry
Meals
Swap group! We would each make up several of one recipe and then go and trade around. That way we came home with one each of different recipes to try. Some of my very favorite pantry meal recipes came from these swaps. We swapped a couple of months and then the fall and holidays hit and we didn't get it going again. But for the little time we swapped, it was fabulous! For more thoughts on the PMS group,
click here.
Conclusion:
No matter what method you choose to use to get and organize your preparedness meals and items, it's important to remember that the principle of food storage isn't a principle of keeping our tummies full, it is a principle of obedience to the Lord. The Lord will not give us commandments that He won't provide a way for us to keep. (1 Nephi 3:7) If we are serious about getting the storage our stake presidency and general authorities have asked us to get, and do all that we can to make it happen, miracles will occur on our behalf. We may have to use our storage before we feel like it is full and complete, but it is my testimony that through our obedience and diligence our "barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail" (1 Kings 17:14).
For some more of my thoughts on pantry meals,
click here.
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