Emergency Pantry Update

Since starting this project in April I've been buying extra nonperishable food weekly to add to our new emergency pantry. I have about an extra month's worth stored now. We're also trying different canned foods to see what they're like, and decide if we really want to live on them possibly for months. Hormel canned chili, for example, was surprisingly good -- we agreed we'd eat it even in non-emergency situations when I don't have time to make chili from scratch. Spam roasted turkey tastes just like the ham variety (and all Spam has a lot of salt in it.)

In addition to food I've invested in nonfat dry milk, baking soda and powder, salt, yeast and other ingredients I'd need for baking. Thanks to the military I can make almost anything in a skillet over a campfire, including flat bread, cornbread, pizza and rolls.

The most challenging part of this project has been finding enough variety. If you've tried one Chef Boyardee pasta, for example, you've basically tasted them all. My finicky man also dislikes a lot of canned foods. But I'm persuading him to stretch his horizons a little and try some new things by reminding him of our childhood days, when our cash-strapped mothers fed us canned everything. Anyway, I'm on target to complete my storage project by the beginning of hurricane season, which is when I'll decide if I want to keep adding more food for the future.

I still have some work to do. The next step is to reorganize what I have (versus shoving it in the cabinets) and label the front of each product with the expiration date, and then create a computer inventory list by item type and another copy by expiration date, so we can keep track of what we have and when we need to rotate it into the regular pantry.

Comments

Maria Zannini said…

Don't forget the pups. Mine are bigger than yours, but we generally keep two bags in reserve and one in use.That barely covers 3 months but that's all the room we have for large bags.

May 13, 2024 at 7:59 AM

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