If
you were to make a list of the ten most essential foods for your
family, what would be on that list? What do you go to the store for?
On a normal day, what foods make you go shopping immediately when you
run out? When we had small children, running out of milk meant a quick
trip to the store. Of course, it was easier to just keep tabs on the
supply and make sure we bought enough to last for the week.
What else is on your critical list? Eggs? By the lack of flour on the
shelves and the difficulty in finding yeast for sale anywhere, it
appears that bread is pretty essential for most of us. This trifecta is
surely a meme somewhere: the panic to purchase milk, bread, and eggs
in advance of a hurricane or blizzard means Americans eat French toast
in a crisis. (But it must be without syrup, because there's never any
in the panic shopping carts.)
Does running out of fresh produce prompt a run to the store? What about
cheese? Lunchmeat? Other dairy products? Those are the items I would
go to the store for. The other items rounding out the top ten list for
Americans are vegetables, chips, breakfast cereal, fruit, chicken, and
beef.
Now what about the long-term storage counterparts to your essential
foods? Do you have them? Do you know how to use or prepare them?
Milk is a hard one for most people. Powdered milk has a certain
reputation for not tasting good. The more expensive milks taste better,
but at the expense of good nutrition. Learning how to make cheap
powdered milk taste good is easy.
Eggs are best fresh from the hen. If you can't keep chickens, or
if your hens are in a molt, however, it's nice to have a backup.
Powdered eggs work extremely well in baking, and there are loads of
other options that work with varying degrees of success depending on how
they are being used.
Knowing how to make a good loaf of bread is a highly desirable
skill even today. It was shocking to hear how difficult it was to
obtain bread, flour, and yeast in grocery stores. Just this week my
husband took a one-pound brick of yeast from our storage to our son and
daughter-in-law in a small town four hours from here, because they still
have not been able to locate yeast.
Cheese and other dairy products are favorites for a lot of us. What are the best forms to store it in, and how much do we really want?
Vegetables and fruits are other hot items. Canned goods
sold out pretty quickly in advance of the COVID-19 pandemic isolation,
as did frozen vegetables. Produce became rather hit or miss with
regards to finding it in stores. Are you able to grow, can, and
dehydrate vegetables you raise in your garden? Do you know how to
extend the growing season with hoop houses and starting seeds indoors?
Chicken and beef are foods that might become a bit scarce in a crisis. Do you have canned, frozen, or freeze-dried options at home?
Chips are comfort foods for lots of us, and breakfast cereals
are especially important to children. What measures have you taken to
store their favorites? Do you know which breakfast cereals have the
best shelf-life? Which are the worst for storage?
Now, how does this list of foods align with the list of food that you
are storing for your family? What kind of adjustment will it be to
transition from your normal daily diet to your food storage diet? Will
that change be small or radical? How will your gastrointestinal tract
handle it? How will small children or the elderly in your life who are
more sensitive to disruptions react to the new diet?
If your food storage involves primarily sustenance types of foods,
you'll be covered for bread and milk and not a lot of variety beyond
that. If you've focused on complementary foods, you'll be missing out
on the vitamins that come primarily from grains and beans.
A diversified diet is much healthier and helps maintain good morale in
difficult situations. Sustenance and complementary foods, long- and
short-term food storage, emergency meals, and comfort foods all have
their place in the prepared pantry. Take inventory of what you have and
start a list of what you need to provide well for your family in a
crisis. Make sure you have your essential foods in there, in whatever
form you use them, to ensure the crisis in the outside world doesn't
become a crisis in your family.
Do this before the projected second-wave of the virus begins.
Links to related posts:
In-Depth Discussion of Powdered Milk
Wheat Bread
Breakfast Cereal Shelf Life
Comfort Foods
Pressure Canning Chicken
Pressure Canning Beef
Canning Butter and Cheese (Don't!)
18 june 2020
