Basic Food Storage--Short Term Food Storage

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since the time I was ten years old, I've heard leaders of the Church counsel their members to store at least a year's supply of food to be prepared for difficult times.  Up until about the 1990s, that advice focused mainly on storing the staples of long-term storage--grains, dry milk, sugar, beans, oil, and salt.

However, following some of the major hurricanes in the early 1990s, leaders learned that even well-prepared members (of which there are tragically few) had difficulties feeding their families.  How could this be?

Of course, those who have been preparing for a while, and preparing for events they feel are really going to happen, recognize the problems in just stocking the common long-term storage items:  they take a long time to prepare anything, and that means using a lot of fuel.  And they require that the person preparing the food actually be able to work with these items.  In a society where fewer and fewer people can cook from scratch, this becomes a real problem.

So in addition to (not instead of) urging their members to store the long-term items, leaders also began counseling people to build up a three-month supply of foods that are easy to prepare, that they have the means of warming or cooking, and that they are already accustomed to eating on a regular basis.

The reasons behind the first item in the list are straightforward--in a disaster, like a hurricane, you may not have a lot of time for food preparation and you may not have the space and easy access to kitchen utensils and such.

As far as cooking goes, too few of the Church members who had food were able to do much to cook it; it does little good to have several hundred pounds of wheat if all you have is a camp stove.

Eating foods that you are already familiar with is common sense, especially for children.  It provides a little bit of comfort and reassurance for them in a stressful situation.  Parents don't need the added stress of a child refusing to eat unfamiliar food.  Beyond that, you don't want to add stress to your body by eating foods you are not accustomed to.  What's going to happen to the guy who lives off fast food if he's suddenly thrown into eating whole wheat and beans?  Hint:  you definitely do not want to be within a quarter mile of him. The three-month supply of short-term storage foods provides time for you to transition from eating your times-of-prosperity diet to the times-of-leanness diet of long-term storage foods. 

And there's one other point that is rarely mentioned.  When we lived in Missouri, our bishop there encouraged everyone in our congregation to live without electricity and running water for three days, using only the food and supplies we had at home.  Due to weather events, we had experienced relatively short periods of time without power or without water, but except for camping, we had never gone without both.

So here I was, while we're pretending to be without water and electricity, life is still normal.  My husband still goes to work; money is still in the bank; the outside world, although as crazy as ever, isn't threatening me or my family.  And yet, I was almost paralyzed.  I had a house full of food--food that we constantly ate and rotated through, and I couldn't think of what to make for dinner.  I couldn't use electricity, I didn't want to use much water, and I definitely didn't want to create a bunch of dirty dishes.

The entire experience was an eye-opener and one of the reasons behind the meal tins I wrote about on 1 November 2018.  It's why we store a lot of paper plates and plastic forks and cups and parchment paper and foil for lining pans.

That was an extremely important lesson to learn.  Even though we are well-prepared with food and means for cooking it, just thinking about what to make in a disaster is rather difficult.  It would be far better to be prepared for that beforehand.  

02.28.19