For those who missed it, our family is doing a 100% food storage challenge. We are challenging ourselves to not go to the grocery store until the pandemic passes. This will not only keep us and other safe, but it will give us a chance to “try out” our food storage to see how it goes and learn what things we need to add to our long-term storage inventory.
At this point the kids have been out of school for 4 weeks. Mike has been working from home for 4 weeks. The last time I went grocery shopping was March 25th, when I stopped by Grocery Outlet before I decided to quit going out altogether. So as of today it has been 17 days since we last went to the store.
Normally that would be no big deal, but since we don’t know when this will end, it’s a little more challenging. We definitely want to ration out the exciting food so we don’t eat all the “good” stuff first and end up with just a bunch of wheat to eat.
If you want to see what our pantry, food storage, freezer, and fridge looked like at the beginning of this challenge, check out the videos in the post that introduces the challenge.
In this update, I’ll go through some of the things we’ve eaten in the past couple of weeks. Then I’ll talk about some things that have been hard as well as some surprise blessings.
If you’d rather watch the video than read, you can watch the coordinating video below (there are lots of food clips in the video):
What we have eaten so far in quarantine:
Breakfasts
Oatmeal: We are actually low on oats in our long-term food storage. They are something we eat very regularly, but we hadn’t restocked up recently. We usually buy oats as 25 lb bags at Winco and had about 35 pounds left when we started. We also have some instant oatmeal packets. Normally the older kids would eat 2-3 of the packets each for breakfast, but to make them stretch, we add 1/3 cup of regular oats to the instant oatmeal packet (and increase the water) to make a heartier serving. We also sometimes make a pot of oats on the stove and add brown sugar and raisins.
Cream of Wheat: Mike and the kids call this “bear mush.” I think that’s a Goldilocks reference. We buy it from the bulk bins at Winco. We don’t have a lot on hand, just what we buy on a monthly grocery haul. We will just keep it in our breakfast rotation until it’s gone. We add brown sugar and raisins.
Sourdough Waffles: Mike’s mom often makes sourdough waffles (from Mike’s grandma’s recipe) when the family gets together. Everyone LOVES them. Mike started his own sourdough start about two weeks ago. His mom also gave us some of her start in case Mike’s didn’t work (but it did!). I made some syrup to go with them.
Eggs: Mike makes the best scrambled eggs in the electric skillet. Some mornings we have fried eggs. We have 17 hens, so the eggs keep coming, though I assure you, with the price of chicken feed, they are not cheaper than store bought eggs.
Cold cereal: If you watched the video of our food storage tour (or saw our recent Grocery Outlet haul video), you know that we got lots of rice crispy cereal at $.50 per box. When we ran out of regular milk, we started making powdered milk. Thankfully the kids don’t mind at all.
Baked French Toast Casserole: Using leftover dried bread we found in the freezer, we made a huge pan of Baked French Toast Casserole. It was delicious!
Pancakes: We make pancakes from our own whole wheat pancake mix. The three older kids know how to make them, so it’s a breakfast that they can start in case mom and dad are still in bed (not that that ever happens 😂). We eat canned peaches, pears, and applesauce on top of our pancakes.
Cinnamon Rolls– For a special birthday breakfast, I made cinnamon rolls with cream cheese and blueberry frosting.
Lunch
Peanut Butter and Jam Sandwiches– Once we ate through the five loaves of store bought bread that were in the freezer we started baking bread. I usually bake 4 loaves at a time. We’ve made our regular whole wheat sandwich bread, soughdough bread, and French bread from whole wheat flour. We have lots of wheat in our food storage. Some is pretty new, and some is from as far back as the 1980s. The really old stuff doesn’t rise as well, so we grind it up with some newer wheat to get a medium-rise whole-wheat flour.
Egg Salad Sandwiches- We get a dozen eggs or so from our chickens every day, so egg salad is a great option for lunch. Sometimes I’ll make both kinds of sandwiches and slice them in halves and let everyone choose what they want.
Orange Slices- We have orange slices almost every day. We picked boxes of oranges from a friend’s trees and these makes a great addition to lunch and work as snacks between meals.
String Cheese- My younger kids love string cheese, so I started breaking them in half to stretch them so they’ll last longer. We don’t have them everyday, so we still have some left.
Pretzels– We ate a bag of pretzels we had on hand.
Graham Crackers– We’ve eaten a few boxes of graham crackers. The kids love these for snacks.
Smoothies– We make smoothies for any meal, but lately we’ve had them for lunch. We add homemade yogurt, oranges, frozen fruit, spinach, and milk.
Dinner
Bean soup– I cooked up some pinto beans in the crock pot along with some dehydrated onions and other dehydrated veggies from our food storage. I made a giant crock pot full, so it lasted for several meals. We added some sliced sausage to half of it. We ate it with a little sour cream and cheese. In one of its appearances as leftovers, I made cornbread in a skillet to go with it. Another day we had more leftover beans with rice.
Lentil tacos– To make lentil taco “meat” in the instant pot, put 1 cup of lentils, 2 cups of water or broth, and 2 Tablespoons of taco seasoning in the instant pot. Cook on high pressure for 15 minutes with a quick release. Easy peasy! We double it.
Spaghetti– We used one of our cans of spaghetti sauce and had a canned grean beans along with our spaghetti.
Macaroni and cheese– In our food storage I found a #10 can of cheddar cheese powder that we inherited from someone. I had never used it before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It turns out it looks just like the pwedered cheese packets that come in boxed mac and cheese, so I used it just like that.
Salad– We made sure to make salad from all of the romaine lettuce that we had in the fridge. We had a couple of dinners of salad with bread and saved some lettuce for tacos.
Butternut Squash Soup– We have a wonderful recipe for butternut squash soup. We enjoyed it with freshly baked french bread.
Bean Burritos– We had several variations of burritos depending on what kind of beans we had leftover.
Orange Chicken and Rice– When I was cleaning out my fridge and freezer, I found an orange chicken freezer meal I had made before our last baby. It was delicious!
Desserts
Plum sauce cake– We have lots of plum sauce that we canned several years ago, so I looked up a recipe for applesauce cake and just substituted plum sauce. I put walnuts on half of it for those of us who like them.
Sponge Cake– Since we have plenty of eggs (but are running short on other leavening agents) I tried a sponge cake with some homemade chocolate frosting.
Brownies– In our family we prefer brownies to cake just about any day, even birthdays. We made fudgy brownies from a jar one day. Then we had a birthday in the family and made a brownie layer “cake.”
Orange Glazed Cookies– I found a recipe for orange flavored cookies with orange glaze. The kids were surprised that the grated orange peel was actually delicious in the final product.
Surprise additions to our food supply
While we haven’t made any trips to the store in the past 17 days, we have had some surprise additions to our food supply which have been a huge blessing!
Sweet potatoes— A friend from church left us a few sweet potatoes in our mailbox
Butternut squash and banana squash— Mike’s dad dropped off two butternut squashes and a giant banana squash (which cooks up like pumpkin) from their garden harvest last fall.
Oranges— A friend whose house is on the market invited us to go pick some citrus from their trees. We have been loving and appreciating them!
How We’re Feeling About Quarantine Food
When we first did an inventory of our food storage, freezer, etc, I was feeling pretty confident about the challenge of living off of just what we have at home. Not long after that, I started to get a little stressed every time I thought about food.
The trigger of the stress was that we were lacking in a few important areas, primarily leavening agents. I realized that we only had about a pound and a half of yeast, a little over a pound of baking powder, and about two and a half pounds of baking soda.
While that would last us a while under normal circumstances, with baking everything from scratch we could easily go through that really quickly, so I knew we needed to ration it. The problem is that we don’t know how long we need to ration it for. Rationing our leaven over two months would be a lot easier than rationing over six months.
The stress was really starting to affect me, so I looked at some bulk food sites online and found somewhere that I could get those items in bulk. I made an order and hopefully it will come through. Until I have it in my hands, I’m still being careful with rationing.
Aside from that, I’ve been feeling pretty good. As the weeks go by, I’m realizing that we are barely making a dent in what we have. I’m glad we started incorporating the boring things in now, so that we can spread the interesting foods out.
A Few Tips From This Week’s Food Storage Challenge
–Ration out good ingredients so you’ll be able to enjoy them down the road. I rationed out our remaining cheese into 5 containers and put 4 of them in the freezer so we can spread out one of our favorite add-ins.
–You can use HALF the amount of yeast that a recipe calls for and just let it rise longer. I did this with French bread and cinnamon rolls and it worked perfectly!
–Having even a simple dessert really makes you feel like your life isn’t so bad. We have made several desserts lately, which helps keep things exciting and helps encourage kids who are suspicious of eating foods that aren’t their well-loved favorites.
–Be conscious about how much you’re eating and stop when you are satisfied. It’s so easy to keep eating because something tastes good. This has always been a struggle for me as I’m trying to lose all this baby weight, but now that we are trying to make our food last, I have another reason to not overeat and it has been effective!
How are YOU managing?
I hope this was helpful to take a look at what our family is eating from our food storage during this quarantine time. I would love to hear how YOU are doing?
- What are YOU eating?
- What are some of your go-to food storage meals?
- What ingredients do you wish you had more of?
Stay home! Stay safe!
Quarantine Food Storage Challenge Series
Why We’re doing a Quarantine Food Storage Challenge, Pantry, Food Storage, Fridge, & Freezer Tour
UPDATE #1– What we’ve eaten, Food Tips
UPDATE #2– What we ate, Theme Days, Baking Supplies, Snacks, Seeds
UPDATE #3– What we ate, Trying New things, Garden Expansion?
UPDATE #4– What we ate, Food Storage FAQ
UPDATE #5– What we ate, New things to try
UPDATE #6– What we ate, New Things we tried
UPDATE #7– Pantry Update after 2 months of our challenge
UPDATE #8– What the kids think of the food storage challenge
I grocery shopped last Saturday and it was the first time I’d been in a store in three weeks. I was shocked at some of the prices: $5.99 for lb of butter, $5.69 for dozen local eggs. There were no bags of whole carrots, no chicken, no escarole, no spinach, no peanut butter, the entire aisle of paper goods was bare, no cleaning supplies, very little frozen veggies or fruit. I couldn’t bring myself to buy some items with such a high price tag. I would rather do without and get creative. I am in CT.
However, asparagus was on sale for $1.98 so I bought five pounds! Broccoli was also on sale and I bought three pounds.
I have my second batch of asparagus soup cooking right now. I lived in France for a semester in college and my “French mother” taught me how to make cream of x vegetable soup. Saute an onion and some garlic with oil, add chopped up potato, chopped up whatever the veg is, salt, pepper and water. Bring to a boil and cook until the potato is done. Use a hand blender to puree the soup and add cream or milk to taste. I’ve used asparagus, watercress, spinach, butternut squash, broccoli, and cauliflower at different times.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have a decently stocked pantry and a small chest freezer and know how to cook. The $64,000 question is how long will the lockdown last! CT is in lockdown until at least 20 May.
This is a fascinating series – thanks Stephanie for taking us along for the ride!
Do you have any recommendations for where to buy food supplies in bulk? (beans, rice, other pantry staples) I’ve been looking online but unfortunately a lot of the sites have limited reviews, or ones that point to them as scams. I’m hoping to find one someone can actually verify as reputable!
Can you share the recipe you use for bread for sandwiches – we are going through what we have very quicky and I would love to make my own but haven’t ever attempted. THANK YOU!
Hi Jess! The sandwich bread we make is here: https://www.sixfiguresunder.com/is-homemade-bread-cheaper/
We are really loving this French bread made with whole wheat flour lately though, so we’ve been making 4 loaves at a time and making sandwiches with it. It’s softer and lighter (even though it’s also whole wheat).
Sounds like your meals are getting rather creative. Fortunately (or not) both my husband and I as well as our daughter work in health care and are still working. We have had to make abbreviated schedule changes for now. With days off and longer hours and days off. To limit the number of people in the offices at one time. I ventured to the supermarket this week. Wasn’t able to get everything we needed. We usually eat all our meals from home so this hasn’t been affected. We are not big on going on so that hasn’t been affected. We have been using the days off to complete home remodel projects ( that we had previously purchased all the material’s for). Hoping to make a dent in a painting project (the whole house is getting painted) and remodeling the back of the house to remove some windows (that look more like office windows) to put in windows that we can actually open and then we are going to vinyl side the house. Luckily he is a DIY-er and know what he is doing and how to do it all so we don’t have any labor expense. I have a plan to start power washing the drive and walkway and porch in the coming weeks. Getting some much needed spring cleaning down inside the house right now.
I am really ready for life to return to “normal” and the stores to have stocked shelves. That has been my main frustration right now. We don’t have a whole lot of storage space so we can’t stockpile like you have but we did a great big grocery haul before the lock down started but we are running out of essential items like milk and eggs fresh fruit and produce and OJ now. I realize we could do without some of the things and we have but now that has gotten old. Yes we are social distancing to protect ourselves but I honestly really just miss going to the market.
Praying every day for this to come to an end and everyone that has been affected to heal and get well. Ready for normality to return.
That’s awesome that you’re getting DIY projects done at home! We’re praying for normal too. 🙂
I recommend the site ploetzblog.de
It’s in German but any translator should work. This guy uses only minimum amounts of fresh yeast and sourdough. Even if your execution of the recipes is only half as exact as his descriptions they work really nicely and you get artisanal bread that needs hardly any yeast. With these recipes a pound of yeast should last forever.
Thanks for sharing that resource!
I have really enjoyed your blogging and vlogging almost from the beginning. Thank you so much for what you do and how you encourage others.
I was watching the news and was feeling the urge to bulk up my food inventory the first week of January so I had started adding a few extra things every time someone went to the store, so we started out the shelter in place in pretty good shape. My housemates would call on their way home to see if anything was need so I would give them a couple of items off my running list. It took me two weeks to do a complete freezer and pantry inventory (I have health issues that limit me to working in 20-30 minutes. I live in a household with 4 of my adult children, 3 of them are still working although their hours have been reduced. Their employment has no contact with customers. Myself and one daughter are on paid leave from our employers. 2 of us are high risk for the virus so we are extra cautious. (We share living space, meals and household chores – it works well for us and in this economic time it is a good thing for us. It has also brought home how important being debt free is!)
I have a couple of suggestions:
Pancakes/Waffles- adding cinnamon/sugar mixture works well here, instead of plain pancakes or waffles. I have heard of some who add cocoa powder but mine weren’t fond of chocolate for breakfast.
Mix up a cake from either mix or scratch and bake them in your waffle maker for dessert. Top them with ice cream, yogurt, pudding,etc. They can be frozen ahead.
Oatmeal: When you shop again buy regular or quick oatmeal and pulse them in the food processor for bit and package them in individual containers for the kids’ breakfast.
For sandwiches- make them open face- egg salad, tuna salad, grilled cheese, grilled pizza, etc. You can use odd and end pieces of bread for them as well.
My favorite and economical cookbooks include the Make A Mix Books (originally Make-A-Mix and More Make-A-Mix, then combined into one Make A Mix) and the Dining in a Dime Cookbook by Kellam and Cooper. These books include recipes for making crackers, saltine and graham, and great recipes for all meals.
Sorry this is so long. Happy Easter everyone!
I’m glad you starting bulking up your food storage back in January! That’s great! Thanks for sharing all of your tips. We like doing cake mix in the waffle maker, but it has been a while. Stay safe and healthy! 🙂
I’m doing this challenge too, and really enjoying watching your progress. We’re only on day 6 though, so still have plenty of food.
We have chooks too, and a veggie garden. I’m really enjoying the challenge. My husband eats meat so today I have pea and ham soup on the stove and a pork roast in the oven. Those will provide loads of meals, and the roast meat can be used for all sorts of things.
I’m vegetarian so with the eggs, the garden and a hefty store of lentils, I’m pretty easy to feed under these conditions.
We have a dog and he has plenty of home made freezer meals.
Milk will be our problem though. We go through a fair bit as I make yoghurt, ricotta and feta. Plus drink loads of tea. I have some in the freezer, some long life and some powdered milk, but I don’t expect that will last much beyond a month. But that’s ok too. We have a home delivered local milk producer so I’ll re-order when I need to, but hope to extend that out for as long as possible.
I don’t have any cravings yet. But I’m sure we will!
PS Stephanie I also wanted to say, I’ve been following you for years now and you helped me hugely to get my finances in order. I’ve lost 90% of my work due to covid and just wanted to say a huge thank you. If not for you and your wise words, I’d be suffering a lot right now. Thank you from the bottom of my heart
Thank you for your kind words Kat! That made my day. ❤️ I’m glad that you have your finances in order and aren’t suffering like you otherwise would have been. That’s hard to lose 90% of your work!! Hopefully things will get back to normal before too long. How great that you have a garden! We’re working on getting one going right now.
I do not have any food storage. I do online grocery shopping at Walmart every 2 weeks and go and pick it up. Works for us.
I love your website (and have been enjoying you on YouTube now too). I am glad you were able to find some baking ingredients online. My favourite chocolate cake recipe uses vinegar and baking soda. I have also omitted the cocoa powder to make a vanilla version. I believe I also saw somewhere a version with bananas 🙂
My copy is in a beat up cookbook but I found a version online.
https://www.thekitchenmagpie.com/crazy-cake-or-wacky-cake-recipe/
Thanks for sharing your recipe Tamaira! I’ve made Wacky cake before, but it was years ago!
Thanks for the great advice! Meat has been harder to come by so we’ve been having more meatless meals. Our pantry is still pretty well stocked. We’ve been enjoying potato soup, refried bean toastadas, meatless chili, and other soups. Our weather is still cool so soup has been a great go to. Stay safe!
Those are some great meatless meals Sherrie! Hooray for soup weather. It will get hot soon enough.
We were given some decades old stored wheat several years ago. Once we had a powerful blender, we found the best use of it was to make blender pancakes with it.(Using the whole wheat berries in the blender.)
Good luck to you. I’ve considered doing the same thing, even before this virus, actually, for the reasons you talk about. I haven’t been brave enough to really go for it though, so I’m very interested in hearing about your experiment!
Hi Laurie! It is definitely a blessing to have this food storage, especially the things that were given to us. Oh, and my sister does blender pancakes like that– it works great!
We don’t have quite the food storage that you have 😉 Also no chickens or powdered milk. So I’m still shopping about every 3 weeks. But I have been baking home ground wheat bread for several years using a pre-ferment technique called a poolish which uses only 2 3/4 tsp of yeast for four loaves. In a nutshell, I mix half the recipe’s flour with 1/4 tsp yeast plus an equal weight of water (1000g flour and 1000g water), then I let it sit overnight for about 12-14 hours before adding the remaining ingredients including another 1.5 tsp yeast. This is just one pre-ferment technique out there, but I wanted to suggest that there are lots of possibilities for using less yeast and they actually make a more delicious loaf, in my opinion. Happy baking!
Thanks for sharing Jen! I read about using a poolish when I was doing some research on leavening to stretch our yeast, but I had never heard of it before so I wasn’t sure. Thank you for verifying that it’s a real thing and that you love it!! 🙂
Poolish is how french bread is made in France!
Um that cinnamon roll looks SO TASTY. Yum!
I think the whole “not knowing how long this will last” thing is the most challenging part of…well, everything about this. Whether you’re living on food storage or not, it’s really hard to get your head around the sheer uncertainty of the situation, you know?
Our eating hasn’t changed a lot, honestly, although the way we get our food has. We have started using the express pickup at our grocery store (basically, putting the order in online, letting an employee pick it and then picking it up when it’s ready). We’ve paired that with ordering produce from a local farm that is doing contactless delivery. So far it’s been pretty good — we don’t always get everything on our grocery store order but we get most of it and we make it work. We are also trying to order takeout a couple times a week from our favourite franchises/local restaurants. It’s not much but it feels good to feel like we’re doing something.
Yes! The uncertainty is so hard! That’s nice that you have grocery pick up and can still support local businesses!
So good to know about the yeast! Since we also have chickens (and therefore have plenty of eggs) but don’t have as much butter for baked goods, I’ve been using my mom’s favorite hack of “half the fat, add an egg” in baked goods.
(I’ll link my blog post about it below if you need more clarification):
https://www.toloveandtolearn.com/2017/10/11/how-to-cut-the-fat-of-almost-any-baking-recipe-in-half/
I really am loving this series! We won’t be able to go for nearly as long as you when it comes to not shopping, but I’m definitely not shopping any more this month, and hopefully partway through next, too. My trickiest thing right now is that my husband was literally just diagnosed with celiac right as all of this started, which meant that we had to get a whole lot more pantry ingredients (like almond flour, corn tortillas, and other gluten-free options), and now I have a steep learning curve ahead to see how to manage his condition while not wasting the non-gluten-free options we have for the rest of us. It’s been…interesting. I have started to lose a bit of the baby weight myself, just because I feel guilty baking cookies he can’t eat, so I’ve stopped making them! ha ha. Silver linings 🙂
Hi Torrie, I’m not sure if you checked out Iowa Girl Eats. Kristen has Celiac Disease as well. My daughter has an intolerance so it’s a little easier. But we have other food allergies and her site is a Blessing. Take care and stay Safe and Healthy.
That’s a great tip Torrie! I’ll have to try that!
That’s so hard to start a new restrictive diet in the midst of all of this! You’re so nice tonot tempt him with cookies!