I’m back with another update on our Quarantine Food Storage Challenge. Today I’m also answering lots of your questions about our experience with this food storage challenge.
We’ve been staying home for 7 weeks now. Our last monthly grocery haul was on March 9th, so almost 8 weeks ago. On March 25th we decided to start doing a Food Storage Challenge where we don’t go to the store at all.
Since we have long term food storage (that we have stored for years and years), we figure that now is a great time to see what it’s like to live on it and learn from our experience so that we can improve our what and how much we store in the future.
In this update I’m going to be sharing what we actually ate this week and I’m also going to answer some frequently asked questions about our food storage in general and our experience so far with this challenge.
What we ate this week
I won’t go into as much detail with what we ate this past week because I have lots of your questions to cover, but here’s the short version:
Breakfasts
Oatmeal, cream of wheat, fried eggs, cinnamon rolls, and sourdough waffles.
Lunches
PBJs, PBH tortillas (one day when we didn’t have bread baked yet), string cheese, orange slices, apple slices, pumpkin bread
Dinners
Spaghetti squash with sauce– This is a spaghetti squash I got at the local u-pick farm last summer, like in july I think! That’s the great thing about winter squash– it lasts so long! If you’ve never had spaghetti squash it’s pretty cool how it cooks up and can be served just like spaghetti.
Shepherd’s Pie– I forgot to get a picture of this. It’s one of my go-to quick meals when I make it from instant mashed potatoes, stuffing, whatever veggies we have, whatever meat we have, and cheese, except this time we didn’t really have much cheese on it.
Stir Fry with Rice– This was kind of a vegetable stir fry but with homemade sweet and sour sauce and pork stew meat. I cooked the frozen stir fry veggies so they were a little softer than a normal stir fry. That’s how the kids and I prefer them.
Beans, cabbage salad, and pasta– This was a somewhat random meal, but it was fun to have a cabbage salad. I bought the cabbage in march’s monthly shopping trip with the intention of making egg rolls. I thought I had a big bag of carrots, but realized I didn’t!
Picnic with G & G— We went to my in-laws to play for the evening. The kids cooked hot dogs over the fire. We had diced seasoned potatoes and green salad that Mike’s mom made and I brought jello with pineapple and deviled eggs. We had pumpkin custard and brownies for dessert. It was all delicous!
Leftovers x 2— I love leftover days because I don’t have to cook and everyone can choose the thing they liked best to eat.
Dessert
Brownies, apple pie (homemade pie I froze), lemon bars
Some Food Storage Challenge FAQ
In the past few weeks as we’ve shared our Quarantine Food Storage Challenge updates, I’ve had lots of great questions in comments and emails and even from local friends. I’ve tried to answer them individually, but I figure that if one of you asked, probably more of you have the same question. If I don’t cover your questions, feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll get back to you (and maybe eventually do a FAQ part 2.
Are you keeping track of what you’re using up?
Yes. It’s not an exact science, but it’s more or less accurate. When I took inventory at the outset of this challenge I tallied up how much of each food storage item we had. I added a column where I tally what we’ve used in a different color.
What do you do about fresh produce?
Well, once our fresh produce is gone, it’s gone. We have tried to stretch it as much as possible so we could enjoy it longer. Even without fresh produce, we can still eat healthy foods. We have fruits and vegetables that are frozen, canned, dehydrated, or freeze dried.
Do we miss fresh produce? Of course! We’re looking forward to having salad on the menu regularly once our garden grows or we get back to the store, but until then, we can still have fruits and vegetables in our diet.
What about dairy products?
Running out of milk is probably the number one thing that sends people to the store, even when they have a pretty well-stocked pantry. In our long-term food storage we have powdered (non-fat dry) milk. Do I love to drink it? Nope! Using it as an ingredient doesn’t bother me though. We even make homemade yogurt with powdered milk!t
Do the kids mind? Not a bit! In fact I usually assign one of the three older kids (8,10, and 12) to make it. They all drink it without a problem!
We have cheese frozen that I rationed out into containers and put in the freezer, but the rations are definitely smaller than our normal cheese use. We’re eating it very sparingly. We miss it for sure!
We started the challenge with on open container of sour cream and an unopened 3 lb container of sour cream. We just opened that new container this week, which was exciting. We’re big sour cream fans around here!
We also miss ice cream! Though making frozen yogurt with our homemade yogurt is a great substitute!
Why do you have foods in your food storage that you’ve never eaten or cooked with before?
In Quarantine Food Storage Update #3, I shared that we had a 45 lb bucket of split peas. I had never cooked with split peas before and was a little hesitant about it at first. Well, it turned out great, but it raised the question of why we would store such a huge amount of something we had never cooked before.
I definitely recommend storing what you eat and eating what you store. Being in a stressful emergency situation isn’t the best time for acquiring new tastes or learning to cook new foods. Plus, you don’t want to spend money on foods that might end up wasted because your family doesn’t end up liking it!
Our situation is a little different. We have been pretty diligent at acquiring and using food storage since we were first married (nearly 15 years ago!). In addition to what we have bought ourselves, we have also been the recipients of food storage items from friends who moved and for whatever reason couldn’t bring their food storage with them.
This has happened on multiple occasions over the years. I’m not sure how we got so blessed, but I think it’s partly because people know that we will graciously accept it and actually use it. We’ve also been taught in our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) to be self-reliant and prepared for unexpected situations. This includes having food stored for things like an emergency, a natural disaster, a job loss, or (who knew?) a pandemic. Because of that, many of our friends and acquaintances from church also have food storage.
All that to say that we have been given food storage items that we have never tried before. Since we have the space to store it, we gratefully accept it and this food storage challenge is giving us a great opportunity to try some of those new things!
What do you do with all of that wheat?
If you’ve seen the hundreds of pounds of wheat we have in our garage, then you might also wonder what we do with it. It’s an ingredient that not everyone keeps on hand, especially in such large quantities.
We have an electric wheat grinder that we love that we use to make freshly ground whole wheat flour. Then we use that flour for everything you can imagine using flour for… baking bread, muffins, bagels, cookies, cakes, naan, etc. The possibilities are endless.
There are other things you can do with wheat, but (so far) for us it’s just baking.
The great thing about wheat is that it stores forever (30+ years). We have some wheat that we purchased in bulk ourselves and some wheat that we were given by older friends who were moving. The older wheat we’re using is from the 1980s!
Won’t you have to majorly re-stock your food storage when this is all over?
Yep! We’re actually looking forward to it! Like I said, a lot of our food storage that we got from other people is pretty old, so we’re glad to make good use of it and then replace it with new stuff!
In our time in quarantine, I’ve even re-organized our garage food storage spaces after being inspired by my mother-in-law’s extensive food storage.
Are you setting aside money for stocking up after this is over?
Yes! I’m putting what we otherwise would have spent on groceries into a “preparedness fund” that I will use to restock our food storage once we get back to shopping.
Do you have any recommendations for where to buy food supplies in bulk?
The first place I always look is the food storage through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS church). You don’t have to be a member to purchase the food. Look here to see if there is a home storage center located near you. You can also order online. The prices are great and the products are in number 10 cans so they are perfect for storing long-term. They are out of lots of things right now, so I would check back in a while after things calm down.
Sam’s Club is another great place to find bulk items like flour, sugar, rice, and canned goods.
Winco has lots of great bulk foods with tons of variety and great prices. They have some 25 pound bags of the most commonly purchased bulk items readily available for purchase, but if you call ahead you can get any of the bulk items by the bag. They even give you a discount at the register for a bit off of the normal bulk per pound price.
Ask around for bulk food suppliers in your area. There’s bound to be somewhere!
Well, that’s a lot to cover! If you have a question that I didn’t hit on, feel free to ask and I will answer! I’ll see you back here next week for our monthly budget update! It was a pretty epic budget month!
This is really inspiring. We had this book growing up, I think it was called Mormonisms, with definitions of different church stuff. One was on food storage. I forget the full definition but it was something like, “The Brethren tell us to have a year’s supply of food, but realistically you only need 3 months, because it’ll take you a month to decide you’re hungry enough to eat it and after two months of eating it you’d rather die.” Good to see you’re not at that point yet!
Ha ha! That’s funny! It seriously has not been bad. In the future we’ll just store lots of cheese in the freezer and I will store chocolate chips by the 10lb bag! We’re doing fine! Of course if we JUST had wheat, beans, rice, and oats, it would get pretty boring. Thankfully we have enough other things to keep it interesting!
Thank you! I was wondering about online bulk food sources, too. Keep up the good work! This blog series is fascinating!
Thanks Deb! I’m glad you’re enjoying the series!
Really enjoying this series Stephanie! Wondering if your family has thought beyond long term food storage to power storage? I was reading about solar generators and remembered that in your area there were times when no power was available. Considering whether we should update our emergency planning to include a generator of some sort?
Hi Paivi! I’m glad you’re enjoying the series! We bought a generator last fall after PG&E turned off our power for the third time. When there’s high fire danger conditions, they turn off our power for days at a time. It won’t run our whole house, but it will run our fridge and/or freezer if need be.
Have you tried making cheese?
It’s funny that you ask that Linda because I am actually going to try this week. I have some rennet tablets that we’ll try with our powdered milk. Wish me luck!
Thank you for the links to the church’s on site stores and online stores. Did I read this correctly, I can use these?
That’s right Sandra! You don’t have to be a church member to buy the food storage items!
I am also loving this series. I’ve been joining along but I’ve nearly run out of food combinations and so have arranged a food order to arrive next Wednesday. I’ll try again, but even just lasting 3 or 4 weeks is a huge step for us.
I’m super impressed Stephanie, and love reading your updates.
Thanks for the kind words Kat! It sounds like you are doing great!! Those big strides definitely deserve celebrating!
I know I say it every post, but I’m really loving this series! I just find it endlessly fascinating (of course, it helps that I’m a member too and was also brought up by a mom who has a truly epic food storage).
I’m curious as to your definition of “when everything has calmed down.” In Utah right now, we went from “phase red” to “phase orange” yesterday, which meant that there was a “soft opening” of a lot of things like dine-in establishments (with precautions), etc. Would you count that as calmed down? Or are you waiting until life is back to whatever “normal” will look like for the next year or two…possibly several months down the road? Just curious!
That’s a great question Torrie! I really don’t have a good answer I guess. Things are loosening up a bit here, too. I think we’re just going to wait it out as long as we can. I used to think that maybe when we can actually go back to church and school that that would qualify as “back to normal,” but it looks as though large gatherings (like church) will be some of the last things to be added back in. I definitely want to do a big restock before fall as there may be another round of all this by then. Hopefully things will go well with the garden, so we will have that. I think we are set to keep going the way we’re going for at least a few more months (if I can get some chocolate chips delivered, that is. #kidding #notkidding)
Hello! I am loving this series. My question is about non-food items. Where doesn’t that come into play with regards to preparedness?
That should be “does”. Sorry about that!
That’s a great question Jennifer! We try to keep at least a few months of personal care and household items stocked at any given time. We are buying them all the time on a rotating basis, meaning I (usually) don’t wait to buy toothpaste/deodorant/shampoo/toilet paper etc until we are completely out. I buy it when I find a great deal or our supply *starts* to diminish. And when I buy it I buy it in bulk usually. That sounds like it would be expensive to buy those things in bulk, but it isn’t, because I’m not buying everything every month. Maybe in March I stock up on a few months of TP and toothpaste and in April I stock up on 3-6 months of laundry detergent because there’s a great sale. This pandemic has been a wake-up call to get a little more organized and prepared on that front though. I have mostly just lived/shopped this way for convenience and for saving money, but adding preparedness as another reason makes it even more compelling. For example we are blessed to all be very healthy, so we rarely take medicine. Whenever someone does get sick, I find I have to go buy medicine (tylenol, etc) because I’m not well-stocked. Fortunately I was stocked on Tecnu before poison oak season (Mike just got it pretty bad a few weeks ago) because we go through a lot of that around here! I think I’m rambling now, but this is a good topic that I will try to tackle in a future post and video. Thanks! Feel free to ask any follow-up questions. 🙂
First of all, thank you! You have been an inspiration on a lot of fronts for me for probably 5 years now. I am not Mormon but my family’s best friends growing up were and I am still in touch with them. For sure I have always had a well-stocked pantry but we are now for reals building a food storage system.
Secondly, Tecnu is soooo expensive, and I am sooooo sensitive to poison ivy (and out in it all summer long, we live on an acre with a big garden and lots of wooded areas and some areas over-run with it, and the animals bring it in on their fur, etc), and believe it or not I have discovered that Dawn dishsoap (or probably any one of the very strong dish soaps designed to remove oils) is as good and much cheaper than Tecnu. Little secret there (and I get a rash so bad from it somebody thought I was undergoing chemotherapy last year–it was on my face). So if it works for me (I use it daily in the summer) you might consider it!
Thanks for following along Lindsey! That’s awesome that you’re building up a food storage system! It’s a great time for it! Thanks for the Tecnu hack! I grew up around poison ivy but I never got it. My husband and kids, on the other get poion oak really bad!! We will definitely give dawn a try. In fact, we still haven’t cleaned all the tools from a few weeks ago when Mike got a really bad case of it, so maybe we’ll just use Dawn to clean it (wearing gloves of course). That would be much more economical than Tecnu for sure! 🙂