This page has been shared 80 times. View these Tweets.
Making a family food storage plan for 3 months can feel daunting. Overwhelming. Something you’d rather not even think about.
How much do I need?
Where do I start?
How am I going to pay for it?
I suggest working on a 3 Month Family Food Storage Plan. 3-Months of foods you KNOW your family will eat. Nothing funky. Nothing you hope they will eat. Don’t buy into the theory that when people get hungry enough, they’ll eat whatever you put in front of them. It simply ain’t true!
I suggest you begin by creating 7 breakfast menus, 7 lunch menus, and 7 dinner menus that your family is familiar with and enjoys.
Then break each menu down to each ingredient. Don’t just assume you have enough tomato sauce, go and check. Add up how many teaspoons of salt you will need and make sure you have it on hand. How sad will you be when your Italian pasta bake has no oregano because you thought you had enough? If you like mayo with your tuna salad, you’d better list mayo on your ingredient list. The same with pickles. How’s your supply of celery salt looking? Go ahead and look, I’ll wait…
Now you should have the ingredients listed for 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches, and 7 dinners.
Since you are working towards a THREE MONTHS family food storage plan, you’ll want to take those ingredients and multiply it by 12. 12 weeks = 3 months.
- If you are planning on serving oatmeal for breakfast once a week for 3 months, and your family uses a pound of dry oats per breakfast, then you are going to need 12 pounds of dried oats.
- If you need 1 cup of raisins for each breakfast, they you will need 12 cups of raisins total. How much brown sugar does your crew plow through each time they eat oatmeal? You are going to need that much, times 12.
- Oh, and if your family likes milk on their oatmeal, you’re gonna want to make sure you have either powdered or canned milk in your stash.
What I like the most about this plan of starting your food storage is that you wind up with exactly what you need in order to make a variety of complete meals.
(And because you have three months of meals your family can’t wait to eat, you can easily rotate the ingredients for each meal. Yes, you must rotate your food storage. Don’t give me the stink eye over this. Storing only cans of stuff that lasts for 20 years, is expensive and full of sodium. In times of crisis your family is going to want foods that are familiar. )
Imagine 3 months of nothing but taco shells, green beans and pudding cups.
Yeah.
This plan is sounding better already, huh?
Food Storage Plan
PS: Wondering how to make meals that call for meat if the power has gone out? Yoders makes canned meat that actually tastes good. With an (approx) 8 year shelf life, you may want to invest in a few cans. I keep a couple of cases of the canned hamburger on hand.
