Jared and I were fresh out of college with a new baby when we jumped on the house-buying bandwagon—purchasing a construction-phase “starter” home in a trendy part of town. I’d become a stay-at-home mom and craved the prospect of “settling”—expecting a house would establish us and fulfill my insecurities. Jared, my adoring husband, supported me and worked hard to provide— aiming to make his young wife happy.
But six months later his “stable” job ended and what had been the perfectly painted picture became a financially stressful time.
When I was a kid I watched my mom can jars and jars of fruit and grind wheat to make homemade bread. She was very resourceful and while our large family never had much, we never went hungry, even during times of financial stress and job loss. My mom’s example taught me to be grateful to “have enough” and to always try to save for a rainy day. Because those days would come. So even from our student-budget newlywed days Jared and I got in the habit of going to the grocery store and buying one for now, and one for later, building a small reserve, “just in case.”
When Jared’s job came to an end we had very little savings and a high mortgage payment and we knew things would get desperate pretty quickly without a new plan. We ultimately decided to sell the brand-new house, make a new dream, and go to graduate school. In the weeks leading up to his last paycheck, I scraped together what I could selling my artwork and old textbooks. And we ate from the pantry.
I don’t remember a single meal we had, but I do remember about a month into the pantry purge I realized our rainy day had come, and that besides taking a pocketful of change for milk and a bit of fresh produce, we had enough.
Fast forwarding a few years later, we now have an abundant pantry stockpile thanks to couponing and better financial habits. But the lessons we learned from those earlier days are etched in my memory and I want to be better prepared if/when a rainy day comes again.
Food Storage is the idea of “storing” food for “what if” situations or rainy days such as:
- financial (such as a job loss or just a tight month)
- natural disaster (which would make running to the grocery store near impossible)
- or as simple as running out of an ingredient while making dinner
Having a supply on hand eliminates stress in emergencies and I find great truth and comfort in being prepared.
Next. . . part two. My plan for food storage and some great resources.
This is a sponsored post, though all experiences and opinions are mine. Shelf Reliance sells food storage, rotating shelves, and emergency preparedness products and independent consultant, Jade Garn has generously donated a #10 can of shelf stable macaroon mix to give to one of my readers. Even though the macaroons have a 20 year shelf life, I’ve tried them, and they’re AMAZING so they will not likely last long at your house! In fact, after we made them Jared and I hid them from our kids so we wouldn’t have to share!
The great thing about this mix is that they only need water–no eggs or oil, so they are great in a pinch, whether it’s a little comfort food during an actual emergency, or just an emergency of needing to take cookies to a last-minute get together.
- To enter, leave us a comment. . . do you have food storage? Why or why not?
- Bonus entry (leave a second comment) if you visit Jade’s site and let us know which shelf-stable products you’d be interested in trying.
Ah food storage…I have struggled with this for over 10 years now. I will say that I probably have a 2 week supply BUT when my husband decided to leave his job and go to school full time for two years, the 3 month supply that we had was really nice to have as a supplement to our groceries. Definitely helped out in the “famine”! I like your idea of buy one for now and one for later. I need to get back into that.
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Looking through the site, I’d probably have to choose a dessert…anything with chocolate. If we were in a position of needing to use the food storage for survival, I’d be a lot happier with some chocolate. With chocolate, anything is possible.
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I’ve nearly always had a reasonably full entry… enough for a family to survive on for nearly a month. I began purposefully stocking up more last summer… shortly after I lost my job. Now it’s been nearly a year of job-searching and I’ve been living off of my “rainy day” storage for a few months… and helping neighbors around me with “rainier” days than mine. Finally found a new job… but it’ll be another couple of weeks till payday. I’m glad I had it… and I can’t wait to rebuild it!
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Your link to “Jade’s” says “not found”.
I agree with Mandy… rainy days always have a little ray of sunshine when there’s a little chocolate to be had.
Other than that, anything gluten-free. (My younger daughter is gluten intolerant.)
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PAM! I HAVE a can of that stuff and YUM! It’ll never even come close to the 6 months from open shelf life.
We tried this:
Mix 2 1/2 cups of macacroon mix with 1/2 C hot water & set aside.
Make 1 chocolate cake mix according to directions and pour batter into well greased & floured BUNDT cake pan. Drop the macaroon mixture by spoonfuls into a ring in the middle of the cake mix (it will sink into the cake as it bakes)
Bake according to cake mix directions…approximately 35 minutes.
Let pan rest at least 25 minutes…cake should be nearly cool before you invert it.
Glaze with pwd sugar/milk OR warm chocolate fudge topping.
YUM!
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Why do I have food storage? Because it’s cheaper to buy it when it’s on sale…and we live 30 minutes from town and it gives me peace of mind.
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pameladonnis Reply:
February 26th, 2012 at 2:00 am
Oh my. That sounds sinfully good! I may have to try that!!
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I love the FD strawberries. We throw a handful in a bowl of generic Cheerios for a yummy treat.
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