Food Storage Analyzer

When Emergency Essentials released their Food Storage Analyzer I pulled up my complicated excel spreadsheet and entered my food storage inventory into the analyzer. I projected teenage boy ages for the baby and pre-schooler and it told me to project 9200 calories a day. Based on this, I learned that I have 163.81 days of food stored up with percentage shortages of sodium and fat. But we're at 220% of fiber! Now where's that wheat grinder?

The best feature is that you can add things to the inventory from the grocery store or that I've purchased from their competitors like Walton Feed or the LDS Cannery. If you look at the nutrition panel, you can easily plug in the carbs, protein, fiber and the system will tally up and tell you if you've got a good balance of nutrition. My own spreadsheet tracks the retailer, price and date of items that I've bought (so that I can rotate FIFO), so I won't be getting rid of my separate inventory, at least not until the analyzer adds fields for this info. Overall, I am pretty excited about this feature. Oh, and also the $10 gift card for writing this review doesn't hurt one bit.

Kitchen Day

Finally our kitchen is put together enough to do some real cooking. I worked on 4 main dishes and 2 desserts today:

Black bean lime chili
Pasta Milano (Macaroni Grill copy-cat recipe)
Spicy thai lentils
Chili spread with mexican red beans (crock pot)
Lemon bundt cake (used powdered eggs, butter and buttermilk from food storage, but fresh lemons)
Papaya sorbet

I hope Paul and Joseph can pick up the pace eating so I can have another big cooking day. Some of this will have to be frozen for lazy days to come. I have my doubts that Samuel will eat any of the main dishes, but we'll try.

Packing up Short-term Food Storage and the Slippery Slope of the Pregnant Mind Toward the "Less is More" Philosophy

I am trying to limit each box about 40 lbs. Canned food is heavy and my sympathy goes out to any who help us move it down the stairs and across town. Thus my efforts to use my food storage are lately re-doubled. But I am trying to be realistic about what we can eat in a week and a half. I just made blender wheat pancakes and twinkie surprise cupcakes from the Everyday Food Storage blog (see my favorites) and they were both great.

One sad thing about this pregnancy is that the very thought "food storage" tends to nauseate me due to a history of failed experiments and spoilage. I employed the "use it up" proverb suffering through a whole can of oatmeal thinking it just tasted old when it was actually spoiled. Luckily I didn't get sick. And I couldn't understand why Kari raved about potato pearls until I opened a can last week that was only 2 years old and they tasted fine. I shudder to think I may have fed both the oatmeal and the old potato pearls to Samuel. The food in question was from a former VT who moved overseas. I suspect she may have stored the cans in her Houston garage. I, on the other hand, am completely at fault for such failed attempts as "sneaking cracked wheat into (insert inappropriate main dish here)." Enough about me. Think about this expert advice:

If you ever have to eat your food storage, you’ll wish you had stored the food in the house and the furniture in the garage.

I am planning to eat all mine. It's crazy not to, given the amount of money and effort it takes to gather, catalog and maintain the supply. So as we house-shopped, I considered where we'd keep food storage. Currently in our 900 sq ft apartment I have about 35 cases and 10 buckets of long-term items that fit easily in less than half of 2 separate closets. The closets of our new house won't be quite so accommodating, but each closet will get 10 cases or so. The closets-only-solution will be a problem in 5 years or so, by which time I hope to have a true year's supply for at least 4 adults. So I have been brainstorming what things will be relegated to the garage in favor of having food take over various parts of the house. And not just relegated to the garage, but also relegated from our lives.

When we downsized to the apartment I got rid of more than half of my shoes and clothes. That was easy compared to getting rid of some of Samuel's baby clothes and accessories. And I only regret getting rid of our ice cream maker EVERY time I see a recipe for ice cream - pretty often. But perhaps a better approach is: the less we take on, the less we will need to give up. This was about the time I started the "Less is More" blog, as giving things up was much on my mind. (But what are things? Discuss.) To an extent Joseph and I have tried to make this a ruling principle of our lives, often to the confusion of our acquaintances and even close friends. Try telling me that at the garage sale 2 weeks ago when I dropped $8 for 40 Hot Wheels and another $12 for random kid stuff. That was a hit to my food storage budget, the name I give to any unassigned cash. It's something I can always justify. I don't know what I'll do once I actually have "it all" (a year's supply).

Deep Freeze

I miss our old refrigerator. More specifically, the freezer part of the refrigerator.

Warning - cold, dark secrets follow. I'd call it a spoiler-warning, but the whole purpose of a freezer is to prevent spoilage.

Here's a partial inventory because I don't want to dig back there.

Strawberries were $1/lb at Randalls (limit 4 lbs with $10 additional purchase - luckily they had diapers on the clearance table). These are chpped up to freeze individually on a platter before I put them in a bag.

Bananas - freeze to go with the strawberries in future smoothies. Closeout item. Bought a huge bag for $1.00.

Nighthawk frozen dinners. High class item. Closeout.

Fajita seasoned Ore-Ida fries. Closeout item. Bought one. Liked them so much we had to buy 3 more because they won't be available in days.

Instant Oatmeal packets. Closeout item. Gross-out warning: Last time we bought these for 72-hr kits they had bugs when we opened them to eat at food rotation time. Discovered this when I opened the microwave and they had crawled up the edge of the bowl. So my latest grain tip is to freeze them for 48 hours to kill any uh, eggs.

Cheese - When it's on sale for $3/lb or less I buy at least 3 lbs.

Hot dog buns - we went off nitrates about a year ago, but hot dogs are something Samuel will actually eat, so...

Bulgar Wheat - Saw this called for in the recipe so I bought it. But there's no telling when I will find that recipe or if I will ever see it again.

Hamburgers - Yellow squash and green peppers were in the produce close-out bin way cheap. Chopped them up and mixed with hamburger - made about 12 patties for all our summer grilling.

Whole wheat flour - When I grind wheat I fill a gallon size bag and store it in the freezer. Fresh ground wheat flour can go rancid, or so I hear. I don't want to risk it.

Chocolate fudge bars - it's summertime, and the 24-pack seemed more economical at the time. We have about 8 left.

Frozen vegetarian casserole for Mumsie - she left it here in February and she'll eat it when she comes again in June.

Bell peppers - when these are in produce clearance (but still look good) I get them for $.25 each usually- chop up and freeze immediately for kabobs, pizza, stir fry etc. There's 1.5 gallons in there right now.

Behind the front layer you'll find pork chops, chicken breasts, 3 lbs of hamburger, 2 lbs steak, 1 lb. catfish, 1/2 gallon milk (close out for $1 - 3 days until expiration - freezes just fine), frozen peas, large bag of spinach and who knows what else.

In the door: frozen cubes of buttermilk (close-out $1), walnuts, fresh (well frozen) cranberries (only available at holiday season, so you have to stock up), yeast, gluten, butter, almonds, pepperoni, chopped green onions, cilantro, and a freezer-burned orange popsicle. (Samuel always wanted green in the pre-fudgesicle era).

So I have a weakness for closeout items like meat, dairy, and produce. If there's a website that says it will freeze well, I will freeze it.