Food Storage Weekly Lessons

A friend of mine from the Seattle area sent these lessons to me to include in this blog. The lessons are great. The Relief Society President assembled this valuable information. You will, no doubt appreciate the hours of planning and forethought that has gone into this program. Enjoy!

Lesson#1

Preparedness
March 31, 2008

Outline of this class:
We will have a regular e-mail for you that will be full of information and helps to get your food storage growing! I

I hope that each person will feel free to ask questions that we can share the answers with the group.

We will start with the basics and build on them.

There will be challenges offered each month for you to grow your storage.

I would like this to be interactive–if you have some ideas, tips or helps, please share them! Many heads are a great resource.
First Things First
Prayer
The most important thing I will tell you about working on your food storage is to pray and ask for help to know what you need, to find the resources you need and the Lord’s help to find it. He will guide you and direct you.

You must have space to store your food storage items
Look around your home for spaces to keep things. A few suggestions–if you have a room it is ideal. You can add shelves and dedicate this area for your own storehouse. If you don’t have a room, look to see if you have a room that could be shared to store this in. If not that, then find a closet, under beds, in corner cupboards, etc, . You can also use wheat buckets for the bed frame, add a thick piece of plywood to the bucket and a mattress. Look around your home and get creative.

Shelving

Shelving can be purchased, or you can use your wheat buckets for shelf ends and buy pieces of board for the shelf itself. You can store a lot of items in this. Look around at garage sales, people getting rid of shelves, etc.

Temperature/Light/Moisture of the Storage Location

Cool temperature helps to prolong storage life. For example if you store your foods at 90* F the shelf life will be half of what it would be at 70* F. Your storage needs to be kept if possible below 72* and above freezing.

Humidity is another factor to consider. Do not put your storage area in the same room with your dryer and washer, because the humidity there is high. Also package your foods in containers that will keep any moisture out of it. You need also to keep your storage off the concrete floor.

Light will degrade the nutritional content of your food over time. Keep your storage in an area that is dark most of the time. If you don’t’ have a dark place to keep things in, keep them in cardboard boxes.

Important things to remember

Your food storage is only as good as the quality of food you put into it, it will not improve.
As time goes on the food will deteriorate in nutritional value, so it is important that you set up your storage area so you can rotate.(Except long term items)

Date all food when you purchase it.

Your food storage area should be the cleanest place in your home. It is an investment in your future.

We live in earthquake area. In a later post we will discuss more how to protect your food.
Let’s Get Organized!

These are the things you need for this class

#1- The first thing I would like you to do, is to gather all the written preparedness information that you have. That would include:

* books
* cookbooks

* papers

* handouts
* etc.

- Then find a place in your home that you can have easy access for these resources.

#2- Get (3) Binders with dividers to organize your information

All the loose information you have, please divide it into two categories. One category is preparation for a disaster; the second is after the disaster has happened. These will be the subjects of your two binders. These will become your personal preparedness bibles. Make your title personal, because these are yours. They are portable so can be taken if you need to evacuate, unlike a filing cabinet. They are also much easier to use this way.

I will share with you some titles just to give you an idea—Use the binders that have a sleeve on the outside for so you can slip in a title page.

(A)- Binder- “Preparedness Workbook for the __________ family”.

Then there is a picture of a cornucopia

Under that it says "A resource to help prepare as the prophets have commanded us.

"For God hath not given the spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind." 2 Tim 1:7

Inside this binder is all the information I have gathered to get us prepared. It is very important to help you organize your storage for future use. When a crisis comes for example, the information I will need is not how to do certain things, such as how many hours candles burn, how much is needed of things etc. the time for that will be past.

(B)- Binder--this is a crucial for an actual disaster.

“Preparedness Resource Book”

Information for Crisis Circumstances

Then a picture of praying hands
Then the scripture: I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me!" Phil 4:13

This binder is something that I would take with me if we had to evacuate or use if we stayed here.
I have the binders divided into:

Lighting
Fuel
Cooking
etc

The third binder is for recipes. This binder is optional, but really handy if you need it.

#3- Make a commitment to regularly purchase food storage supplies.


Several of you have asked for ideas of how to organize your actual storage...and several of you have stated you feel you have a pretty good handle on that. So those that have said they feel good about their organization---will you please e-mail me back your ideas so I can pass them along? I love many heads working
CURRENT WEEK HOMEWORK1 - Make Binders, gather information that you already have, you are starting your preparedness library.

Next week we will cover wheat

PS The cannery has a new shipment of the pre-filled cases of wheat. I am sending you a calculator by attachment. You just plug in your numbers and it does the rest.