Book Review

I'm currently reading I Dare You to Eat It, a book about food storage, by Liesa Card.

Liesa Card's a working mother who doesn't really like cooking, but has a testimony that food storage is important and the prophets wouldn't be telling 13 million plus members and the world to have a food storage for nothing if they didn't mean it.

She began her food storage by doing what a lot of people do, buying the basics...wheat, oats, beans, etc., but like most of us, she had no idea what to do with it.

Like her, when I bought our food storage basics, I figured I'd have it, store it and throw it out in thirty years unless (heaven forbid) we'd ever need it.

But that's a waste!! I got to a point where I felt like if somebody doesn't know what to do with wheat than they shouldn't have it in our food storage. Plus, there is no guarantee that you and/or your kids' bodies would react well to moving from having little or no wheat in your diet to having wheat every meal in a crisis.

Liesa Card pointed out that the Church does still recommend getting the basics, though. Maybe we do have to do some hunting to find wheat recipes our families will tolerate and grow accustom to, but luckily wheat isn't the only basic thing we can have in our food storage. Church Dry good Canneries provide oats, rice, pasta, potato flakes or pearls, etc. in addition to wheat (click here to see order form).

Surely, there are meals that your family eats with oats, rice, pasta, or mashed potatoes. When we're planning your food storage, why not "notice what your already eating." Card says, "One day I realized that instead of constantly struggling to hunt down food storage meals, the meals I normally cook--using foods my family already likes--could actually become part of our food storage plan."

She gives the example of spaghetti... "Using the pasta from the cannery already stored in the basement, all I really needed to buy for our everyday storage were three jars of our favorite marinara sauce. Done. With that little effort I had the storage ingredients for one meal, to be served once a month, for three months. And look, a food storage dinner of spaghetti isn't even scary or weird."

She went through the other food storage basics she had already and thought of a couple recipes that went with oats, rice and potato flakes much the same way as she thought of spaghetti. The recipes are simple, but what's important is her family was already eating them. Yes, some of the recipes have fresh ingredients, but everything that can be is substituted with the non-perishable equivalent.

She thought of recipes until she came up with thirty. Then she made a list of all the canned, bottled, etc. ingredients she needed to have three months worth of those thirty meals (basically multiplying each recipe by three).

A list of some of those recipes are in the book as well as on her website, http://www.idareyoutoeatit.com/. Take a look at her wheat recipes. Some of the recipes had called for Uncle Ben's wild rice, and she'd substitute wheat berries. The recipes work, and her family enjoys them.

Here's her method of food storage summed up (in her words)...

1. Gradually [build] a year's supply of basic dry goods suggested by the Church


2. [Design] thirty meals that use these dry goods


3. [Purchase] a three-month supply of the canned, dried, or bottled ingredients for these thirty meals, with fresh ingredients added as necessary and as available.

The plan does call for work on our part, but I believe it is an effective method.

What do you think?

For more info on our Regional Cannery, see How to get your food storage? post and Policy Change at the Cannery post.

For more info about three month supply, see Three Month Supply post

Book Review: Not Your Mother's Food Storage

This book, Not Your Mother's Food Storage, is by no means life changing, eye opening, or...whatever, but it takes what is written in the Church's Family Home Storage pamphlet...

Namely,

"Build a small supply of food that is part of your normal, daily diet. One way to do this is to purchase a few extra items each week to build a one-week supply of food. Then you can gradually increase your supply until it is sufficient for three months. These items should be rotated regularly to avoid spoilage."

...and walks you step by step (using examples) on how you'd actually put the Church issued suggestion into practice.

The book prompts you to list the meals you eat on a regular basis for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Then it shows you through worksheets how to figure out what food you'd need in your food storage and how to calculate how much of that food you need to buy. Once you make a list of what to buy, the book gives suggestions on how to efficiently and frugally purchase the food for your storage. As a result, you'll have a food storage of meals and snacks you and your family actually eat.

Other topics included are Storing Staples and Condiments, Storing Nonfood Items, Adapting Your Favorite Recipes, How to Store It Now That You Have It, and Where to Store It Now That You Have It. Plus, it provides over 80 recipes easily adaptable to food storage.

Yes, this blog post sounds like a commercial for the book, but I must warn you that the book provides not a lot of new information or information that can't be found on the Internet.

However, if you want a concise source of information about starting/improving your food storage, this is a good book. I just recommend borrowing a copy from someone (like me) or buying one the next time you get a huge discount for Deseret Book or similar retailer.

Anyway, it's worth the read, but not necessarily worth the listed price.

Take a look at http://www.notyourmothersfoodstorage.com/