FOOD STORAGE

UPDATE:

After posting about my food storage I was feeling a little unprepared for my year's supply so I did what any good woman would do...I jumped into action. (now I'm jumping into bed...) I made 2 batches of blackberry jam, 2 batches of peach jam, two quarts of peach syrup (YUM!), sliced and froze 6 quart bags of yellow/zucchini squash, made three batches of zucchini bread and peeled/sliced 12 quart bags of fresh frozen peaches. There...now I feel better.

Look at all this deliciousness. I promise to share if you come visit me...
Nothing says lovin' like bread from the oven! (amen sister)
My frozen peaches - just waiting for pies or smoothies...mmm...
Frozen summer/zuchinni squash. This makes my heart swell just looking at it...
At the end of the day I was left with this, took me over an hour to finish the thousands of pots and pans and bowls needed for my day in the kitchen. (can you even believe I made it out of the house for a night out with my husband?)

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Here's a little game I like to call..."Take a picture of your food storage and share for all the world to see". As you probably have noticed, I don't have more than 3 months here - although I do have buckets of wheat, rice, pasta and a few other things that are stored in my crawl space....but I am NOT crawling in there to take a picture of it. (that's what I have children for) Anyway, I wanted to throw the challenge out to

you

to do a post on your food storage because it's always a good motivator to try and do better.

Here is our pantry. It is located in our basement underneath the stairs. It was a perfect little spot to turn into a place for food storage. I love the #10 cans that fit perfectly underneath the stairs - click on the picture and you can see it better. (don't judge me that I have froot loops and corn pops in my storage - that's my husband's purchase)
This little spot is located in my wash room - we have extra shelves for our paper goods but I didn't take a picture of those because I am really embarrased for you to know that we have probably two weeks left of toilet paper. (I'm on it, alright? Back off!) But...I didn't want to leave my sweet Benjamin out. Since he can't eat what we eat, I am showing you that yes...I do have food storage for him too. I only have 4 months supply here, I'm still working on that too. He uses a formula, pictured in the white boxes, protein and fiber supplements in the cans and the box in the middle is his feeding bags.

Besides working on my "dry" stuff, I also have a freezer that is full of beans, yellow squash and other goodies from my garden and sister Jenny's orchard. I really probably should be canning this stuff so it can sit on my shelves but I am a sucker for "fresh" fruit and vegies in the winter. (it would be a problem if my power went out for days...then I would lose all of it.)
Behind my house I have numerous amounts of rasberry and blackberry bushes. I take full advantage of this free fruit and like to make jam with it. I send my kids out every day in the month of August and they bring me back cups full of berries to work with. (they love me for this, really they do...especially when their cups aren't full enough, then I send them back out into the wilderness where they crawl through the noxious weeds. Good times I tell you!)
Here is the finished product...aren't they beautiful? I will probably get around 20 pints this year as the town cut some of the berry bushes down.
Here is a picture of my sister Amy Jo...I am including her in my blog today because she is the one that sent me this email below. Look, she's actually telling me to go and share. She's shy like that. So...here I am, dutifully sharing, and now I'm passing the torch to you, my dear bloggers. Do share...really, it's fun. (fun tied in with a little bit of pain -

knowing I'm not totally prepared, but hey...I'm working on it!)

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(Church Public Affairs is asking Church members to share their experiences with maintaining and utilizing food storage by posting video, text or other content on personal blogs, video-sharing sites like YouTube, social media sites like Facebook, or other Internet sites. Members can then e-mail a link to their story to publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org. The Newsroom site may link to some of them in an upcoming Web package on the Church welfare program, but in any case the stories may be beneficial to others who read them on the Web.The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long encouraged its members to store extra food to provide for possible future needs caused by economic hardship, disasters or other emergencies. Encouraging individual members to be prepared is part of the Church's overall welfare plan.

http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/sharing-food-storage-preparedness-stories-with-new-media)