You have to learn to USE what you store away in your pantry as a prep/emergency item. You can have all the neatest and nest things a survival prepper might have, but if you have never, say, made bread, what good will all that wheat and yeast do you? If you have never much cared for rice, but got a great price on it for the storage, what are you going to do with it later when you might have to eat it for weeks?
Maybe not the best examples, but you get what I'm talking about. If your husband only likes meat and taters, and all of a sudden you are living off your garden produce and maybe a chicken or two, he ain't gonna be a happy camper. If your children are snacks and chips, greasy foods and all that, and all of a sudden here you are baking bread, soaking beans and growing tomatoes, you'll likely have a rebellion on your hands in short order.
Honestly, forget all the Armageddon talk, forget TEOTWAWKI prep stuff, forget global economic collapse in under 5 years...what if you are suddenly without a job? Benefits have run out, you still aren't working or bringing in enough income to keep the lights on and food on the table. What about another catastrophic hit from Mother Nature, like Katrina or worse? Folks all over not only the South, but farther North as well, were caught with limited supplies after Katrina. We are in north Mississippi, where just a little wind hit us after Katrina, and it was a good month before even Sam's Club had restocked meat, let alone the regular mom & pop stores here. Flour, sugar, coffee, tea...the shelves were empty. When things did come in folks were waiting. Yes, we had a fair share of 'relocators' here then, but still...even my Mom in Illinois found shortages here and there of staple items.
USE your food storage. ROTATE your food storage. CHANGE your diet NOW while you can wean yourself into things. It's healthier for you in far more ways than you might think!
Being ready to live off those foods doesn’t involve just having the appetite for them. We need to be prepared to use them and work with them as well. If you’ve never tried sprouting, don’t think that the sprouter you’ve got in the basement is going to do much for you in a time of crisis. Using it under such circumstances will only cause you more stress due to its unfamiliarity and you’ll avoid it at all costs. You also need to get your body accustomed to eating such foods. In fact, if most people attempted to go from their existing diet to one containing whole wheat at the majority of their meals, they would actually DIE inside of 30 days due to the dehydration and diarrhea their body would experience in so drastic a dietary change. This is one reason why I counsel people to store what they eat—at least a 90 day supply—and then work on introducing other, more stable storage foods, into their diet along the way. Yes, it’s a lot less expensive to store a year’s supply of wheat, legumes, honey, and powdered milk as opposed to the ingredients for your favorite casseroles, Navajo Tacos, and brownie mixes. But I assure you that those items won’t get used for much of anything if you haven’t already familiarized your family with them prior to a disaster. So be sure to have at least 90 days of the familiar and then work on familiarizing your family with other foods that will have a great shelf-life in your home. Remember, stress alters the mind. It races the heart. It breaks down the immune system. If you’re in a quarantine situation, for example, can you really afford to expose anyone in your family to any of these physical stresses simply because you weren’t prepared with a realistic menu for them?
That's from part of the UNDERwhelmed in Food Storage posts from PreparednessPro, Kellene. Go stat at Day 1 there and follow along through all 8 sharings...and then find some good reading in the archives.
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