FAQ

How do I add variety so my year's supply doesn't get boring?

• Store a number of different spices.  Adding different spices to the "same" meal can change the taste and make it seem like a completely different meal.  
• For several of my recipes, I have the ability to change them slightly.  For instance, one of my breakfasts is Muffins.  Along with the ingredients I will store to make the base of the muffins, I also have 4 different "optional" ingredients I will store: Chocolate chips, dehydrated raspberries, dehydrated strawberries, and dehydrated blueberries.  I will store enough of the optional ingredients for 13 weeks each.  That way each week I can have a different variety of muffin.  

Another example of variation is, depending on the season, if you have a garden (which I hope you will), you can add seasonal vegetables like potatoes (which can be stored through the winter), carrots, broccoli, tomatoes, corn, etc.  All of my dinner recipes also contain meat (which is a lot of meat to consume every single day!), and during the best gardening times, I can take out the meat from a meal and use fresh veggies instead.  Beans are also a great substitute for meat.

• Once you have your entire year's supply finished, you can begin adding in different ingredients that will give variation to several meals.  For instance, I have a chicken taco recipe where I have included the recipe for the inside of the taco, as well as a recipe to make easy homemade tortillas.  When my food storage is complete, I will add several jars of say... BBQ sauce.  That way I can make BBQ chicken tacos if I get bored of my regular chicken tacos.  This can be done for several recipes.  But it's important to get your year's supply done with the basics of 7 breakfasts and 7 dinners before you add in additional ingredients.  

*The most important thing to remember is that this is about surviving. Most likely, if you take the "old" way of getting food storage done (i.e. Just buying a ton of wheat, a ton of flour, a ton of sugar and beans with no real guidance as to how to use them) you or members of your family will most likely die of either starvation or intense diarrhea because your body is not equipped to eating large quantities of those kinds of ingredients.  Trust me when I say you will be grateful to have 7 breakfasts and 7 dinners, as boring as they might be. : )  


*It IS possible to store a pleuthera of different meals, but just remember that this food storage needs to contain items that you can easily rotate throughout the coming years if you don't use it.  There are some items, like flour, sugar, wheat, honey etc, that if properly stored can last upwards of 20 or 30 years, but you will have a lot of ingredients (like canned meat for instance) that you will need to use throughout the year or two it's sitting on your shelf and there ISN'T a disaster.  Keep in mind that as you use some ingredients, you will need to replenish them.  If you have too many ingredients, or you have ingredients that you don't already eat regularly, if some huge disaster happens in 5 or 10 years, it's probably a safe bet that 1/2 of your food storage will be useless and dangerous to eat.    


For a second there, I thought I didn't hear you say lunch.  There are 3 meals a day, right? 


Well, actually no, there's not. If you are living completely on your own self reliance, with no electricity or running water, it will be much like the "olden days" when they had a large breakfast in the morning, and then another large meal mid-day when the sun is still out.  2 large meals a day, and that's it.  You might add into your food storage enough to be able to make a loaf of bread a day, and that might become your "before bed" snack.  Remember, this is about surviving, not eating like Kings.