Food storage can be a learning process when you are converting to real food. One easy way to start is with dried goods. There are several online food storage calculators.
The Emergency Preparedness Center
Has a wonderful calculator. Simply enter in the amount of people ages: 0-6 and 7 + and hit the calculate button. Mind you, not all of the emergency food items fit under the REAL food guidelines, it does give you a wonderful place to start. Print our your calculations and keep in your purse/coupon binder. When a good sale hits, your prepared!
Here is what our family calculations look like (for 1 year):
- Wheat: 900 lbs.
- Flour: 149 lbs.
- Oats: 149 lbs.
- Rice: 300 lbs.
- Pasta: 149 lbs.
- Peanut Butter: 24 lbs. (actually this would be doubled for our family)
- Beans, dry: 180 lbs.
- Lima Beans: 27 lbs.
- Soy Beans: 60 lbs.
- Split Peas: 27 lbs.
- Lentils: 27 lbs.
- Dry Soup Mix: 27 lbs.
- Honey: 17 lbs.
- Sugar: 240 lbs. (I’m not sure who I feel about this number)
- Brown Sugar: 17 lbs.
- Molasses: 7 lbs.
- Jams: 17 lbs.
- Dry Milk: 370 lbs.
- Canned Goats Milk: 77 lbs.
- Baking Powder: 7 lbs.
- Baking Soda: 7 lbs.
- Yeast: 3.5 lbs.
- Salt: 31 lbs. (if you ‘corn’ any of your meats, you’ll need about triple)
- Vinegar: 3.5 gallons (since we use vinegar for cleaning and not so much for cooking, I would est. 50 gallons)
- Water: 2,555 gallons (if you have a rain water collection system for watering your garden, etc. this no. would work)
- Bleach: 7 gallons (we do NOT use bleach in our home. However for emergency prep, you CAN use it numerous ways)
What REAL foods do you stock up on?
houseofkirk 