My month of "No Grocery Shopping in May" is just about over and I did learn some things about my emergency food storage preparedness:
-- It takes a lot more time and energy to make everything from scratch, time that I hopefully will have if there is an emergency (like losing my job), but not so much when I'm working full-time and trying to go to all of the "end of school" activities. Let's just say that towards the end of the month, we just went without bread because I was too tired to make it.
-- I did cheat and went to the grocery store twice, but that's only because my kids had promised certain foods for their classroom's pot lucks and we didn't have those in our food storage.
-- We learned to survive without Kool-Aid, Parmesan cheese and Ramen; and we also learned to eventually like the Apple drink.
-- Don't stock up on the kids' favorite cereals because as soon as you do, they will decide that they now HATE that particular cereal and you'll end up eating all of it (curse you, Cinnamon Toast Crunch!)
-- Luckily my radishes were ready to harvest half-way through the month and I would look forward to picking some each day just so I could taste the crunch of a fresh vegetable.
-- We went through a lot more butter than expected; and we went through a lot less eggs than I expected (we started off the month with two dozen and ended the month with one dozen left).
-- My credit card bill was cut in half just by not hitting the grocery store each week.
-- We really didn't eat that much differently than we usually eat. Makes me wonder what the heck I'm wasting my money on at the store.
-- Stick with the basics. We got sick of fancy canned soups real quick, but we could eat beans and rice every night.
And the most important thing I learned from this whole experiment:
-- Nigel is the "MacGyver" of food storage cooking! He can take a rubber band, some toothpaste, and a roll of duct tape and make lasagna out of it! He's amazing! He's going to be the most important part of my emergency plan.
6 comments:
True saving is using what you have.
WAY TO GO! I am considering making this a goal for myself for a month next year. I think I need that much time to really build our food storage. Right now we would be living off of rice, fish crackers, microwave popcorn, and olive oil.
Well, I'm certainly impressed. We couldn't do it. We seem to only have a good supply of baking supplies and chocolate. I think we'll have to bake and barter.
Thanks for the update...Lois!
VORQUEL -- you should write fortune cookie messages.
CAMILLE -- it is a good way to see where you have holes in your food storage.
CURTIS -- hey, I'll trade you some freeze-dried cheese for a chocolate dessert any day!
JHJD -- you're welcome.
Hey, do you think Nigel would give me that lasagna recipe?
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