#6 Presentation at MV Ward- Long Term Storage

Part 6- Presentation given by Amy at the Morrisville Ward, North Carolina, combined RS/Priesthood, Aug. 29, 2010. I will post the rest of the presentation in the next few days.

Long term food storage

“The revelation to produce and store food may be as essential to our temporal welfare today as boarding the ark was to the people in the days of Noah.”
Ezra Taft Benson, “Prepare for the Days of Tribulation,” Ensign, Nov 1980, 32

For your long term storage, you need to buy grains, legumes, and other staples that can be stored for long periods of time, like 20-30 years, and would sustain life if nothing else were available to eat. I am talking about shelf-stable foods here, none of it in the freezer or fridge. And make sure they are all in bug-proof and rodent-proof containers.

They are the most compact foods you can store, and they don't need rotating on a yearly or monthly basis like your three-month supply, so they are much easier to store. You can hide them under the beds or in the backs of closets and forget about them until you need them.

BYU has recently done studies of very old food storage, and got some very positive results. They found out that

“properly packaged and stored low-moisture food retains much of its sensory (taste) quality and nutritional value for 20 to 30 or more years after being placed in storage—much longer than previously supposed.
This means Church members can store certain foods long-term without the worry of regularly rotating the food. They can be confident that their supply will be there to keep them alive if they have nothing else to eat.”
“Family Home Storage: A New Message,” Ensign, Mar 2009, 56–60

The photo is from that same Ensign article.



Wheat, grains, and beans, last a very long time. So buy them and consider them like term life insurance. Maybe you are paying for something you will never use, but it gives you safety and security that if something bad happens, you are covered.

For your long term storage, you need some type of oil. However, oil only lasts 1-2 yrs (according to BYU-TV- Living Essentials). But Crisco lasts ten-plus years. So you may want to adapt some of your recipes to use Crisco instead of oil so you can store more Crisco.

I think it is smart to find a shelf-stable substitute for every ingredient. I LOVE to use Powdered eggs and Powdered milk in all my baking. I never have to wonder if I have it in the fridge when I am ready to bake. (In case you are wondering, I eat real eggs for scrambled eggs and devilled eggs, etc.)

I am still looking for ways to store cheese. I have purchased some canned cheese and some dehydrated freeze dried grated cheese, and some other cheese that doesn't require refrigeration. We'll have to learn more about that subject in the future.