Provident Living Challenge for December

Do one of these by the January evening Relief Society meeting and get a prize!

Challenge #1:  Count up all the weight of your shelf stable “grains”.  Determine whether you have a three month supply, which equals 100 pounds per person.  If you count it all, you get the prize.

This would include wheat, rolled oats, hot cereal, cold cereal, crackers, graham crackers, macaroni, egg noodles, spaghetti, cornmeal, cake mixes, white flour, rice, brown rice, minute rice, pancake mix, popcorn, alfalfa sprouting seeds, etc.  Anything that is made of grains. If you want to, you can also count the bread in your freezer, but that is not technically “shelf stable”. 

Remember, the church teaches us to get a three-month supply of things we normally eat.  The “grain” group of foods takes up the most space, and you should already have a lot of it.

STORAGE:  What are you doing to keep out bugs?  

Your three-month supply is usually in normal grocery store boxes.  These need to be rotated regularly, they can be easily invaded by bugs.  Or, the bug eggs might already be inside them.  One lady said that she wraps the box openings  of her cake mixes with clear packaging tape, to prevent bugs going in or out.  She said she would rather have one box with bugs instead of all of the boxes getting ruined.

Flour, cornmeal, rice, pancake mix, etc, which come in big bags need to be dumped into canisters or large Tupperware containers so the bugs can’t get inside.

I am assuming that your long-term storage (wheat, rice, etc.) is in sealed #10 cans or in large plastic buckets to prevent bug damage.

Challenge #2:  Get a year’s supply of salt.  You need 5-8 pounds per person for a year.  This is the cheapest part of food storage, and it takes the least amount of space.   It costs 25 cents per pound at Sam’s.  Buy iodized salt, so that you can also obtain the necessary nutrient iodine.  (Non-iodized salt is used for canning.)

Some of you might say, “We don’t use much salt.”  Let me point out that currently we are all eating mostly store-bought foods, and it isn’t obvious how much salt is actually in our diets.  If you ever had to start baking and cooking all your food from scratch, you would need this much salt for a year, and would be very sorry not to have it.

(Notice the photo above:  I put a label that says I opened this 4 lb. box in November 2008.  It wasn't all used up until Sept. 2010.  So at this point my family is only basically using 2 lbs. per year, but like I said, most of our foods are purchased at the store, with the salt already added.)

Storage of salt:  Because it is so inexpensive, I am not worried about it too much.  I assume that if the salt becomes clumped together, I will just dissolve it into water or hammer it and then use it in recipes.  Other than getting stuck together, it will last forever.