August Provident Living Challenge #1: Breakfasts!
Buy enough ingredients to make oatmeal 3 times a week for three months.
Make an oatmeal breakfast for your family. Measure carefully how much everyone eats. Buy enough of those ingredients to have that food 30 times. That would be about 3 times a week for 3 months.
Eventually you will want to have food collected for 90 days of breakfasts, with all of the ingredients being shelf-stable. You don't want your food to go bad if the power goes off!
Most of us would want to have several different menu choices such as cold cereal, hot cereal, pancakes, waffles, etc. You could plan to have that item once a week, twice a week, or more. But for this challenge, you will get the prize if you buy enough breakfast ingredients for 30 days. (Choose some other breakfast menu to buy if you don't like oatmeal.)
Thanks to Laura H. who wrote up the following explanation and put it on her blog. Go to this link and you can see the photo she took:
"Here's a picture, list of ingredients, and cost of preparing oatmeal for my family of 6 for 30 days using food storage. There is actually more cinnamon, brown sugar, or salt than I'd actually use, but I think "planning" visually is much easier this way and keeping track of my inventory to make sure I do indeed have enough food. I have all the supplies as food storage for emergencies, and rotating the ingredients before expiration dates is easy since I use all the ingredients in many other recipes.
20 lbs whole or 1 minute oats
7 lbs. brown sugar
16 oz. vanilla
2.25 lbs. raisins
1 lb. salt
cinnamon
water
$33 for all ingredients (items purchased at Sams or Costco)
6 people for 30 meals = $1.10 per meal or .20 per person
-When I prepare oatmeal, I DO NOT cook it. I merely poor in boiling water (or hot milk), salt, and vanilla and let oatmeal sit for 5 minutes to soften oats (this will prevent "gluey" oatmeal). 1 Minute oats get VERY soft with this method and Whole Oats get a more muesli-like texture. Then I sprinkle on desired toppings!" -Laura H.
August Provident Living Challenge #2: Emergency Communication.
Think of the ways you could give information or receive information when the power is out. Do one of the following:
Buy a solar powered or windup radio.
Buy a solar-powering device which will allow you to charge your cell phone.
Investigate the steps to acquiring a ham radio license.
Plug an inverter into your car, and use it to power a TV or laptop. Test whether you have any TV’s which can receive a signal using an antenna instead of cable or satellite.
Add a black marker and large sheets of paper to each one of your car trunks and to your 72-hour kits.
Get a home phone which has the handset attached to the base, because those types will usually work when the power is out.
Discuss with your family where you could leave notes for each other in an emergency situation. It might be important to choose hiding places where strangers would not see the notes.
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