Food Storage Corner
Protecting Your Food Storage“Protecting Your Food Storage,” Ensign, Jan. 2006, 70Whether you are just starting your food storage or have your year’s supply, the following tips from the Church’s welfare Web site—providentliving.org—will help you protect your supplies:• Avoid heat and sunlight. Optimum temperatures are 70 degrees or cooler. Freezing should be avoided for wet-pack items. Storage at temperatures below freezing may be detrimental to the germination quality of some seeds.• Protect against moisture. Food containers should not come in direct contact with concrete floors or walls. Instead, place them on shelves or raised platforms. If you live in a particularly humid climate, consider providing ventilation to avoid moisture buildup.• Keep rodents and insects out. Instead of leaving dry goods in the original packaging, consider storing them in number 10 cans, foil pouches, glass canning jars, PETE (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic bottles, and plastic buckets.• Rotate. Generally, wet-pack items can be kept for two to three years. Dry-pack goods have varying “best if used by” recommendations. Referring to a retail product’s label, which usually includes a company’s toll-free number, can also help you decide how soon products should be rotated.For more information, consult your ward or branch dry-pack specialist or visit http://www.providentliving.org/.Concern has been brought up about canning breads and cakes, which she talks about in the fireside, here is an article (click here) about it and here is what she has to say about it.Everything Under The SunI've had a request for myTop 10 Reasons Why I Don't Have My Food Storage.10. My neighbors have a TWO year supply! No, they don't. They don't have any food. Did you know that 85% of the members of the church don't have any food storage at all? If your idea of food storage is to eat someone else’s food………..this is a really bad plan.9. I've paid tithing for 20 years...the church can give me a little food. Many members believe that when the times get hard, the church is going to come through like Joseph in Egypt. Absolutely not true. All the church storehouses and welfare farms across the country would only feed 4% of the members of the church. The church has been asking YOU to store food for 75 years. They're NOT storing food for you. Thus, another bad plan.8. I'm moving in with my children / parents! Really....that’s just a bad plan all by itself. But it points out that most members don't have a year's supply because they're PLANNING on eating someone else's food! Of course, since no one HAS any food, we have yet another bad plan.7. I have a year's supply...and the bullets to go with it! I've heard time and again, "How dumb is that to go to all the time and expense of getting food...just to have some guy with a gun come and shoot my family to take it away?" Here's a better question. Are you afraid of the guy with the gun? Or are you more afraid of BECOMING the guy with the gun? What would you do if your children were starving to death? Would you lie? Cheat? Steal? Would you shoot your neighbor for his food? I guarantee....if you were watching your child starving to death, you would do anything you had to to keep them alive. If you don't have your year's supply, you are putting yourself in danger of losing not only your temporal salvation, but your spiritual salvation as well.So far, all the reasons we don't have our food storage involve eating someone else's food. Please, don't put your family's temporal salvation in other people's hands. No one is storing food for you. Not your neighbors, not the government...not even the church.#6. The boat and the 4 wheelers are taking up all my storage space! (priorities!)#5. 3 letters....Y2K. Ok, that's 2 letters and a number....but they're always making way too much out of everything! This is never going to happen!” (Every prophecy that has ever been given WILL happen.)#4. If anything DOES happen, the government will be here within hours! (insert laughter) Did you know the government has been telling us that we need to have food storage? They're actually CALLING it food storage! We now have the government telling us to store food, water, medicines...whatever we will need to be able to stay in our homes for several months.#3. I can't afford scrap booking AND food storage. The average food storage can cost as little as a dollar a day. We live in the richest society in the history of the world, and while there are cases where money may be a problem, most of the time it is a matter of priorities. We have chosen bigger homes, nicer cars, more tv's, computers, vacations ...everything is more important than our food storage. If I asked, "Who has a cell phone?" most of you would say yes. You pay at least $30 a month to have a cell phone....that's about a dollar a day...the cost of one year's supply of food for your child. Is your cell phone really more important than your child's temporal salvation? You have to make food storage a priority.2. I'm waiting for the cannery to sell Papa John's dehydrated pizza! Food storage has always had a stigma attached to it. If it's not wheat, beans and powdered milk, it's not food storage. With the system I use, food storage can be sweet and sour chicken, tamale pie, chile and cornbread, beef stew, shepherd's pie, minestrone...even chocolate chip cookies! Your imagination (and your pocketbook) are the only limitations you have.And the#1 reason why I don't have my year's supply of food? A year?? I thought it was 72 hours!!You KNOW you should have your food storage. You WANT to have it, but it can be so overwhelming! How much do I buy? Where do I store it? How do I cook it? It seems like an impossible task.... but it's not. It doesn't matter if you use my system or just start buying extra food, the important thing is to do something.