Bring on the disaster! Except, you know, DON'T.

Turns out I am married to a superstitious man. He won't say that's what he is, but it's true. If we're in the car driving to Vegas and I say, "Hey, we're making really good time!" he comes unhinged. "I can't believe you just SAID that! Now you've jinxed it! We're going to GET INTO A WRECK AND DIE!!!!" And he really, truly does believe that there's some power in the Universe that is right there ready to smack down the foolish ones for their hubris. The only real response to this must be said with Eyebrows. And eye rolls. And snorts. And then I tell him he should maybe be more worried about the false gods he's all worshippin' on.

But it's because of him that I can't just type "Bring on the disaster!" I'm becoming all knock-on-woodish--not for myself, because I think it's all a load of hooey, but because I don't want to upset him and make him start molting. So that's where the title comes from. Anyway.

Over the weekend started thinking a bit more about food storage. I'm liking how the Church is moving more toward encouraging people to just start small--buying extra groceries when they go shopping, putting together 72-hour kits, building up to a 3-month supply, buying bullets for the eventual shotgun . . . stuff like that. To me, a 3-month supply of food and essentials seems a lot more do-able than a year.

One cool thing I just found over on Pinching Your Pennies is a Grocery Guide tool where you can plug in your zip code and it will pull up the current list of deals in your local grocery stores--with red stars next to the deals that are especially good. (Because hi, like I even know what would be a good price for potato pearls.) So I pulled up the list for my local Macey's and saw all their case-lot sale items, some with red stars. Then I went there and purchased the ones that were a. actually things we eat, and b. way, way on sale. I saw a lot of other people there loading up like it was Armageddon, which was fun to watch. But if you're doing the "build up gradually" method, this would be a good thing to check every week to see what would make a cheap addition to your stash. And then you wouldn't have to waste time in the store browsing around and trying to compare costs to see what's the best deal.

So here's what we have so far, stashed in various places in our apartment. (Note: we no longer have cases of cans at the foot of the bed, since GH scraped all his leg skin off after colliding with one in the dark. Woops.)

No idea how long this would last us, but:

1 case tomato sauce
1 case black beans
1 case chili
1 case ramen noodles
45 lbs wheat
1 wheat grinder (thanks, Mom and Dad)
10 quarts peaches
10 quarts raspberry jam
2 cans Red Feather canned butter
3 containers of potato pearls
20 lbs sugar
2 gallons water

And then all the normal groceries in the cupboards. I'm thinking we might need more water. They say you should at least have a 3-day supply of water, which for us would be 6 gallons.

I've always sort of considered food storage to be what you live on when the entire infrastructure of the world has broken down and there's no electricity and it's dog-eat-dog and you're living in an apartment with one of the walls blown out. I'm realizing though that for most people it's nothing dramatic like that. But it means you're okay if your water gets turned off, because you have enough to last you until it's on again. Or if money gets tight or, heaven forbid, someone gets laid off, you know you have enough pantry items to feed your family for several months, which is one less thing to worry about. Or if someone you know is going through those situations and needs help, you have the extra resources to help them. It's also just a smart way to buy groceries, really (in bulk, on items you already know you'll use).

And that is my food storage plug for the day. Thank you.

ps. When I snooped around on providentliving.org's family home storage page to get information about what constitutes a 3-month supply, I saw a link entitled "Protecting Your Food Storage." Totally assumed it was going to be about guns. It wasn't, though. It was about protecting it from things like heat, sunlight, and mice. Not as exciting as starving neighbors, but oh well.

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