Food Storage

I have been working on building up a supply of food. Our church recommends storing 3 months of food, having money saved for an emergency, storing water, and having longer term storage. You can read more about the recommendations here.

Up until now I haven't really had a plan. It has mostly been buying things that I think will work well and then every now and then deciding that I need to figure out what exactly I have and what I need....that desire soon passes and I just buy some more random things and then start the cycle back over again.

I've decided to plan out my 3 month storage, but in the meantime, all the food I have bought for longer term storage keeps building without a real plan or goal to build towards.

Today, however, I found a great calculator for long-term food storage. You can find the calculator here.

It really works great. There is a place for you to enter your family information so it can figure out how much food per day your family needs. Then there are tabs that you can enter in all of the food that you already have. At first I was frustrated because there were things I had that weren't listed and things that were different sizes than what they had listed--but then I found a tab where you could enter your own information on products that you have--just enter the nutritional information and it will add it to your worksheet and you can enter what you have. There is also a tab for items purchased from the grocery store (canned beans, oils, pb, etc).

After you have entered everything in, just push the button and it calculates what you have and displays a graph showing the number of days food storage you have, and then divides it up based on nutritional information (how much of that is fiber, carbs, fats, which vitamins, etc).

Go and try it out. Not only can you get some great information (for free), but right now they are giving out a $10 gift card to anyone who tries it out and posts a review on their blog!