Week Seven: Food
It’s a grains week. Store 6 pounds per person. Please do not store wheat if you do not like wheat or you do not know how to cook and bake with it. The key to a great food storage plan is storing the foods you normally eat. During a crisis you want familiar foods that will be a comfort to your family.
I have been asked numerous times about a gluten free diet for food storage. This is one of the many reasons I tell you to never use a list you find online that tells you specifically what to store. Store by food groups what YOUR family eats, always! If you have someone who is gluten free, store gluten free grains such as corn meal, oats, rice, wild rice, or quinoa for them and your whole family.
To continue last week's discussion and answering the question about storing for diabetics, consider storing the following.
Brown Rice: Replacing roughly one-third of a daily serving of white rice with brown rice would lead to a 16 percent reduction in overall type 2 diabetes risk.
Bulgur: A bowlful of bulgur has a very low glycemic index; therefore, it does not get absorbed quickly and enables slow release of sugar that also aids weight loss.
Oats: Oats are a food that is high in fiber and therefore can control blood sugar levels. Use in place or bread crumbs in meatloaf and meatballs.
Buckwheat: Buckwheat flour instead of regular white flour for baking gives a big boost to your soluble fiber content, an important consideration in a diabetes diet.
It can be prepared like risotto and is easy to add to stews, casseroles, and salads, according to Michigan State University Extension.
Quinoa: Although quinoa is commonly thought of as a whole grain, it’s actually a highly nutritious seed that is high in protein and fiber.
Wheat Berries: Wheat berries are actually just whole, unprocessed kernels of wheat, all that wheat you stored because someone told you you needed to. Cook them as a side dish, serve them for breakfast as you would oatmeal and top with a sprinkling of nuts and berries, or toss them cooked into your salads for a nutty accent.
Barley: Barley’s fiber content increasing the number of good bacteria in the gut and releases helpful hormones increasing it’s importance for diabetics.
Week Seven: Store
Paper Plates
This week we begin working on food feeding the hordes of family and friends. You should have a well-stocked General Store with lots of canned fruits, veggies and proteins and lots of grains. Now the task is to consider how you will serve the feasts.
Every year we try to gather our children and grandchildren for a week. This has given me great insights including the realization that feeding more than 20 people is no small task.
This week store paper plates. You will need much more than you think.
Begin by considering how many you are likely to be feeding. Next consider the foods you have stored. Will you need plates to serve that food? If you have lots of oatmeal and soups you will need bowls for those meals, we will store those at another time. Now multiply the number you will be serving by the number of meals needing a plate each day. Lastly determine how many days you are preparing for. I would never prepare for less than two weeks and I feel six weeks is much more realistic. If your extended family has been flooded or survived a hurricane they will be with you for a long time.
Example:
20 people X 2 meals per day X 45 days= 1800 paper plates
I would add a few more for servings.
Seems like lots but plates are easy to rotate at summer barbecues and picnics. Remember following a disaster you may be without power, no dishwasher or hot water. You may be without water that is safe to consume, no way to wash dishes safely. No garbage pickup, paper plates can be burned (never store Styrofoam).
This week purchase paper plates in a lunch size, you can always go back for seconds and the lunch size are less expensive. You may also want to purchase some of the lightweight variety for meals like sandwiches but heavy duty is best for everything else.