This is a list of things you get every time you set foot in the store. It is a great way to build up your food storage.
First, set a budget, $5.00, 10.00 or 20.00. Not more than that or it will put a huge dent in your finances before you know it.
I generally go the grocery store twice a week. One day is "Big Shopping Day". That is where I fill the cart with the usual staples like meat, bread, milk, and so forth. I always use a list and always use coupons. I generally hit two or three stores before I am done. All the of stores must be within a couple of miles of home or the gas costs eats up the food savings.
Once a week, I have to go "pick up a few things". Sometimes it is something my wife needs for a meal or for baking. Other times it is more milk or bread although I try to keep three weeks of perishables on hand at all times.
When I go the store, I pick up a few things every single time.
- One 1lb bag of rice or one bag of noodles (elbow).
- Two 1lb bags of dried beans.
- Two cans of something, usually with protein like canned beans or tuna fish.
- Two cans of fruit.
- One four roll of toilet paper which ever is on sale.
All in all, I usually never spend more than seven dollars on the above. Sometimes it is a little over five.
All of these purchases go into the pantry. The rice and beans go into 5 gallon buckets in their plastic bags after they spend the night in the freezer. The cans go on the shelf.
This builds up a nice little supply of back up food with long shelf life. After a month, you have enough food for a family for three days or longer if you do it right. A year of this can mean a big dent in a month's supply of food. And it only cost about ten dollars a week. That's a fast food meal or a movie ticket.
When it comes to food, I am not a gourmet. It drives my wife bats because I eat very simply. I like bread, meat, potatoes, and little else. But I do like to cook. Cooking is a skill which all of us need before (to save money) and after (to eat, live) the SHTF. Aunt Bee is not coming over to make me a chicken dinner every night.
Because of I am all thumbs in the kitchen, I like cookbooks, the older the better, to prepare foods. New cookbooks have too much "soothing diversity and cultural awareness of foods and the sustainability they bring to persons throughout the world".
Not for me. I like a book which presumes one knows where their food came from and accepts facts such as cows and chickens are for eating.
One of my favorite cookbooks was written in the 1930's and is called French Cooking in Ten Minutes
Don't get me wrong. This is not "Filay Minyon and Snails". This is simple food, prepared quickly, for little money and with a small amount of equipment. The author based his writing on the way people lived in France in the 1930's. Most only had two burner gas or coal stoves (think Coleman stove anyone?).
The book contains recipes which take a few minutes to make and contain basic ingredients nearly everyone has at home. And the meals are filling and complete. And the author is politically incorrect by today's standards. He tells readers how to properly kill a trout ("whack its head against the side of the kitchen counter") before cooking. Why calves brains are so good cooked in butter. Why you should "stick up for yourself" and eat sausages and tuna fish for lunch if you want.
It's a great basic cooking book which can help a useless eater like me in the kitchen, or that young person you are sending off this fall to work or college. It's cheap too. A good buy in my book.
The world is heating up. I was pretty depressed last week, but feel alot better this week. I think we are about to turn the corner. Don't get me wrong. I am prepping for the worse, but I think the end game scenario is changing while we speak.
Some of the "powers that be" are working in their exit strategy now. Keep that in mind!
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