Sunday, October 3, 2010

Let's not make it complicated

Preparing for uncertain times doesn't have to be complicated.  If you take a common sense approach you will realize that most of what you need to do you are already doing in some fashion or another. 
I've already listed breakfast meals for planning ahead.  Try the same with dinner.  Think back about 50-75 years or so.  What did people who lived in the country do?  I know my parents and grandparents lived in the city.  My grandmother shopped every day to get fresh produce and meats.  My mother shopped once a week.  On the other hand, my great grandmother couldn't afford to shop.  They lived on 1/3 acre in a log house, raised six children (my grandpa slept on the kitchen table), and they had 100 chickens!  They raised them for food and to sell eggs.  They didn't buy feed from the feed store and they didn't have enough land to grow food for the chickens. They collected food waste and plant waste to feed to the chickens.    They had a garden, fruit trees, chickens, and their house.  You can actually get a lot onto 1/3 acre if you don't have a large lawn, play yard, or pool.   
You don't have to make gourmet meals every night.  You probably don't now, especially if you have kids because we all know they'd rather eat mac and cheese than a leg of lamb any day.  I don't remember every meal but I do remember that one night was meat loaf, a second night of ground beef was sloppy joes or hamburgers or even a hamburger helper type dinner, one night was chicken, one night was fish, one night was a vegetable main dish, two nights were pasta.  Around our house we have pretty set meals.  We do vary them, it's not Monday meatloaf, Tuesday spaghetti, week in and week out, but I could write a list of 10-14 dinners and plan around that for a storage program.  For the next couple of weeks you should list everything you eat for dinner.  Then go over the list and see how you would need to change it if you could only use stored foods or food you grew yourself.  Work on it.  I'll get back to this topic.
 

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