If you have read my blog for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve realized by now that I am working hard to build up a good pantry and food storage. Remember last week when I posted this:
Look at all that grain!
I bought all those bags of different kinds of grain for two reasons. First, I wanted to experiment with different whole grains in baking, and this was the most economical way to buy them. Second, I wanted to repackage most of the grain for long term storage (meaning mylar bags with oxygen absorbers in food grade buckets). Last week, I started packing the food in mylar bags (see post about it here), and yesterday I finished. It really didn’t take me a couple of weeks, in fact, it took me about an hour total. However, with the insanity that accompanies the last couple weeks of school coupled with the general craziness of life, I just couldn’t find the time to finish up until yesterday. And here they are!
10 buckets (including the 2 done last week)! Repackaged as they are, these grains should last for at least 20 years (unopened and stored at an appropriate temperature). I’m not planning to have them sit around that long, because I plan to rotate the grains into our regular diet. But it is nice to know that this food will last a good long while.
And did you see these? Remember I said that I wanted to experiment with some of these grains? Here they are in mason jars ready for experimentation!
I don’t know if you can see it from the bucket picture above, but I have a few more things to repackage (oats and white winter wheat), but I may just throw those in a regular food grade bucket without a mylar bag, because I use those pretty regularly. I’ll let you know when I decide.
Why am I doing this? Growing up, my parents had food storage in our basement as well as a full pantry. I remember my mom grinding her own wheat and making her own bread in a time when processed food was all the rage. Because of her hard work and dedication, I have a great love for whole, natural foods, and I want to include those in my family’s diet. Having food storage on hand allows me the freedom to wait for a good sale on healthy food and stock up. I rarely have to run to the store for “one thing,” because I have extras of almost everything in the pantry or my food storage closet. It’s not a year supply of food as some recommend, but we would be just fine for a while if we experienced a job loss, extended illness, natural disaster, or any one of a number of regularly occurring “disasters” that people experience.
