Dear Neighbor,
Once you have your recipes in your Homestead Journal, you can quickly find the ingredients you need to prepare your planned meals. Our goal is to have a month’s surplus of food. Once you have a complete month on your pantry shelf, then you will begin using, rotating and replacing your food.
I have prepared a sample food list, which is no way inclusive, it is a sample list to get you started. You will build your own list of what your family needs.
How do you get started with your list? Look at your recipes. Let’s say one of your dinner menus is Taco Soup, which is a favorite at our homestead.
The ingredients are as follows:
1 pound ground beef ( add kidneyor pinto beans for meatless soup)
1 large can tomato juice k
1 can tomato paste
1 can corn
1 can olives
2 cans black beans
1 package taco seasoning
1 onion
If we planned to eat this twice a month, I would tally tomato juice, twice, on my sheet under tomato juice, and two tallys for everything except black beans. I need two cans for each meal, so I would tally four marks in the space for black beans.
I would do this for each ingredient for my month’s meals. Don’t’ forget finishing ingredients like milk for cereal, syrup for the pancakes, tuna fish needs salt and pepper, etc. Those small details are huge when cooking. Also, if you use homemade baking mixes for quick breads or pancakes, you must have the ingredients on hand to make the mix. The devil is in the details!
Once all the ingredients have been added to your list via tallys, simply count the total tallys for each item and put the number under the WANT column.
Now is time to take inventory. Go to your pantry and see how many of each item you already have on hand that has not been purchased for the current eating cycle. If you purchased them to eat in the near future you cannot count these items as surplus. Enter the number of items in ON HAND column and now simply do the math to see how many you need to put in the NEED column.
Your goal is to build a surplus beyond your current shopping cycle f0r your pantry. Next time you are shopping, buy some of what you NEED and adjust your ON HAND column. I would buy extra by recipe. There is no benefit in buying all your beans at one time and not having the juice or other ingredients to make the soup. If you can only buy one extra meal, do so. Some is better than none! If you shop wisely, couponing or using discount stores like Aldi’s, you can buy more extra food than you think.
Using your month’s list, you can easily build that into a year’s supply by multiplying your numbers. If you wish to learn more about preparedness, the best book you can purchase is Making The Best Of Basics by James Talmage Stevens. This will prepare you for any and every disaster besides death itself. The Bible is what you need for that one!
Click here for your PANTRY INVENTORY LIST . Save the document and edit for your personal list
Happy Homesteading, S