Building Your Emergency Food Storage

Start by building a 3 month supply of foods you and your family will eat. If you are just starting out, commit to at least $5.00 a week out of your budget. $5.00 should be doable for anyone. Give up that cup of Starbucks for a day, take leftovers to work for lunch for one day. Ladies....manicure your own nails and save that money to put back food for your family. There are many small ways to save a few dollars to use for your food investment. For $5.00, this is one example of what I could buy using store brands.

1 package of dried beans
1 package of Goya (Concentrated Ham seasoning) use to season dry beans and peas and has 10 envelopes in the package
1 jar Spaghetti Sauce
1 package of spaghetti noodles
1 large container of oatmeal

This sample would make 4 meals of lunches and dinners and many meals for breakfast for 3 to 4 people.

$5.00 could purchase both a 5 pound bag of flour and cornmeal using store brands. This will begin the stores for bread baking items to serve with your meals to make them more filling. If you save your $5.00 for 3 weeks. That $15.00 can be spent on a large box of Carnation Instant Milk to make 22 quarts of Milk which is 5 1/2 gallons. This milk is good to drink if made the night before and chilled. You can also purchase the chocolate or strawberry powder or syrup if you have children who really balk at drinking instant milk. The instant milk can be used in any recipe that calls for regular milk and I promise you will not know the difference.

Check to see if you have any grocery outlets in your area. Most of these stores sell items at cost plus a 10% surcharge. We have two and the savings are well worth the extra miles I drive to get to one of them. Also...if you shop in or near an upper class neighborhood, consider checking out prices on the other side of town. Stores sometimes charge higher prices in different areas of town.

What I am trying to show is that by starting small and adding things weekly, you will soon have a 3 months supply of emergency food storage. Make 6 copies of the following chart. This will be for a 3 month food supply. Write in your daily menus and then make a shopping list of all items it will take to prepare the food. Every time you go shopping purchase something that will go into your emergency food supply. I personally only buy items that does not have to be frozen or refrigerated just in case our emergency causes loss of electricity.

Two Week Menu

Day #	Breakfasts	Lunches	Dinners	Snacks
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14