Food Storage Made Easy

One of the easiest ways to prep for unplanned events is building up your food storage. This is a great idea for everyone. I look at the recent natural disasters that occurred this year including the fires, mudslides, and hurricanes and I’ve realized that life can change without notice. Loss of income can also come along with little notice and can impact the ability to purchase food. Having a stocked pantry can help decrease the blow to any of those things.

There are plenty of websites and blogs that can give you a list of things to stock-up on. These lists can be a good starting point. Keep in mind, each person/blogger prepares for different things and their food list/pantry guide will reflect this. So I recommend looking at several lists and determine what you want to be prepared for and plan your pantry accordingly.

Here are my 3 tips for beginner food storage

1. Store what you like to eat. Let’s face, if you don’t like eating it now, you probably won’t like eating it in an emergency situation. If your kids don’t want to eat it now, they won’t like eating it for 3 days straight. I like to buy a little extra of the things we normally eat to put away.
2. Start with essentials first. A good place to start is with the basics. Start thinking about a 3 day supply just in case there’s a bad storm. What do you need to survive for three days. You’re most certainly going to need water and basic easy to prepare food. Tackle these first. Then move on to add either variety or quantity to your storage.
3. Canned food is your friend. Canned food is a great staple to your food storage. Canned foods are cheap. Sometimes I can get 4 cans for $1. It can store for long periods of time. Its easy to store by stacking. You can easily rotate the food so you are eating the oldest first. All sorts of food comes canned. You can get canned meats in the form of tuna or chicken, an assortment of vegetables, lots of fruits, juices, potatoes, etc. Its pretty amazing what you can easily stock-up on.

These tips are pretty simple and common sense. I know when I first looked into building up my food storage, I was a bit overwhelmed by all the options and people’s opinions. This was my starting point.

Have you been building a food storage? What are your beginner tips? Did I miss a basic tip you think should be included? Let me know what you think!

This post was shared here: https://www.oakhillhomestead.com/2018/05/simple-homestead-blog-hop-158.html

Book Review: The Proving

My first book finished in 2018! If you’ve been following my blog, you know one of my goals is to read/finish at least 1 book a month. I’ve also started my second book for the year.

The Proving by Beverly Lewis

Amanda Dienner has run away from her Amish roots and living in the Englisher world. She was surprised when she found out her mother had died and she will inherit the Amish bed and breakfast. The one caveat is she must successfully run the bed and breakfast for 1 year. Trina has been mourning the loss of her fiance. She found comfort in caring for an elderly woman. When the elderly woman fell and was unable to return home, Trina found herself out of job. With time on her hands, she decided to go on a mystery vacation which landed her in an Amish bed and breakfast.

Lewis is a gifted story teller and this book is no exception. Her characters have colorful and varied. The story focuses around Amanda and Trina. Their unlikely friendship helps guide both woman to healing. Trina is a bit rough around the edges sometimes as she tends to say what she’s thinking. But she has a helping heart and helps Amanda not only with her physical needs but also with emotional needs to help heal. Amanda is kind and hardworking but is impulsive and tends to hold a grudge.  Lewis uses her story telling skills to help us gently see potential flaws and ways to improve on them.

Sense this is an Amish book, one should expect references to church, God and praying. This book does a good job intertwining the story with Christian activities. The book also has several Christian themes. These include the importance of family, trusting God, and forgiveness.

Overall, I give this book a 5 out of 5 bookends.

Disclaimer: I did receive this book for free from the publishers in exchange for an honest review.

Have you read this book? If so I’d love to hear what you thought of it. What are you currently reading? Share your reviews as a comment and maybe I can find my next book!

Book Review: Sweet Potatoes

Oh boy! Here is a review of a cookbook I received this fall. I am a bit late in my review and I apologize.

Sweet Potatoes by Mary-Francis Heck

This book has 60 recipes. These recipes vary from simple to more complex. The recipe ingredients are basic and traditional to less traditional such has chocolate or coconut milk. It has recipes for different types of Sweet Potatoes.

Before reading this book, I had not realized there were any other types of sweet potatoes besides the orange fleshed ones. The book is thin so it’s easy to add it to your collection of recipe books. It has beautiful pictures. I tried two of the recipes. They both turned out good and my family ate them well.

My only disappointment is thinness of the book. Overall, I really like my cookbooks to have a bit more thickness to it. I do know this was a very focused cookbook but I would have liked a bit more from the book.

Overall, this is a good cookbook. I give it a 4 out of 5 on the scale of 1-5 book-ends.

I did receive this book for free from the publishers for an honest review.