Tess Pennington - The Preppers Ultimate Food Storage Guide: Your Complete Resource to Create a Long-Term, Live-Saving Supply of Nutritious, Shelf-Stable Meals, Snacks, and More Violator: Includes 300+ Delicious and

Congratulations on beginning (or continuing) your journey in food storage. Part 1 of this book is intended to be a helpful resource for everyone, from those just beginning to consider their food storage to those who are already well underway. Preparing your family for a variety of challenging circumstances is a really good idea and I congratulate you for having the wisdom and foresight to be prepared for whatever may come.

It could be that your family will never need its long-term food storage, and I hope that is the case. But if you do find yourself in trying circumstances, your preparedness may mean the difference between life and death; and even if no hardship befalls your family, you will at the very least sleep better knowing you are prepared.

Part 1 is organized into 101 steps. The intent of this is to reduce what can seem like a very daunting task into a series of reasonable steps. Each step includes an item or items to store, an indicator of costs, where you might buy the item, how to store it, how long it will last, what equipment you might need to use it (such as a can opener or a grain mill), and a recipe to get you started. Most recipes are for meals to eat right away, but there are also some meal-in-a-jar recipes that enable you to prepare meals in advance and have them ready to go at a moments notice. Youll also find a host of other recipes later in the book.

In my family, when presented with a big or challenging task, we ask each other the rhetorical question, How do you eat an elephant? The answer is, of course, One bite at a time! Our hope with Part 1 is to divide the work of creating your family food storage into easily manageable steps. Plan to complete a couple of steps per week and you will build your storage in about a year. If you are an overachiever, you can double that and have it done in half the time! Depending on your budget and the size of your family, you may choose to divide some higher-cost items into two or three steps. Thats perfectly okay. Just work on each step and mark it done when it is complete.

The goal here is to figure out what you need, plan your approach, get started (sometimes the hardest step), and then just keep going. Be very intentional about your efforts. After some time of being diligent and intentional, youll find you have the vast majority of what you need.

The steps are organized here in rough order of importance, from very high priority to high, medium, and low. Within each priority level, items are divided into categories to make them easier to find. Those categories are:

• Canned Goods
• Dairy (and Dairy Substitutes)
• Drinks (and Drink Mixes)
• Fats
• Pantry Staples
• Produce (Fresh and Dried)
• Sundries and Household Items
• Sweets and Sweeteners

Of course, you should adjust the plan to fit your budget, priorities, and schedule. If a trip to town finds you at Costco, we hope youll have this book close at hand. Flip through and look for items best bought at Costco, and knock out as many as your budget and time allow.

Mark your progress as you go. It might be your plan to store 2,000 lbs. of wheat, but you might choose to do that 100 lbs. at a time. Keep track of your progress as you go and mark each step as done when you have purchased as much as planned.

COST INDICATORS (1-year supply)

$ Under $100 for family of 4

$$ Under $500 for family of 4

$$$ Under $1,000 for family of 4

$$$$ Over $2,000 for family of 4

Planning your food storage starts with determining what your goal is. Start with the number of people in your family, including any likely guests or visitors. In my house, I have an immediate family of four. I also have an elderly relative and extended family of four who are my neighbors, as well as an adult grown son who would arrive at my door with at least one friend in tow. It adds up fast, doesnt it? You also need to think about having a portion to share if your budget allows.

What about children? They require fewer calories than adults, except when they become teens; then their caloric needs are about the same as, or even greater than, an adults (depending on activity level). I count children as adults, knowing that a near-term emergency would leave me with some extra capacity (always a good thing) and that in the long run Ill still have enough food.