Paskett - Food Storage for Self-Sufficiency and Survival

LIVING READY BOOKS

IOLA, WISCONSIN

www.LivingReadyOnline.com

To my husband and children

CHAPTER 1
Food for 72-Hour Emergency Kits

Disasters can strike at any moment, so its important to have a ready supply of food on hand. The kit described in this chapter is designed to be portable so you can use it during an evacuation, but also if you are stuck at home without access to grocery stores.

CHAPTER 2
Food for Short-Term Emergencies: Two Weeks to Three Months

Food storage can help you through a widespread disaster, but it can also help you through personal financial difficulties by reducing your grocery bill during tight times. This chapter helps you identify which foods you should store based on your personal preferences and how much you should keep on hand.

CHAPTER 3
Food for Long-Term Emergencies: Three Months or Longer

While large-scale disasters are rare, they could happen. Plus, long-term food storage helps you beat inflationyou can eat food a year from now that was purchased at todays prices. You can also stock up on foods in season and during sales to take advantage of even lower prices.

CHAPTER 4
Storing Water

Water is more critical to survival than food and must be included in your food storage plan. This chapter explains water storage options, alternate sources of water, and water purification methods.

CHAPTER 5
Preserving Your Own Food

Canning, dehydrating, and freezing are excellent methods of preserving fresh foods, whether you grow and harvest them yourself or purchase them from stores or farmers markets.

CHAPTER 6
Packing Dry Foods for Long-Term Storage

Food storage has many enemies that can destroy itpests, moisture, oxygen, just to name a few. Proper packaging and storage of your food will protect it from ruin and ensure your food is as nutritious and great tasting as possible when you need to eat it, even if its years later.

CHAPTER 7
Buying Food

Long-term food storage is an investment, but it doesnt have to break your budget. This chapter is full of practical, budget-friendly ways to stock your food storage.

CHAPTER 8
Maintaining Balance and Variety

Planning for and storing a range of different foods can provide your family with proper nutrition and reduce appetite fatigue. This chapter explains how to incorporate the various food groups into your food storage so you can maintain a balanced diet that has enough variety to meet your nutritional needs as well as your taste preferences.

CHAPTER 9
Sustainable Food Storage

Food stored in cans and buckets will eventually run out. Supplementing your stored food with sustainable food sources like gardening, livestock, or hunting will help extend the food supply you have as well as provide food for years to come.

CHAPTER 10
Organizing and Storing Your Food Storage

Where and how you store your food can be a big challenge. This chapter provides step-by-step instructions for finding a safe place for your food storage, even if your space is limited.

CHAPTER 11
Using Your Food Storage

If you dont eat the food you store, you are wasting money, space, and time. This chapter shows you how to use the contents of your food storage both during an emergency, when cooking can be a challenge, and as part of everyday life so food is used before it goes bad.

The seeds of my own food storage journey were planted as a child. I grew up with a mother who canned garden produce, milked goats, cooked from scratch, and built bookshelves using boards and wheat cans. When I started a family of my own, storing food got serious. The responsibility my husband and I faced as parentsto provide for ourselves and the children who blessed our livesbecame a driving force. I did not want to be dependent on a grocery store or government agency to feed my family if there were an emergency. Storing food just made sense.

So I set out to build my food storage. There were few resources at that time, but I learned as much as I could about which foods to store, how to store them, and how to use them from the limited books, seminars, and classes that were available. Most important, I actually started storing food. I tested what I learned from those seminars and books in my own life and with my own family. There has been a lot of learning and more than a few mistakes along the way. But with each can of food I put away, I felt that much more peace about my familys ability to provide for ourselves.

Ive never had to use my food storage for a large disaster. I did not personally experience any of the devastating natural disasters in the recent past like Hurricanes Katrina, Ike, or Sandy. I havent even had to live through a power outage that has lasted longer than two days. So has storing food been a waste of time and resources? Absolutely not. What I found is that storing food is so much more than an emergency plan. It is a means by which my family can be self-sufficient every day of the year, regardless of whether we have to deal with an emergency situation or not.

Food storage has helped me stretch my familys income in tight budget months, pack quick meals for short-notice trips to the mountains, and create healthy meals for my family without constant trips to the grocery store. And that food is there for us in the event we do experience a long-term emergency, whether that is a power outage, natural disaster, or a personal emergency such as illness or job loss.

About five years ago, a friend of mine asked for help getting started with her food storage, and thinking I could help her and maybe a few other friends and family members, I started the blog, foodstorageandsurvival.com, Food Storage and Survival. My handful of readers has grown to a worldwide audience. I now host a weekly radio show as well as teach seminars and classes on food storage and family preparedness. I have been blessed to be able to help many more than just my one friend, and I want to help you, too.

I did not write this book to tell you the single best way to store food for your family. I dont believe there is one best way. Each of us has our own unique circumstances, and our food storage will reflect that. Age, family size, health concerns, income, and living conditions will all factor into your personal food storage plan. Within each chapter are a variety of options including options for preserving food, packaging food, and getting various foods in your storage plan. You will find some options will work for you and some wont. Those that dont work for you may be perfect for someone else.

This is also not a cookbook or a complete survival manual. This is an in-depth, nuts-and-bolts guide for storing food. The first three chapters cover storing food for portable emergency kits, short-term storage, and long-term storage. Water storage and filtration are next, then canning, drying, freezing, and packaging your own food storage. I give options for purchasing food for storage and detail a variety of foods that are available to store. Sustainable food storage, including raising livestock, gardening, and hunting, is also covered as a means of providing ongoing food sources for your family. And we wind up with proper storage techniques, ideas for places to store your food, and how to use food storage to make your own favorite recipes. And, of course, there are worksheets throughout the book to help you plan, purchase, and rotate your food storage. With the information in this, book you can build and carry out your personal food storage plan to fit the needs of your family.