8 lessons learned from our eat from your food storage challenge.
Have you ever wondered if when it comes down to it, you can really do what you think you can? I write a lot about self-sufficiency, building up your food storage, and living off the land, but I still do purchase things from the grocery store.
What if you had to rely solely on the food you had right now in your food storage and pantry? Myself, and over a hundred and seventy other readers decided to take the challenge together. Challenge rules, to eat from your food storage and pantry without purchasing anything from the store for 14 days.
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8 Lessons Learned From an Eat From Your Food Storage Challenge
- You have more food in your fridge than you realize. Bad part, there is probably an item or two in the back of the fridge or in tucked in the crisper drawer that is passed its usability. Too often, we don't really truly see what we have. We need to make the time to take inventory.
- I tend to cook more along the lines of what we want, than what we have. When you dedicate yourself to only using the ingredients on hand, you learn to craft your eating and meals with the resources you have. I thought we were already doing this for the most part in theory, but when you're forced to do it, you see where you weren't necessarily following through.
- We could go a lot longer than 14 days eating only from our food storage. I actually have more food stored than I realized, which is a pretty good feeling. We'd be able to not purchase any food and not go hungry for months. Build up your food storage with these 8 Foods You Should Be Storing & How and 6 Tips to Buying Food in Bulk (plus our free bulk spice and herb storage list)
- We might be able to eat from our food storage for a very long time, but we're lacking variety in a few areas. Dairy is the one area we are sorely lacking in our food storage. We don't have our own dairy animals and while I have a good stock on butter and other fats, I don't have a source for milk, cream and cheese. I need to put a few more blocks of our favorite cheddar in the freezer (you knew all dairy freezes wonderfully, right?) as well as some powdered varieties for sauces and baking.
While we have tons of home canned tomato products, all of our green beans, and pickled asparagus, - I actually have more time. One would think cooking all of our meals from scratch from our food storage would make things more hectic, but I found that to be the opposite. Meal planning really does save time and the key to making this challenge work is to plan out meals ahead of time. I used my slow cooker almost every day for supper, and baked ahead on the weekends or when I had other blocks of time for snacks and breakfast items. Because I wasn't driving to the store and spending my time shopping, I actually had more time available, even with cooking everything myself.
- You will save money and not just during the challenge. Obviously, if you're not buying groceries or food for 2 weeks, you'll save some money. However, the benefit of this challenge I didn't see going in, is it's forced me to look at our current shopping and buying habits and to re-evaluate them. Often times, when I'm at the store, I purchase items and then don't end up using them. For example, I have a package of shredded coconut, pecans, and dates that have been in my cupboard for six months.
Have they went bad? No, but before I go and purchase something else to eat, we need to use up what we already have. From here on out, I'm still going to purchase as little as possible until I've used up more of our dry goods section. I've even went through some of our closets and am re-using and re-purposing things we already have instead of donating them or purchasing something new. Reveals of these in our coming up Homemade Christmas Series! Sign up here for an old-fashioned Christmas.
This really does give you a new appreciation for what you have. - We have holes in our food storage. I am keeping a list of items we don't have at all, ran out of, or am very low on. For example, I only have two bags of chocolate chips left. I love to bake and my family loves to eat chocolate. I have over two pounds of cocoa powder, but very little chocolate chips. So I either need to make my own chocolate chips or have a better supply on hand.
I ran out of lemon juice while canning tomatoes, a back form of acid for safe canning is non-negotiable, and I'll be investing in some citric acid. I mentioned dairy, some powdered varieties are coming in and dairy goats are looking more and more appealing.
Vegetable variety. I rely on being able to purchase fresh vegetables to supplement our canned variety more than I realized during our off growing season here. I need to can/freeze/or dehydrate more vegetables than I currently have. I also want to experiment more with cold frames and cold weather crops. Our fruit variety is pretty good with our canned applesauce, dried cherries and blueberries, and frozen bananas, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. - Oatmeal is way more versatile than I realized. Seriously, oatmeal is a breakfast go to, makes wonderful cookies, can be ground into flour, used as toppings for muffins and desserts, and does not get enough credit! I have a large amount of old-fashioned oats in my food storage, but I'm upping our quantity and will keep using it more.
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Without our home food preservation, my food storage would be a lot more expensive and a lot less than it is. I'm thankful for our crops and putting up food when it's in season to see us through the rest of the year. Everyone should be putting up some of their own food, even if they don't purchase it.
Just now catching this? No worries, grab our FREE Ultimate Home Food Preservation Guide and when we our next round of 30 Days of Preparedness, you'll have a choice to join in, too! sign up here!
Honestly, I didn’t have a problem in the world eating from my pantry and did not coming up short. We love crackers and always run out – so I need to learn how to make them from scratch. Actually, we need to learn to do without them! I always run short of oils but I had enough for this particular challenge. If I were to go longer I would have to find a way to compensate for grapeseed or olive oil in things like mayo. I’m pretty good for about 6 months. I guess my concern mostly is maintaining long-term. Time will tell I suppose. Nice challenge – I enjoyed it and learned a few new things along the way too.
I don’t think you finished #4, and in #6, Have they gone bad?
What did you think was missing from #4? And in #6, no the dates were unopened and sealed, as was the rest of the items, so they’re perfectly fine (and also good food storage items)
I tried printing off your recommendation for 8 lessons learned eating only from food storage and I was only able to print 2/3 wide of every page. I found the article very informative but I would like to keep it on file so I can return to it later for review. Do you have any recommendation on what to do to print the entire page.
Thanks
copy and paste into a word processor program
This challenge was so much fun!!! My husband thought he wasn’t going to make it without his bananas haha. I learned i need to diversify and maybe invest in some powdered milk. Thanks for setting up this challenge 🙂
I did a similar challenge in January & February of this year. The only things I purchased were milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, and orange juice (hubby has it for breakfast EVERY morning). I mainly did it to test what I had in my preparations since I just started this journey last year.
I plan on doing the same thing this year but I’ll be freezing cheese and yogurt. I didn’t know they could be frozen when I did it last year!
I know based on that experience that I really need a dairy source. We’ve had plans to add a flock of chickens too, although it hasn’t been possible yet. Soon though!
I’ve also purchased a small valencia orange tree. I know I’ll need to make a home for it inside during the winter but it just might help with hubby’s need for OJ. And I don’t expect to get fruit off it for a few years yet.
I would love an on-line source for bulk oatmeal. I used to live near a store that sold it in 25 pound bags. I have moved to a different state and that store is now about a 3 hour drive each way.
I enjoyed this article and although my food storage isn’t enough yet, I have at least started. Tonight we froze peppers, onions and a couple of cantaloupes. Although I am hoping to start putting up things in canning jars this winter (also new to me). Peppers are allot of work though! But nice to put them up ourselves. I wish we had more freezer room.
Hi, Diana, so glad you enjoyed this. Everyone started somewhere and just being aware and beginning puts you in a better position! I’ll be doing a free canning webinar soon, so if you’re new to canning you’ll really enjoy that.
Another use for oatmeal, is bread. I made this quite a bit when raising my kids.
It’s from a BH&G Bread Book from 1969. I modified it over time, but will let you figure out what works for you. The biggest change was to use potato water so that the bread keeps better.
Oatmeal Bread
2 pkgs yeast in 1/2 cup warm water
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In pan combine:
1 1/4 cup boiling water
1 cup oats (I prefer regular oats like you suggested)
1/2 c. molasses
1/3 c. shortening
1 T. salt
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Sift 6+ cups flour
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In big bowl mix:
2 cups of flour, softened yeast, and cooled to warm oat mix.
Add and beat well with wooden spoon
2 beaten eggs
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rest 15 minutes. It should form a ‘sponge’.
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Add more flour to make soft dough
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let rest 15 minutes (optional)
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turn out onto bread board and knead in the rest of flour until a good dough forms.
Cover. Let rise till double…. Divide dough into two and place into greased loaf pans. Let rise again. Brush with egg white wash and sprinkle with oats.
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Bake 375 for about 40 minutes until bread sounds hollow when tapped.
Remove from oven and place pans on their sides on a cookie rack to cool.
Thanks so much for sharing! I adore oatmeal and I’d swap the shortening out for butter or lard, but sounds like a great one to try. I love those old recipes and older cookbooks have some great gems in them.
Instead of storing butter, make clarified butter. It is available from Indian grocers as “cow ghee”, but it is very easy (and much cheaper) to make at home. I pack it hot into mason jars and have had some for over 2 years that is shelf stable. The key is to cook out all of the milk solids and the water. It may be liquid at warm room temperatures or solid at cool room temperatures. It is much healthier to use than butter.
I do freeze cheese but I also bought some freeze dried cheeses, sour cream,butter and shortening powders. Sure you can not do everything with those types but you can bake with them. I agree that we tend to cook what we want instead of what we have on hand. It is kind of fun to see what you can come up with. A word of warning though, write down what you used if you made up your own recipe. It never turns out well when you try to recreate it without having it written down. I made a chicken dish in the crock pot which my family loved BUT I did not write it down so I have been trying to recreate it ever since and just can’t make it the same.