Background
This blog started not so much because I had food storage, but because I had to use it. Let me explain. We reached a tight spot in our finances during the summer of 2012. My husband was between graduation and a job, we were getting ready to move states, and our meager financial reserve was pretty much gone. In 2011, I had felt inspired to store our 3 month supply of food. Since we lived in a 400-sq. ft. apartment at the time, I thought it would be ridiculous to find a place for everything. Somehow, we managed to do so without tripping over any of it. I had no idea we’d be living on food storage a year later.
During the lean times in 2012, we felt that we should put off borrowing money and start using our food storage. Our goal was 6 weeks since we knew that there were inherent flaws in our storage system. We had great success without feeling too deprived!
What We Learned
In the process of living on food storage, we learned some valuable lessons:
1. How to make substitutions in recipes that still taste good
2. Cooking new things from scratch
3. A new appreciation for how much fresh food we usually have in our fridge
4. A better understanding of our minimum nutritional requirements
5. How to save money in more ways than we knew before
6. That God is always watching over us. We received fresh food from ward (congregation) members and family members just as our supply of fresh fruit/veggies had run out. None of them knew about the experiment!
7. More compassion for those who are less fortunate than we are
We are grateful to have food in the fridge again, but we are even more grateful for the lessons we learned in those short 6 weeks of living on food storage.
