Food Storage.

Some of you may or may not know that we take food storage pretty serious in the LDS Church. Here is a little overview of why....

"Our Heavenly Father created this beautiful earth, with all its abundance, for our benefit and use. His purpose is to provide for our needs. He has lovingly commanded us to “prepare every needful thing” so that, should adversity come, we can care for ourselves and our neighbors and support bishops as they care for others. (my favorite part)

"We encourage members world-wide to prepare for adversity in life by having a basic supply of food and water and some money in savings.

"We ask that you be wise as you store food and water and build your savings. Do not go to extremes; it is not prudent, for example, to go into debt to establish your food storage all at once. With careful planning, you can, over time, establish a home storage supply and a financial reserve."

I have to admit, having children and the economy being what it is.... It brings me comfort to know that I have slowly been building our food storage. Some people worry when we advertise this...because they feel that if something really bad happened people would come to our house looking for food. This is my take on it...if something that bad really happened...of course I would part of our substance to help others. Would I really just stay in my home and feed my children and watch our friends, neighbors or family starve? NO....
I personally feel that by building up our food storage, I can rest easier if something were to happen to Benjy's job, or we got snowed in or something of that nature..we could be self reliant. Also, I buy food storage stuff very cheap, find ways to get it free with coupons or get large quantities when it is ridiculously cheap!
Yesterday our church was able to get a canning machine for 2 days. I took advantage with the goal of canning 50 pounds of rice ($20 stores for 30 years) 25 pnds of flour, noodles and oatmeal.

Well...I underestimated (seems to be a consistent issue in my life) the number of cans I needed. I told Jessica 12 cans... ha ha ha... 9 were filled with rice alone!

WE opened my 25 pounds of flour and filled my remaining 3 cans...

I had over 1/2 a bag of flour left and open to get creative with....hee hee hee!

Stay tuned to see how I got creative last night with my flour! ;-) Thank you so much to Jessica, Jared, Cindy, Norma and Dan for helping add to our food storage! It really was a lot of fun and I can't believe we were done with every one's in less than an hour!