Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The Experiment

The last little while I have secretly been doing an experiment on my family. Just how long can we get by on Food Storage?

It started mainly to start saving for, and to clean out the fridge before the big celebration we had a few weeks ago for my son's 8th birthday. We ended up with a fridge full for a couple of days after that and gleefully lived on roast beef, pork and salads until that ran out.

Then the lack of food in the fridge hit, and my refusal to buy any more (because I've been saving for other things) and I really wanted to see how long my family would be able to handle living just on what we have available. Apparently the answer is "Two weeks". Poor hubby cracked today and is craving all sorts of things, which just aren't in the cupboard any more. No more chips, soft drink, cordial, meat (we're having the last of the bacon tomorrow), fried chicken, 'normal' soup (he likes brand name soup).

Heaven help us if we actually have no choice but to live off our food storage!

So, would your family be able to complete this challenge? Would you be able to survive on just what is in your pantry cupboard? Do you have appropriate food in there that you can make complete meals out of? Would it be a reasonably balanced diet? Do you know how to make bread/pasta/tortillas etc without running to Google for help?

The 'two weeks' was a bit of a lie. We actually have survived for a few months, with a $100 spend in the middle of that for fresh fruit, veggies, milk, bread and sandwich meat for hubby to take his lunch to work (plus washing powder, tissues, toilet paper, dishwashing detergent etc that I hadn't stored up on, all in that $100 too).

Not a bad experiment, if I may say so yourself.

Try it, you may be suprised!