What to store?

In order to know what to put in your food storage...you first need to determine who will be eating the food. There are three choices; bugs, the sewer system or your family. You decide!

If you do not store your food properly; moths, weevils, bugs or mice will get it, no matter how well you store your food. If you do not choose to store the right foods and rotate your supply, nobody will eat it.

The aim is for you to store the right foods, rotate your foods, and your family will eat it.

Remember the SIEGE MENTALITY.

They store foods with the vision that in the not too distant future every family will be sequestered into their own "bunker" - fending off scavengers.

PRACTICAL AND PROVIDENT assume that when the storage will be used it will be most likely during periods of unemployment or storms, which make getting food impossible. That during this crisis, life will go on pretty much the way it has always gone except that you will be eating from food storage and not from the shops.

On the surface, siege food is easier. There are only a few foods that need to be stored and the amounts to store have been worked out for you already. But there are some drawbacks. Siege food is workable. There is a lot of work to prepare the meals, a lot of adjustment on the part of the families, but it is possible. Here is a list of some of the problems that must be solved:-

Leavening Agents

Where is the yeast?

Just about everything you can do with wheat requires yeast or baking powder or sourdough starter.

Here is a rule of thumb:

- Half a pound of yeast

- One pound of baking powder

- One pound of baking soda

per person per year

Yeast is a living thing and it will die on you. Store it in the freezer and rotate . Dispose of it after it has reached expiration date. Dead yeast is good for nothing.

Water

If you are going to rely on wheat and beans and powdered milk, you're going to need to store over and above amounts of water to what is recommended to drink.

Remember it is recommended that we store two weeks worth of water only.

What and beans are useless without first soaking them in water. Powdered milk is useless unless made up with water. Plan on three cups of water to one cup of wheat or beans.

Power

What and beans need to be cooked. There is not much you can do without this process. It is against the law in Australia to store kerosene or petrol, so the very thought of storing flammable liquid is out of the question.

Honey

For children under the age of one, honey is a no-no. Honey causes Botulism in young children. Botulism is fatal. Use sugar instead.

Non-Fat Powdered Milk

Children should not drink non-fat or low-fat milk. Fat is a vital building block for young children's bodies.

Wheat and Lactose Intolerance

"In our family, we spent a year of our early marriage as food fanatics. Out went the sugar, the white flour, anything processed - even red meat for a little while. We knew we had to ease into healthy eating. We did everything right. incorporating whole wheat flour into bread recipes with white flour, adding more as time passed and reducing more of the white processed flour. Finally we reached the point of exclusively using our own stone ground flour.

We felt wonderful.

Then the body started telling us there was a problem. It would not tolerate anything with whole wheat in it. There more we ate, the more the intolerance grew.

Finally we gave up and returned to our pre fanatic lifestyle. We can tolerate small amounts of wholewheat".

Be aware of food allergies.

Be aware of diabetics.

Human Tastes

We need variety in our diet.