Week 17 Deep Pantry/Food Storage Challenge

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Sorry I missed last week, we will just skip it and move on, I will incorporate last week’s items into a future challenge.

A deep pantry a good thing to have.

Remember having a deep pantry isn’t just about having extra food on hand. It is also about having the means to survive in an emergency situation, having all the extra food isn’t going to do you much good if you can’t cook it when the power is out.

Don’t forget to share what you were able to do this past week to have a deep pantry/food storage. Let’s encourage each other. And if you have a question feel free to ask or if you have the answer to a question feel free to answer. If you have a tip or idea you can share that also. As I said let’s make this a place where we can share and encourage others to get that deep pantry.

6 Pounds Shortening / Cheese

6 Pounds shortening, oil or lard I use lard and olive oil to cook with since it is better for you then the hydrogenated shortenings. I do keep a little shortening and vegetable oil on hand. I use the oil in a spray bottle to spray the bottom of pans. The shortening I use in soap. As with everything be sure to rotate. If you plan to make your own soaps you might want to try and get a little extra.

Shortening does have a very long shelf life if keep unopened and in a cool place. I also have lard and tallow canned which extends the self-life. Oils not so long, they will get rancid a lot quicker than the solid shortenings.

Cheese we eat a lot of cheese, I try to buy on sale and keep in the freezer I get the shredded, because when you freeze block cheese it will fall apart when you thaw it out. You may want to get some cheese powder I have two different kinds and really don’t care for either one of them so I don’t know if I am just picky or if I just haven’t found a good one, the kids like them so maybe it is just me. I need to play around with them a little and see if I can tweak the taste.

You can also wax some cheese and store in a cool place. The only problem with this is if there is even a pin size hole it will get very moldy,( don’t ask how I know) and it does get sharper as it ages. I tried this and didn’t care for it. I haven’t using a food saver on block cheese but plan to try this soon and see if it would work better than the wax.

You can also dehydrate grated cheese, if you do this use cheese that you grate yourself. Or you can can your cheese it is pretty easy to do. I have hard cheese and Velveeta canned.

I make most of our soft cheese like, cream cheese, mozzarella, and cottage cheese. You don’t need fresh milk to do these you can use store bought milk to make any of these.

The Action item this month is learning to cook from scratch if you don’t already. It is so much cheaper and healthier.

The extra item this month is alterative lighting. Oil lamps are very affordable and you can use Kerosene which is less than ten dollars a gallon and keeps for a very long time. You will go through batteries in your flashlight pretty quickly so be sure to have lots of candles, oil lamps maybe even some solar powered lights and other light sources in addition to extra batteries .

Put back some more water. Store bought or containers that you fill your self.

Add more money to your money stash. Even if a small amount it all adds up.

So what did I get done this past couple weeks?

I bought 24 pounds of cheese (it was on sale),10 boxes of rigatoni pasta, several pounds of bananas to put in the freezer, a couple jars of molasses, I ordered a couple patterns one for busy books and one for underwear, a couple extra spools of thread, I also signed up for a online class for my serger (was going to take a class at a local sewing shop but just can’t get away during the week to take it), ordered The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses , was gifted a whole bag of dyed wool. I think this was about all I got done this past couple weeks.

What were you able to get done this week? Even if it is something small every little bit helps.

 

One Reply to “Week 17 Deep Pantry/Food Storage Challenge”