Starting Your Three-Month's Supply

Now that we have our 72-hour kits together, we are going to concentrate on the next step--Your 3-month supply of food. By definition, this should be "a small supply of food that is part of your normal, daily diet. One way to do this is to purchase a few extra items each week to build a one-week supply of food. Then you can gradually increase your supply until it is sufficient for three months. These items should be rotated regularly to avoid spoilage (Provident Living website)."

There are several ways to go about doing this, but two of the easiest tools are:

1. Buy two, use one--If you need a jar of spaghetti sauce for dinner this week, buy two and keep one on hand. Always have at least on jar unopened in the pantry.


2. Choose 15 meals and multiply the ingredients needed by 6--For example, Spaghetti, veggies, & croissants is your meal. If, in one meal, you go through 1 box of spaghetti, 1 jar of sauce, 2 cans of veggies, and 2 cans of croissants, this is what your 3-month supply of this meal would look like:

• 6 boxes of spaghetti noodles


• 6 jars of spaghetti sauce


• 6 pounds of hamburger meat (can be stored cooked in the freezer for 3 months)


• 12 cans of veggies or 6 bags of frozen veggies


• 12 cans of refrigerated croissants

You would just repeat this process for 14 other meals. Having 15 meals will ensure that you only have to eat the same meal twice in a month. If you don't mind having the same meals every week, you can use less recipes. Gradually build up your supply of each ingredient with the "Buy two, use one" principle.

Remember to make a few things from scratch to be able to use your staple, or long term, storage items, too. Here are some websites to look at to get some ideas for easy meals:

• Kraft Foods


• Campbell's


• Betty Crocker: Dinner Made Easy


• Pillsbury

Also, here are a couple cookbooks and recipe search websites that have GREAT recipes that don't have a lot of ingredients:

• All Recipes


• Recipe Zaar


• A Man, A Can, A Plan: 50 Great Guy Meals Even You Can Make


• Eating For Life--Recipe book based on the Body For Life diet & exercise plan (Great tasting, healthy recipes even if you don't follow the plan itself)


• New Cookbook (Better Homes & Gardens)

Challenge: For Family Home Evening, discuss with your family what their favorite meals are. Come up with 15 and gather the recipes to determine how much of each ingredient in that recipe you will need to build up to a 3-month's supply.

The Sharpsburg Ward has put together a 3-month supply booklet with recipes, budgets, and ideas for planning for your 3-month supply. I would like to do this for our ward also. Please send your 3-month supply recipes to Sis. Schaefer at justjen@stsweb.com. The deadline for getting recipes in will be March 29.