LOS ARIAS: Food Storage

Perhaps it is because hurricane season is approaching, or maybe it's the fact that I have a child I am responsible for providing for, but I have been thinking about food storage a lot lately. Last year when Hurricane Ike hit we didn't have power for a week. Before that I never fully appreciated how much we use electricity. The first day was fine, we ate the fruits and veggies we had in the fridge, finished the milk and other perishables, but then the food in our fridge and freezer started to go bad (thank you Texas heat). For two days we lived on sandwiches, pop tarts, canned fruit and we would make hobo dinners on the grill outside at night. Luckily, we had some friends close by that didn't lose power so we packed up after three days of living like cave men and went and stayed with them for a night and then we went to my uncle's in Dallas for the next few days. If we hadn't been able to go to my uncles I'm not sure what we would have done. We wouldn't have starved by any means, but the food would have been meager and not nutritious. We definitely were not prepared to the extent we should have been. Because of all this I have set a goal to really get my food storage in order. Last night for enrichment they did a whole thing on food storage and had wonderful ideas as well as recipes for 30 days that don't require electricity. That was the tricky part for me, we had the food, but no way to prepare most of it. No restaurants were open, no gas stations had gas, the supermarket shelves were bare. It had the potential to be a fairly scary week. At the time Livi was only 4 months old, so she was getting all of her nutrients from me. But now that she requires food just like Phil and me, that puts a little extra urgency into it for me. I'm so grateful that we had the opportunity to go through the hurricane, because now I really understand the importance of food storage and why the leaders of the church are constantly bringing it up. For anyone who reads this...even if you don't live somewhere that has natural disasters very often, get your food storage!!! You never know when you are going to need it. Here are some pictures from Ike.