Self-Reliance

After my last post, Segullah was mentioned by two family members as a blog that they liked. I have to say, I'm not so sure that I like it. That might be too harsh ... but some of the writing is not to my taste (too flowery). I know for a fact that others love that, but not my style. It actually hurts my head to try and consume the writing that way.

But then there are others that are right up my alley. In fact, I read several posts today that made me cry .... not just a tear or two, but cry. Losing a child, getting divorced, watching someone go through a hard time.

The latest one that struck me was on self-reliance: http://segullah.org/daily-special/finding-balance-thrift-versus-consumption/. I thought that I had already put my thoughts down on this, but it doesn't appear so.

For many years I've been confused about self-reliance. The church has given us two different messages: be self-reliant and support/give to each other. Okay ... what am I missing? How can I serve or give to others, if I'm supposed to not only take care of my needs now, but put away more for later? Sounds like two opposing messages, doesn't it?

Then one day during a lesson in Relief Society on self-reliance ... 'Bing!' ... the light went on. Oh ..... I get it! If you take care of the things within your home, you have the capability of looking outside of your home to bless others.

If we have extra food stored...

• we can give to a family in the ward who is out of a job
• we can make dinner for a young mother that just gave birth or got sick
• we can make a meal for a funeral or for ward function

If we have extra money put away...

• we can give more towards the ward missionary fund
• we can double my fast offering
• we can give towards a family that has to be for an unplanned funeral
• we can give to a family that has an unplanned medical expense

Yup - I can't tell you how long it took for me to get this concept ... years! I'm a little ashamed to think I was so thick-headed. But I'm really happy that I know it now. Now, I can focus on getting my act together so that I can bless others lives.

Couponing...for real?!?

Yup. For real.

I looked into this a year or so ago and thought, no way. But then my sister-in-law (thanks, Melissa) invited me to her house and I checked out how she was doing it. And it was a really easy way of organizing coupons - just date them, combine multiple copies, and file away. Yes. That is how I can 'clip' coupons. :o)

So, I got four copies of the Sunday paper and I've been filing coupons for a couple weeks. It took me quite a while to figure out how to take the list on Grocery Smarts and find what I needed. I made a grocery list for the next two weeks, but it didn't really match. So I thought, "why don't I just find some things I know I'll use and go shopping for those to see if I want to do this more....."

AND I went on my first shopping trip today! Check out the picture to see what I got for ~$65!

Can you believe it!?! JUST the cans alone would cost $65! OR JUST the non-food items alone would cost $65! And I got it all for $65 and saved about $53!!!!!!!

Needless to say, I'm hooked! And I'm really excited that we now have about a year's supply of toothpaste, bars of soap, and razors for Leon (just from this one trip). Totally cool. (I just have to figure out how to match my list of menu items to the list of sales/coupons better.)

I'll let you know what happens the next time I go. Happy shopping!

Small Accomplishment

Today, I had a small accomplishment. I really needed it.

I've been working on getting more food storage, but we need to organize it a little bit better.....have you seen the cost of those metal rotating shelves? Outrageous!

We have metal shelves, but they don't rotate. I came across this http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2009/02/16/build-your-own-can-rotating-rack/ and thought "hey, I can do that."

And I can. And I did. It took a lot longer than I would have liked, but I have made eight of them and they are more efficient than just stacking the cans (space or rotation). So after days of working on them (not continuously), I'm feeling accomplished.

Although, I need to make about 12 more (at least). :)

The Wisdom of Food Storage

In my religion, food storage and self-reliance has been taught for years. It can be a daunting task to store food and water for you family for any length of time.....one-month, three-months, twelve-months.

But let's throw out the religious aspect - for giggles.

Having food storage provides peace of mind.

What kind of things are in food storage? Food for meal preparation, water storage, non-food items, and a few extra dollars, etc.

So, let's take a hypothetical situation that your tire on your all wheel drive van goes flat. Little do you know, that with an all wheel drive vehicle, you have to replace all four tires at the same time. No matter what!?! Seriously? I had no idea.

So, four new tires can be anywhere from $250 to $500+. If you don't have a good reserve, which we sometimes do and we sometimes don't, then where is that money going to come from. We don't have credit cards, so it can't go there (good decision on our part). Lucky for us, when these types of situation have come up, we can pull that amount from our food budget.

.....BUT only because we have food storage in the garage. Without that, we would have been up a creek.

Not to mention it's Sunday night at 6PM and you just ran out of toilet paper. Hmmm, sure is nice that we have some in the basement and don't have to break the Sabbath to run to the store for that item. Or better yet, a child gets sick and you have medicine on hand. So many little examples where food storage really comes in handy.

Just putting a little thought out there.....

3-Month Menu Planning and Food Storage

The last few weeks, I've been dedicating my time to planning and organizing a three-month menu. So, where do you start? I have done this before and pretty much just did one month and multiplied the ingredients by three months. But that's not how we eat - the kids (and me) get too bored.

I found a website through a friend (thanks Teresa!): http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2009/06/29/babystep-3-three-month-food-supply-revised/ - halfway down the page, there is a spreadsheet. I started to populate the spreadsheet that they provided, but I wanted to change it slightly.

Note: I get overwhelmed by too many choices. What should I make for lunch, snacks, dinner? How many recipes should I keep readily available? What ingredients should I have on hand? etc. etc.

First step: I grouped the lunches, snacks and dinners by each day of the week so that I could narrow down my choices for each day. For now, this is how I have everything broken out:

Monday

• Lunch: calzones (or similar item such as Pizza Muffins)
• Snack: fruit or yogurt
• Dinner: chicken or fish

Tuesday

• Lunch: canned items or soup (ravioli, spaghettios, chicken noodles, beef stew, etc.)
• Snack: granola
• Dinner: noodles

Wednesday

• Lunch: meat (corn dogs, hot dogs jellyfish, chicken wings, etc.)
• Snack: frozen treat
• Dinner: soup or salad

Thursday

• Lunch: sandwiches
• Snack: chips & dip
• Dinner: beef or pork

Friday

• Lunch: wraps
• Snack: sweet treat
• Dinner: pizza

Saturday/Sunday

• Lunch: leftovers
• Snack: leftovers
• Dinner: casserole or big dinner (like roast)

Second step: I have about 110 recipes, including a couple breakfast recipes. It allows you to put in the recipe ingredients so that you can do a total for shopping. This is the most time consuming part, but it's nice to have them all in one place. I'm seriously thinking about getting rid of most of my cookbooks. (I also made individual recipe cards so that I don't have to flip through books, but that goes a little far and isn't required at all.)

Third step: By adding all these recipes, it allows me to have a variety of recipes per month without duplicating everything three times. I added an additional calculation that would let me duplicate a single recipe for the ones the kids like a lot (like lasagna).

Conclusion: Now I have a quick and easy way to figure out my grocery shopping list AND to know what I should have in my food storage. I'm pretty excited about this because I've had a hard time getting started (once again, overwhelmed with where to start and too many choices).

Here's a quick screen shot of what it looks like. I love it! (I'm not consistent, but love the results when I do it.)

Planning a Menu

So, planning a menu has alluded me for so many years. I have tried to do this many times, but have not been very persistent. So why do it? THAT is what I'm learning now...

#1 - it helps you when at 4:30PM, you say "what should I fix for dinner" before you have to head out the door at 6:30 to some activity

#2 - it gives you an idea of what are the ingredients you should put in food storage

#3 - it gives you the opportunity to tell your kids, when they say they don't like dinner, "you chose dinner on X day and your sibling chose for today" eat this and then you'll get what you want :)

#4 - it sure helps to make a grocery list - especially for those odd ingredients

#5 - it allows kids to have ownership in what is chosen each day - we have even had our kids help us cook the meal they've chosen (we need to get back to doing that again)

Overall....definitely a keeper concept that we are using in our family!