Friday, February 22, 2008

Meat Sale and Preparedness

Some girls buy shoes, some buy fancy clothes, me, I like to buy meat, especially meat on sale. I don't know why but I always worry we don't have enough food in the house, plus we are trying to create an emergency stockpile in case of a disaster or flu epidemic. So today I hit a great sale, pork ribs $1 a pound, $1 Amazing, shoulder steaks $2.40/lb. Now these did come in family packs, but all that means is I get to play with my seal-a-meal and divide up the meat for the freezer. The ribs will make 2 meals and the steaks I should be able to make into 3 meals (2 pieces were very large, 2 were smaller). So back to my compulsion of buying food, I decided to count out how many meals I could make out of just the food in my freezer. Without considering the potential for leftovers, I can make 16 meals from the items just in my freezer. Considering we only eat about 4 evening meals together a week, I have a month of food just in my freezer. Adding in the pasta, soup, canned goods and leftovers, we probably have 5-6 weeks of food in the kitchen alone. Now my personal long term goal is having a 6 month supply of food, but of course alot of that needs to be dry goods and canned goods. I'm not sure how much we have in the stockpile I just hand the items to Paul and he puts them away but I think we're on a good start. I really need to switch my focus to drygoods and canned goods for the stockpile and kitchen. One way we are doing that is to always have a backup ready, for example, I have a large box of Bisquick in the cupboard and another one put away in the pantry (note for us the pantry and the stockpile are two different things). We've just started this system and only have a few items so far.

How long could you survive without a trip to the grocery store? Are you prepared for the possibility of having to stay in your house for several weeks?

No comments: