Category Archives: $10 Will Do It

It’s time to focus again for a moment on increasing your food storage by spending just ten dollars. Here are three things that are good to have on hand — mushrooms (pieces and stems), dark red kidney beans, and three 48oz. packages of thin spaghetti noodles.

Remember, do not let building your food storage become overwhelming. Take it one “bite” at a time so to speak. It is especially good to take advantage of case lot sales when they happen. If you pay close attention to sale ads, you can get these items at a good price.

After buying the Ottavio’s (a local restaurant) Extra Virgin Oil a couple of weeks ago, I went right home to try it to see if it was as good as I had hoped. It was. My family especially liked this recipe that I tried out of desperation to get out of a hot kitchen.

I boiled 1 box of the Farfalle (small bow tie) pasta, steamed a vegetable mix (broccoli, sugar snap peas and baby carrots), fried some mushrooms in the oil with a little bit of garlic, salt and pepper. I tossed everything together while it was still hot and drizzled a little more olive oil on it, tossed it again, salt and peppered it to taste and served it with Parmesan cheese. It was REALLY good. I hope that if you try it you will enjoy it as much as we did.

This week’s suggestion (prices may vary according to sale ad prices and location):

1 case mushrooms (stems and pieces) = $10.00

OR

12 cans kidney beans = $6.00
three 48oz. packages of spaghetti = $4.50

So, set aside ten dollars this week and go spend it on these suggested items to build up your food storage.

Everyone has to have baking powder to bake the really good stuff. Here is a recipe to make your own baking powder just in case you run out and can’t run to the store.

Homemade baking powder

1 lb. soda,
1 ½ lb. cream of tartar
¼ lb. Cornstarch

I’m sure that you could make smaller batches. Everything in this recipe is done in pounds so just change the pounds to tablespoons or even teaspoons. This recipe is supposed to be double the strength of anything on the market, so you might want to experiment with it. Who knows, you might like it even better.

My other suggestion for this posting is to get Tang.  This is an excellent way to provide vitamin C into your storage program along with a tasty drink.  If you have not-so-good tasting water, Tang (or Country Time Lemonade) will mask the flavor and make it palatable.)  Under optimal conditions, Tang will keep for up to 2 years.  It will also be comforting to young children to have something that tastes sweet and good during times of stress.  To use it, you will need water — which brings me to one of my focal points:  water.

Most of the culinary water in where I live comes from wells. If the wells were to dry up or if there were a disruption in the electricity and the powers that be weren’t able to pump the water, we would be in a very difficult situation.

We need to make sure that we have enough water on hand in case of an emergency. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) recommends 14 gallons of water per person for a two-week period. Even though that sounds like a lot , it is only a gallon a day for drinking, washing and cooking. (Don’t forget your pets.  They will also need water.)  People who have been in an emergency situation were asked what three things they needed most were and they said, “water, water and more WATER!”

There are a lot of different ways to store water. The easiest way to store water is to buy it already bottled. You can also store water in empty 2-liter pop bottles. It is not a good idea to store water in bleach bottles or milk jugs (the milk jugs are engineered to deteriorate). Some people store water in empty bottling jars until they are needed again. This is a good idea as long as the problem that we are going through isn’t an earthquake or tornado.  You need to store your main water source in a container that you don’t have to worry about breaking. You also need to take in account whether or not you can move the container when it is full OR if you have a siphon pump for the very large containers.

Also, store some bleach or water purifier tablets. I would also suggest having a whisk on hand to incorporate oxygen into the water to give stale water a fresher taste.

A few years ago, I would have laughed at the thought of buying bottled water, but now it seems somewhat logical. I would suggest that if you are going to buy bottled water that you buy the brands from the larger bottling companies because their water has been shown to be safer and higher quality than some of the lesser known brands. Bottled water goes on sale all of the time so watch for a sale and pick up a case or two each time you go.

You can also store sports and fruit drinks. Soda pop can be stored, but I wouldn’t rely on it to keep you hydrated in a crunch. That and it tastes terrible when it is warm and so unless you know you are going to have refrigeration, buy it to enjoy during good times, but not to keep you hydrated in a crisis.

I hope that you are starting to see how easy it can be to start building your food storage. Last week, I took advantage of a chicken sale. I bought 100 lbs. I bottled 80 lbs. of it and got 28 pints. Twenty-four pints actually made it into my storage room.  The rest of it was made into sandwiches and a chicken pie. I also bottled the chicken broth that was left over when the chicken was all gone. My storage shelves are starting to fill up

This week’s suggestion:  Red Star Baking Powder. for $4.99, Tang – 20 quart for $5.99 Or Countrytime Lemonade – 32 quart for 5.99.  Again, prices may vary according to your location.

I hope that you were able to try some of your new recipes using your popcorn. This week I am suggesting Crisco shortening, oil and cocoa.

It is so important to have shortening and oil in our storage. I know that we have some concerns about oil, but unopened Crisco shortening will store for a very long time if you store it in a cool dry place. Also, just as a note, powdered butter doesn’t work well in cakes and cookies and neither does powdered shortening. The powdered shortening does, however, work well with mixes such as pancakes, muffins, etc. (Also, a woman at the USU Extension service said that if a cookie recipe calls specifically for shortening you can substitute wheat flour instead of white.)

Other oils store for about one year, so you will want to rotate it. I have had sealed oils for longer than a year and they haven’t gone bad, but I imagine that if the seal were to be broken that it would eventually turn rancid.

I am including cocoa because I think that it would be such a shame to be stuck without chocolate. It is hard to store chocolate bars. From personal experience I don’t know if chocolate bars go bad or not, they never get stored long enough for me to find out. (My family likes to keep this item rotated.)

Chocolate has been proven to be a stress reliever (duh) and during stressful times a plate of brownies or a chocolate cake can be just what you need to make things seem a little better. Chocolate is also a wonderful item to barter with. Oil, cocoa and cinnamon are especially good items to have on hand for this reason.

During the depression and when times were tough, these items were as valuable as gold. Cocoa and cinnamon are grown outside of the United States and so they have to be imported, hence their increased value. Also, it is always more pleasant to cook with oil or shortening than rendered fat (lard) or drippings.

I also wanted to pass on an additional idea. If you watch the grocery ads, you can sometimes find chicken quarters (legs and thighs) for only .28 cents a pound. You can buy 100 lbs. for only about $28.00. You can either take the chicken and re-wrap it in individual servings and freeze them or you can bottle them.

Bottling is a really good way to preserve meat and it is very simple to do. It is also very handy to have on hand to make meat pies, sandwiches, soups, etc. If you have never preserved meat just buy a “Ball Blue Book” which has just about everything you need to know about bottling – including meat.

When you pre-cook the chicken to bottle it, keep the broth, strain it, and bottle it also. It makes a wonderful base for soup or anything else that you need chicken broth for.

This weeks suggestion: Crisco shortening – 6 lbs. for approximately $6.00 or Ambrosia Baking Cocoa – 5 lbs. $9.00 and/or 160 oz. Crisco oil for $5.00. (These prices may vary depending on your location.)

I am so happy with the response to the “$10.00 Will Do It” club. This week I’m suggesting 50 lbs. of popcorn.

Yes, I know you are thinking “how could my family possibly eat that much popcorn?” Easy, my family of four goes through 50 to 100 lbs. of popcorn a year. The reason that I store popcorn is that it is high in protein and fiber and it is delicious popped. There are other corns that are higher in protein, but they don’t pop and you can only use them for cooking.

I grind my popcorn to make fresh cornmeal and it makes the most delicious cornbread. You can also make a fine enough corn flour for corn tortillas. I don’t know if there is something more added to the corn masa that is sold in the stores to make corn tortillas, but I think that it would work just fine.

Just a note: You need an electric grinder to grind popcorn because a hand grinder is just not fast enough and the corn gets too hot and it starts popping.

Mom’s Cornbread
1 ½ cup flour
¾ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cup cornmeal
3 eggs
2 tablespoon baking powder
¾ cup oil
¾ cup sugar
1 ½ cups milk

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix all ingredients until well moistened. Pour into a sprayed 9×13 pan. Bake 18 to 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Serve this with a bean chili and between the beans and the corn you will have a complete protein, not to mention a really delicious and easy meal.

Instead of putting the batter in a pan, I like to bake my cornbread in muffin tins for 16 to 18 minutes. I find that they are not as crumbly and they are easier to work with. My family prefers it better this way and it is easier for small children to handle.

This weeks suggestion: 50 lbs. popcorn for approximately $8.49

As most of you know, food storage is very high on my priority list. I’m hoping that I can help you get enthused about stocking up your food resources, too. My theory about food storage is that you are only as prepared as your neighbor. I would never let anyone go away hungry.  If we are all prepared as we have been instructed to be, then we would be a help to our neighbors and not be a burden in times of need. “… if ye are prepared ye shall not fear.”

I would like start some new ideas that will hopefully help you see how EASY, FUN and AFFORDABLE building your food storage can be. One ideas is the “$10.00 Will Do It” club.

Each week I will recommend very specific storage items that you will be able to buy for your food storage that will cost no more than $10.00 (or really close to it).

Now, by no means is this the only way that you should build up your food storage, but it will help you to get started. Or, if you have already started, it will help you increase your storage.

This weeks suggestion:
25 lbs. of white rice for $5.49 or 25 lbs. of sticky rice $5.99
Ramen Chicken soup – 36 count for $3.69

I started the $10.00 Will Do It club back in 2002 when I was given a church calling to help my neighbors build their food storage and get their families better prepared. I wanted to show people how easy it was to build their food storage one or two items at a time and that they didn’t have to go into the poor house in order to get prepared.

I am passing along the information to you that I shared with them but I am not going to update the prices on the products. Food prices have increased since 2002 and depending on where you live geographically, the prices may fluctuate a bit from region to region.

This information is meant as a vehicle to show you how easy it can be to start building your food storage with a fairly small amount of money — $10.00 a week or every two weeks, whichever you can afford.

The most important part is that you get started, no matter what amount of money you set aside each month. Just make sure that you aactivelly work towards getting your food storage built up. After you get started, you will find that it will get easier and easier — so get started and go buy a case of something!