Day 11:

Today is Halloween, and is also the day that I babysit Ethan's little BFF playmate.  When her mom texted me this morning to tell me that she (the mom) was sick, and asked if her daughter could please, please come early so she could get some sleep, I promptly assured her that it was totally fine.  After taking some time to dig through our shed for a spare costume for a friend, I raced through the kitchen to whip up a soup for Mom Friend in the 15 minutes before she came over.  This was the fantastic result:

Frozen beef, frozen and canned veggies, some bouillon, dehydrated onion, all brought to a quick boil and we were set!  I made enough for Mom Friend, as well as my lunch and the family dinner.  Seeing as how it's Halloween, I definitely didn't want to be spending my evening prepping food, so I was really grateful that this opportunity came up.  Service for the win!

Day 10:

Today, my 16 year-old mutinied.  Nicole has always been my obedient child; my high achiever, my loyal supporter.  If I ever need help hiding a body, she'd be my girl.  However, some of my self-declared challenges try her rather exceptional patience; like the time I boycotted cars because I was mad that gas prices were  high and we biked everywhere all summer, or the time I made us ride the bus everywhere a different summer, or like the time our oven broke and I decided we would live without one for a year, or when our dishwasher broke and we washed dishes by hand because it was good for us.  Or... like that time I decided we would live off food storage for a month... One thing I am hoping our children learn from me is that just because society says you need something in order to be able to function doesn't mean you actually do.  I want them to know how to retrench, even when they have plenty of money.  None of this has ever been about money; we could have paid for the gas, replaced the dishwasher and oven, and driven around both summers; it has always been about challenging ourselves and our expectations and seeing what we're made of.

Today, as a protest, Nicole cooked her own meals, including her lunch of french toast made from my homemade bread, and my 1/2 & 1/2 milk mixture...*cough* both from food storage--shhhhhh.  She also made dinner for the family; a corn chowder from our current baking supplies and frozen corn.  When I asked her to take a picture so I could add it to my blog, she jokingly washed her hands of food storage, my blog, and me in general.  🤣🤣🤣  So, I snuck my own picture, which didn't look nearly as appetizing as it did when it was warm.  It smells amazing though, and I'm sad that my dairy/gluten-free self doesn't get to put it in my belly.

Day 9:

Last night's dinner was SO much better, guys.  It looks ugly, but tasted SOOOO good!  It was very simple: frozen preprepared ground beef, frozen green beans, sliced cheese (that my kids hate, so I have to hide it in food to get rid of it), topped with potato pearls.  People ate and were happy, and everyone's digestive systems are no longer crying.  Success all around!

As you might be able to tell, in addition to using cans and jars of food storage, I'm also trying to use up all of the things in our freezer (Oh. My. Peaches.  SOOOO many peaches!).  Tonight, we are having chicken thighs that I dug out of the depths of their frozen home.  I might also pull out some... you guessed it... peaches!  For breakfast, we had french toast, made from 1/2 normal milk/ 1/2 powdered milk, eggs, and homemade bread.  Then, for lunch, I cooked up some frozen peaches from this season and sprinkled them with stevia while they were all warm and juicy.  I highly recommend this if you are craving something sweet, but are trying to not dig in to your chocolate chip stash (or what's left of your stash after your kids have discovered its hiding place.  I'm still bummed about this.). 

I think I'm going to start branching out of the books and going forth into the interwebs to find some new food ideas.  Anyone have some favorites they'd like to share? 

Day 8:

Well, last night's dinner was an adventure.  The canned chili sauce was really good by itself, but it was a bit sweeter than I had anticipated.  Paul ate a ton of it, as did I, but the kids weren't super jazzed about it.  The adventure part didn't hit us until this morning.

Let me tell you about my morning routine.  My running buddy (my next-door neighbor) has a husband who needs to leave for work really early.  So that we don't leave her kids home alone, we go running before he sets out.  Friends, the crack of dawn hasn't even happened yet when we get going.  This has caused us to have a wide variety of glow-in-the-dark couture, and frequently makes us question our life choices.  For me though, I set my alarm 45 minutes before I need to meet my homie so that I can get ready while still unconscious, and to give my body time to get acclimated...and, um, get things moving so they don't start moving while I'm running.  Today though.  OH, today.  Getting things moving was NOT a problem.  Keeping them from moving was the issue.  I'm pretty sure that for most of the three miles we ran, I wore an expression of trepidation and complete distrust of my body.  Prayers were said, friends.  Walking had to happen a few times, just to be sure we got home with dignity intact.

Paul wakes up 30 minutes after I return, during my private scripture reading time.  I was downstairs, still in my sweaty running clothes, pondering the secrets of the universe when I heard his footsteps make quick tracks overhead to the bathroom.  When I came up, I heard a grumpy, "Woman?!  What did you PUT in that chili?!" 🤣🤣🤣  Just keeping it real, babe; real and regular.  Now, I feel a little bad about sending a bunch of it home last night with the two missionaries who stopped by to say howdy.  Good luck, Elders.  May the wind be ever in your favor.

It looks so innocent.  Don't trust it.

So that I can keep my family on speaking terms with me, I think I'm going to back away from the beans for a few days...slowly...without letting them out of my sight, the dangerous beasts. Today, we're going with something a little safer and a lot less volatile.  But, at least I know that if we had to survive on beans, we could; it just wouldn't be pretty.  This is what we're shooting for tonight: 

Sometimes, it's just better to play it safe. 😁

Day 7:

I can't believe it's been a week already!  After we came home from church today, we had lunch and it was interesting to see what everyone chose.  Paul went straight for a jar of pears (there was some grumbling about this; he really misses fresh fruit), nearly everyone else enjoyed some leftover seasoned rice from last night.  It feels good to have everyone use what we already have on hand.

Last night, we were almost out of eggs, so Paul and I went grocery shopping.  We spent $76, and were gratified to see that a solid 50% of that money went to Halloween candy, razor refills and some necessary running supplies.  The rest of our purchases were almond milk, eggs, laundry and dish detergent.  Voila!  SO much money saved!

Tonight, for dinner we are having chili!  I'm pulling out some white beans, and will use some frozen corn, frozen prepared ground beef, and maybe some home-canned chili sauce.  I'm loosely basing it off of this recipe:

But, again, my recipe-following skilz have never been stellar, so there's that. 😊

Day 6:

We've been enjoying leftovers, and yesterday I ate WAY too many pieces of my gluten-free corn bread.  Oh, my gosh.  I love it.  I'm relatively certain that I had about 15 pieces (okay, it might have been more), and I gained 4 lbs. over night.  Literally.  I ran several miles up a big hill this morning as penance.  

The food I wanted to focus on today, that we have REALLY been enjoying, is not really a food.  It's grape juice.  We have a ton of it; both from red grapes, that produce this gorgeous, dark purple juice, and green grapes, which makes a murky, brownish juice.  Because we are naturally frugal people, we don't ever buy real juice from the store.  We buy water flavoring.  I always figured that the whole idea behind any beverage is to get someone to drink water so that they, you know, stay alive and stuff.  So, this is what we've done for years:

It tastes good, it's cheap (six packets in each for $1.72?!), the kids love it, and most of the time they can make it by themselves with relatively little mess.  In the 6 days we've been doing this though, I decided to not use the rest of the Wyler's Light that we had on hand, but to go straight to our supply of for-real, authentic, super-healthy, won't-leave-colored-mustaches grape juice.  It has been DIVINE.  If you've never had for-real, authentic, super-healthy, won't-leave-colored-mustaches grape juice, it's not like the nuclear purple grape juice you buy in the store.  It's beautiful and very natural looking.  It's not sicky-sweet, but it is naturally sweet enough that the kids find it appealing.  Ethan asks for it constantly.

Isn't it beautiful?

So, even though we're eating lots of fun mixtures of food storage meals + things we already had on hand (ground beef, rice and cheese wrapped in a tortilla---yum!), this is today's take-away: real juice is awesome.  Go squeeze yourself some grapes today!

Day 5:

Last night's dinner had some successful aspects, and some...not so successful parts.  I decided to try a "Soup in a Jar" dinner that my aunt had given me 10 years ago as a house-warming gift.  It was so darn cute that I couldn't bear to use it before, but decided that the time had come. 

 I have a leeeeettle trouble with directions though, in that I forget to read them (or often disregard them with a shrug), and just dumped the whole thing into my InstantPot.  Not my wisest move.  Apparently, I was supposed to leave the noodles out until close to the end.  That MAY have contributed to the very interesting texture of the final product.  However, it tasted okay.  What?  How do I, as a gluten-free individual, know this personally?  That would be because I completely forgot that it had noodles in it (I told you the texture was weird), and downed a bowl before it had occurred to me.  This is after I went to great lengths to make sure the cornbread side was gluten-free.  Alas.

Day 4:

My meal plans were somewhat detoured last night when our beloved Aunt Sharon came over for a visit.  Now, Aunt Sharon, being Paul's aunt, has always been in our lives, but did not play a significant role until Savannah came on the scene.  In the months before our fourth baby was born, Sharon retired from her job, and found herself with much more free time that she had previously experienced.  So, when we had Savannah, and my maternity leave wrapped up, she said she would come babysit while I worked from home upstairs in my "office" (walk-in-closet, where I could shut 3 doors between me and the loud people).  It just so happened that the night before she started watching the kids, I broke my ankle when my softball cleat caught in the dirt on a slide into home.  I spent the next month and a half EXTREMELY grateful for Sharon, as it was impossible to carry a new baby while walking with crutches.  It has been seven and a half years since that day, and even though I quit my job two years ago to stay home, Sharon has been a constant in our lives, visiting two or three days a week.  Now, when Sharon visits, she doesn't usually come empty-handed.  Most days, she is loaded down with grocery bags of goodies; ice cream, popsicles, chocolate milk, pizza, shrimp, etc.; sometimes all at the same time.  The kids absolutely adore her and every single one of them screams with joy when they see her car drive up.  Olivia has had her phone number memorized since she was about two, and all of the kids call her, sometimes several times a day, with requests (and shopping lists) for her next visit.

Anyway, before my meal prep started for the evening, Sharon arrived with food that was WAY too tempting for the kids to pass up, and Mom's food ideas all became garbage.  However, during the day, they almost all have been using the homemade bread for toast and sandwiches.  In fact, my usually carb-conscious husband even took half a loaf, and the entire tub of butter, into the family room to munch during his evening brain dump hour in front of the TV before bed.  I have been loving having the smell of bread permeating the house several days of the week, and served a warm, fresh loaf during our book club meeting today. 

For breakfast, Savannah created her own parfait by choosing a flavor for her yogurt, mixing it together and then layering it with granola in her one and only remaining goblet purchased from a neighbor's yard sale (with the money she was "holding" for her sister).  Yum!  (For the record, she's not really this short.  She just hadn't gotten dressed for the day yet.)

Another change we've made is in our fruit and cracker consumption.  I knew that if I kept buying fresh fruit, we would never have a reason to make any kind of dent in the surplus of canned fruit we possess.  (Paul, having a Master's in nutrition, is against this particular part of the experiment, but he's also willing to go along with my plans for 30 days--and he doesn't want to waste his limited non-work and non-exercise time going to the grocery store.)  To prepare for this, I purchased a lot more small tupperware boxes.  I knew that the kids would still need to bring fruit, and other food in place of crackers in their lunches, so a way to carry them was essential.  Applesauce in a baggie is just weird.  They all still think they're dying when they look in the pantry and don't see the usual row of cracker boxes, but they're also eating more real food and leftovers this way.  I think it's a win!  But, again, it's only day 4.

One thing I wasn't prepared to face was my deeply-ingrained need to protect the food storage at all costs.  One of the WORST things a person can do to a food preserving person, right after they have finished canning, is to OPEN a jar of what they just spent their lifeblood, sweat and sanity putting in that dang jar.  Marriages have been threatened by this, friends.  Husbands have narrowly escaped with their lives for this offense.  Ask me how I know.  It's hard to turn this intinct around to, "Sure!  Why don't you go choose a jar off the shelf?!"  But, right now, I really do want them to (kind of.  Do they really have to eat? hahaha).

Day 3:

Well, people, the yogurt turned out perfectly!  I continue to be amazed at this whole follow-a-recipe-and-it-makes-edible-food thing.  I used a mixture of 1% and powdered milk, and an existing cup of raspberry yogurt that we had on hand, and couldn't taste any rasperry in the final product at all.  It's just plain, white yogurt.  For my daughter's breakfast this morning, I decided to create a customized cup of yogurt along with her eggs and toast (homemade bread), and added a little home-canned huckleberry syrup.  This was not the wisest choice, as stirring it into the yogurt made it all watery.  So, I did the only right thing to do in that moment and ate it all by myself.  (Is this a good time to mention that dairy does not agree with me?  Today should be interesting.)  I then tried adding honey straight from the squirty bear, but no matter how much I stirred, it remained stuck to the spoon.  Being the nice, sacrificing parent that I am, I just ate all the honey off the spoon and tried again.  Adding vanilla and brown sugar worked okay, although the vanilla made it too watery.  (I'm still debating whether by pouring in pure vanilla I just made alcoholic yogurt for my 16 year old.)  Nicole's assessment: "Grandma's yogurt doesn't look like this."  *sigh*  We'll work on it.  As far as texture for the whole batch goes though, I am very impressed.

Day 2:

Wonders and miracles!  Apparently, I CAN follow a recipe and have it turn out edible!  (Friends, this may be a good time to insert a little side note about my past life.  I was a Home Ec teacher back in the day.  This is moderately funny because I am, as I said, a terrible cook.  When I did my student teaching, I legit set 4 microwaves on fire.  ON FIRE, people.  There was smoke.  It was billowing.  My saving grace is that I can sew like a demon, and I am an ace at Human Development-- also funny since I was pregnant both years that I taught.)  Anyway, dinner last night was some seriously fantastic baked beans from one of The Books, and rice.  Super easy, and nearly everyone liked it. (Hey, when feeding this many people, it's hard to please everyone.)  Now, before you go getting all carb-judgey on me, there were also bottled peaches that were offered.  At least know the full extent of my carb-dense menu before you completely condemn me for my unbalanced meal abilities.  We carried this over to breakfast and had rice, sugar and milk, which has been a favorite since my childhood.

In other news, this was my shopping for the week.  Amazing, right?  $27.59 vs. the $120 I spent last week.  When 1/3 of your total bill is your husband's caffeine supplements, that's not too shabby.

Today, I'm making yogurt for the first time!  Wish me luck!

Day 1:

This last week I did a ton of prep work.  I took every last jar off the shelves and organized them by type, cataloging how much I had both inside the house and out in the garage.  (My mom came to help with this monumental task, because she's pretty much da bomb.)  I moved, counted and cataloged all of the cans that I had stored in SO many weird places, and in mountains out in the garage.  Now, every can is stored with similar items.  My mom also lent me two food storage recipe books (which is going to save me hours of hunting on Pinterest), and I'm ready to go!

During the week, I decided to give a few recipes a try, just to get my feet wet.  It was...interesting.  For example, Wheat Loaf (which I mostly cooked because the title cracked me up):

So, the complaint from the fam wasn't that it had things in it that looked like bugs, or that the texture was chewy.  The biggest issue they had with this was that it was too spicy.  What?  So, basically, my hubby, the only one who likes spicy things, ate it all.  Friends, I wouldn't recommend eating this much wheat by yourself, gastro-intestinally speaking.  Just sayin'.

The next experiment was Cheezits.  I'm still trying to decide if crackers will be one of the things I still buy.  I used fake, "plastic" cheese slices that I bought on a whim because they were cheap, and it still cost more to make them.  I also kind of didn't measure the salt and may have added too much. The kids told me they didn't like them as they were shoving them in their mouths, soooooo... take that feedback as you will.  (Recipe found on Pinterest.)

And then last night was sloppy joes, which I ate on cardboardy gluten-free bread and it still tasted amazing!  I made bread that morning for the fam, grabbed pre-cooked ground beef I prepped earlier in the week, added in some home-canned spahetti sauce, and it was fantastic!

Thus begins the adventure!  I'll keep you updated!

The Challenge

How it began:

For a long, LONG time, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have counseled to have a year's supply of food to help feed your family in a time of need. I have seen friends survive off of theirs when they were unemployed, and others have depended on their supply during storms and natural disasters. In 2013, we got serious about it, and purchased a few boxes of canned food. As soon as we showed a willingness to obey this counsel, food started POURING out of the craziest places. Blessings of free apples, plums, grapes, peaches, and apricots for me to can, entire storage rooms of canned fruit given when friends and relatives moved; just SO MUCH FOOD. This is where I'm at now. At this point though, it needs to be used and rotated so it doesn't get wasted.

This weekend, I made a decision. A scary, scary decision. For 30 days, I'm going to stop shopping for food. (Well, almost completely. Meat, milk, eggs, cheese, butter... I'll still get that stuff at the store.) I'm going to take a week to get organized and have a solid plan, and then I'm going for it.

So far, here is the reaction of my family.

Paul: "Sounds good. Save money."

Kobe (18): "I don't care if I'm not living at home! You are going to STARVE everyone!" (He called me to tell me this.)

Nicole (16): "I'm eating at Grandma's every night." and "...and you'll just be mad the whole month because you'll have to make dinner." and, after I explained that we have to use it or it will go bad, "Oh, yay. Almost expired food."

Audrey (11): "WHAT??? NOOOOOOOOOO!"

Little kids (2, 5, 7): "Can we call Aunt Sharon?" (Paul's aunt, who spoils them rotten with goodies.)

So...I'm interpretting this to mean that everyone is on board, totally happy and completely supportive about it!

A few things to keep in mind:

1. I am NOT a good cook. I'm pretty excited that my family is all still alive with some of my experiments. Usually, my food is ugly, but mostly edible.

2. I am NOT a photographer. These are very amateur pics off my phone.

3. I have six kids. Now, I can either keep those peeps alive, or I can spend a lot of time prepping food; not both. So, this is going to be fast, low-effort, minimal prep kind of food. InstantPot is going to be my BFF.

4. Wheat and I don't get along well. If I eat it, I can't breathe, and that makes everyone sad. So, I am completely depending on the fam to review certain recipes while I eat other, boring things, like a piece of meat or cardboard or something.

Wish me luck!

Here's what we're dealing with:

See what I mean?! It needs to be USED!