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!