FOOD STORAGE TELL-A-THON
So here’s the challenge. Beyond chatting about provident living tips and recipes, I invite you, and every single one of you, to please help someone else get started on designing and building their food storage. Just look around. Think about your family, friends, and neighbors. Pray for inspiration and then start offering to assist others in their steps towards preparedness.
And here are the rules:
1. Everything counts. You could take someone to the cannery and just be an extra set of hands. Teach others how to cook with food storage. Or, simply help them purchase their food storage online. Create opportunities and pay it forward.
2. Share your story. Long or short, and everything in between, I hope you’ll TELL your story of action taken and contribute to an endless variety of good ideas. If you think this tell-a-thon idea has merit, please teeeeeeell others and invite them to join us.
3. Don’t get discouraged. I get turned down all the time. If you are sincere about helping, and stay focused, I bet you’ll find success.
Now we have to have a poster child, or two. Meet Luke and Candee.
We’ve only gotten to know each other during the last few months but when we invited them to eat dinner at our house, Candee told us that she wanted to get going on her food storage. (!) We casually offered to help…and desperately hoped that they would give us the chance.
A few weeks went by and then Candee mentioned it to me again. (This almost never happens.) I repeated my original offer and encouraged her to choose the date and time. About a week later, the four of us met at the cannery right after work and knocked out sixteen cases of food storage, 6 for them and 10 for us, in just over one hour. And we had fun! I was so happy for this young couple as they loaded their small car and drove home with 25% of their long-term storage done. I don’t think they have tons of extra money, and I know they don’t have any extra space, but they made it happen. That’s very cool.
A couple of things I learned, again, from this experience with Luke and Candee: Having your own food storage brings peace. That’s wonderful. Helping others with their food storage brings JOY, and that’s even better. I hope you’ll give it a try!
Liesa, out
Tags: help someone help themselves, let's do something!, pay it forward with food storage, talk is cheap
July 30th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Thanks Liesa for the opportunity to blog about food storage.
I talk to everyone I know about food storage, and I do mean EVERYONE! Sometimes I bring the fiesta wheat and bean salad to an event and that’s my foot in the door. I also put together our ward news letter and that gives me a much bigger audience to talk to, but mostly I just bring up the subject when I am visiting with anyone. I freely share how blessed my life has been by putting provident living into effect in my life and those of my family and just how easy it is to get started. I give your book away on a very frequent basis with my testimony of food storage inside and hope that it will inspire someone else to give it a try. (remember the wedding packs we give? big hit!!)
Thank you for blessing my life with your book and the basic gospel plan of provident living and food storage. You have no idea just how blessed we have become by using these principals on a daily basis.
Much love,
Kris
July 31st, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Since Liesa has basically turned this over to us, the people, for helping one another, I decided to share why Liesa – her book and provident living have been a blessing in my life.
I have always had some kind of food storage, be it cans – boxes or cases of food, stored away for a rainy day. My three month storage was cases of this and that, nothing with a real plan but at least it was something to eat, things we used on a regular basis. We also had the bigger items from the cannery but never as much as we should have.
After reading Liesas book, everything clicked! Now I knew how to manage a three month storage that would actually make real meals, not just cans of this and that and that it was okay to use and rotate my bigger food storage (the #10 cans from the cannery).
Well…within a month of reading the book and implimenting some of her ideas, that’s when it happened, the economy took a nose dive and our only income stopped. I could have been a total wreck but I really felt at peace, at least about what I was going to feed my family. For the past 7 months we have been living off our food storage. I buy a few things at the store now and again but knowing that my basement has what we need brings me peace.
I don’t know when things will pick back up again or when we will get a paycheck but I do know that I have food for my family, even if it’s just some rice with canned soup on top. I know that I have been blessed by following the counsel of church leaders and putting away food for such an occation. We are going to be okay and this is why I share my love for Liesa and provident living with literally everyone I talk to. I hope that maybe there is someone out there who reads this and finds that they will be okay too.
Don’t wait for a reason to give it a try, start now, and if for any reason something does happen, you can also be at peace knowing that you can make it work.
Kris
August 2nd, 2009 at 7:53 am
Just another experience to share…the silence is killing me.
I went to another wedding last night and decided to share my wedding gift idea with all of you.
Several months ago, January to be exact, my teenage son and I went to the dry pack cannery for a bit of fun. I had gotten an idea after reading Liesas book, why not give food storage as a wedding gift. But this wasn’t just any food storage. This was food storage with a message. A message of love.
In each box we put 2 cans of wheat, 1 can each of macaroni, rice, beans and oats. We sealed the box closed and then wrote what was in each box and the date we packaged it. We then gave a copy of Liesas book “I dare you to eat it” along with my testimony and experience of provident living written on the inside cover.
I can guarantee that they won’t get duplicates of that gift or take it back to the store. It is a gift that keeps on giving. Maybe the oats will be breakfast for them because they woke up and realized they have nothing in the cupboard for breakfast or cookies without raisins because that’s what they have on hand. What ever the reason, even if it sits unopened in the basement for several years it will be there for them when they need it. And it makes me feel good to know that they have no reason to go hungry because I have given them a gift of provident living.
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:40 am
PROPS to KRISTINE!
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
My family is trying to gather and use our food storage. We love it! We don’t have a lot, but we do it – here a little, there a little. What a wonderful blessing it is. What peace it brings to know that at least we are trying. We eat what we store and store what we eat, and we have learned a lot! (Including that I have a Bran allergy and can’t eat whole wheat and other wonderful things like popcorn. But at least we know this now and not when we are dependent on our food storage).
I want other people to realize the blessings of food storage and preparedness because it is so important to me. It has helped my family and will continue to help us. And because we do it, I hope to be able to help others too! Even if it’s only one person, one family, I think it would be worth it.
For this reason, I started a preparedness blog a few months ago. goodnewsminutes.blogspot.com It’s not spectacular, but it may help someone who’s looking.
Thanks for your inspiration and willingness to help those around you! I enjoy your site!
Krystal
August 6th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Love all the comments!
Candee and are I both pretty excited about the new foodstorage we have now. We have been using it with our every day meals instead of just letting it sit on a shelf and I’ll admit it’s tastier than I ever thought it would be.
Next week we are actually going to take Candees Dad down to Welfare Square to show him how easy it is to can your own food storage and it can actually be pretty fun. We are trying to do our best to spread the word about food storage and help our family get started with it too.
LUKE
August 6th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
For me the easiest thing to do is to make and share food that uses storage ingredients. My entire nursing unit absolutely loves the Curried Chicken and Wheat Salad from Liesa’s book. Every time I’ve made it for work or church (at least half a dozen times now), people say “This is so good! What are those little ball things?” Oh that’s WHEAT, I say, and from there the conversation goes straight to food storage. Same thing goes for the Fiesta Wheat and Bean Salad. One coworker has already gone to the cannery with me, and several others have said they want to. Now, I’m still a newbie at this and have no expertise in food storage, but if I wait till I’m perfect at it I’ll have missed loads of opportunities. I make sure to tell everyone “Food storage doesn’t have to BE your life in order to BLESS your life.”
August 9th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Hi! I’ve been following Liesa’s blog for a year now and waiting for my mom to give me I DARE YOU TO EAT IT for my birthday. It finally arrived and wow! I really felt the Spirit from Liesa’s message. She is truly inspired on this topic. I already have a 3 month supply of regular food (mostly) and a 9 month supply of long term storage but have a whole new list of to-do’s for using it all. Thank you so much Liesa! Here is my list:
-Try many of the recipes.
-Select recipes from each of the categories, either from the book or my recipe box.
-Purchase what I don’t have (maybe a few canned meats–my meat is all in my freezer–and a generator).
-I may bag the contents for each meal and store on my shelf (for easy access).
-Try dry pack cannery potato flakes–I hate potato pearls.
-Update our 72 hour kits and send one to school with my new college student (I was especially excited about this tip).
I was especially interested in page 139 “The preparation and skill of a mother can completely alter the experience of a child.”–not only for food storage but for life!
-Pray for better abilities to help my children have joyful lives.
Thank you Liesa.
August 9th, 2009 at 9:08 am
No, the generator is not in the freezer! But we have one!
August 14th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I would like to see what a portable oven looks like, one like the one mentioned in the book.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Remind me, on what page of the book is the portable oven mentioned? After reading that section again I may be able to help.
August 19th, 2009 at 8:45 am
This is for Michelle M.
I found mention of the oven in question. It would have been a solar oven of some type. If you are really interested you could check one out on google. The message however that I came away with after reading that section again was this; It’s not so much the tools that you have secured but the knowledge that you posses in knowing how to use what food you have avaliable.
Even if I have a sun/solar oven, do I know how to prepare the foods that I have stored away? Rice, wheat, beans, etc… Let me quote:”the preparation and skill of a mother can completely alter the experience of a child.”…meaning, does mom know how to cook in an emergency?…Let me continue:”Chooseing to prepare food storage and developing my ability to cook with it will make me better able to gather those I love and say with confidence, “we’re going to get through this.”"
I hope that information is of some help.
Kris
August 20th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Today my 16 year old son and I went to the dry pack cannery to make 6 more of the wedding packs that we give as wedding gifts and to can a few other things. When I pulled into the parking lot I wondered if I had come on the wrong date or wrong time. Empty…completely empty. We walked into the building to find that besides the service missionaries that work there, my son and I were the ONLY ones in the building. It gave me a very sad feeling inside.
Not only did we have the building to ourselfs but we were asked if we would like to purchase some of the pre-canned items that were on our list. I said no thank you, we are here to do our own canning. Not that I would have minded purchasing the pre-canned items but I thought it important to have my son do some service and help with the canning process from start to finish.
Apparently it has been slow all summer long. Either we all have a years supply in our basemetns or making sure we are prepared dosen’t matter during the summer months. Just say’n…
August 20th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I was just venting! PLEASE dont’ take the last blog personally. I just thought it was sad that no one else was there.
August 25th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Liesa, are you done with your blog? or just resting? If you are done, then thank you for all your wonderful contributions to my family’s well being. but if you come back,…..then hurray! Then I can get MORE good ideas for my family’s year’s supply!
)
August 26th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Hey Laura! (Hey everyone!)
I don’t think I’m done with the blog. It’s just on auto-pilot for the next while. (Resting? What is resting? That sounds interesting.)
After about a year of postings, sharing how provident living looks, warts and all, in my own family, I’ve felt a definite prompting and even an urgency to focus on ACTION. Trying to practice what I preach, I’m hunting for food storage opportunities. Last week, I took a neighbor and her children to the cannery. This week, I cooked dinner for the sister missionaries and taught them how I use food storage in normal meals. Next week, I’m going to at least offer to help another one of my visiting teaching families get a few basic dry goods into their home. Every time I feel tempted to make another post I ask myself if there isn’t something else I could DO to share my testimony. It’s been a good change and I hope others will try it. Thank you to everyone who has already shared their food storage experiences. I hope this tell-a-thon post will just continue to grow!
August 27th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Great challenge. I am also very motivated to help others build their food storage. Recently I have become addicted to couponing and have been taking my girlfriends grocery shopping to show them how they can utilize coupons to not only provide food for their households and food storage, but also infuse hundreds of dollars into their family budget a month. It’s been really rewarding to see families on food stamps be able to get back on their feet again. I’m so charged up that I’ll be teaching the class all over the Utah valley for the next several months. Feel free to attend! http://tinyurl.com/lymhye
September 2nd, 2009 at 6:25 am
I too have heard that the cannery has been extremely slow. (In KCMO) They’ve even cut back on the hours they are open. I personally believe with vacations, and with canning season, perhaps many of us are simply concentrating on other areas of prepping. I have been canning garden produce, and spent food storage monies on a solar oven and purchased some freeze-dried items online. Perhaps once canning season is over, you will see better numbers. I just hope the recession hasn’t killed everyone’s ability to keep moving forward in their efforts.
September 2nd, 2009 at 6:29 am
Oh, I wanted to add that we hold a monthly preparedness potluck in someone’s home. Everyone is to bring a dish primarily made from their storage; either long-term or 3-month supply. They are allowed to use items grown in their gardens or foraged too. We try to have a demonstration of some sort – one month was making an apple cobbler in a Volcano stove. This next month will be on pandemic preparedness and the following will be a demo on making wheat-meat chicken nuggets and crackers from the leftover bran. Oh, we also had a demo on making gnocchi with potato pearls. I believe everyone is enjoying learning how to better use our stores. Several non-members even attend and volunteer their homes as part of the rotation.
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Hey Liesa. I read your comment about “doing” and I fully agree with you. I would not mind if periodically you gave us a list of suggestions- what are you doing. The post does not have to be long or time consuming. Your blog has motivated me and I miss it.
September 10th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
We have a Self-Reliant group in our ward. In our next month’s meeting we will be featuring your book “I dare you to eat it”. Thanks so much!
We are challenging everyone in our group to start or finish their water & food storage. Every month we have challenges and if they complete all the challenges they will become “Self-Reliant Certified”. It’s fun and it gets people to try new things
September 20th, 2009 at 10:20 am
I just had the most wonderful experience this weekend. Okay, so it was also a bit intimidating. Each year our church hosts a neighborhood emergency preparedness fair. We always have wonderful teachers/speakers who share with us their knowledge of how we can become more self-reliant and how to prepare our self and our families for a disaster. This year I was asked to teach a class on how to use and prepare wheat from our food storage. I immediately said yes. A few days later it hit me that this wasn’t speaking to just one person at a time but dozens at a time. That scared me beyond all reason. After much prayer I was blessed with a calmness and felt that I had been prepared well to take on this task. The class was a hit!!! Even if my message only helps one person I feel it was well worth the time and effort I put into it. Thank you so much Liesa for all your love, teaching moments, information, inspiration and confidence in me! I love you and it is because of you that I have such a testimony of provident living and the blessings it can bring to our lives.
p.s. the fiesta wheat and bean salad/salsa was a hit, as usual. but you would have already known that wouldn’t you.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:13 am
Since we remodeled and we have space for storage we knewn it was time to put the cans on the shelf out of the boxes. It is still a thrill to open our storage cupboards. The important thing that has happened is we use what we have and My sister has started to build some shelves for her storage. Thanks to Leisa. One thing that has happened is when we opened an old can of flour, my bread didn’t raise like it should so I sifted the flour and today the bread raised fine. I talk to everyone I visit with about the storageideas of dare you to eat it and how it has changed my life. Accolades to Leisa.
September 21st, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Hi Liesa, I hope everything is well with you and your family. I miss your cheery and informative posts. Hope you will be posting again soon.
Blessings, Joyce
September 27th, 2009 at 7:50 am
Leisa,
The teaching of preparedness and living it cannot be overstated. For example: Last week, we had Stake Conference. 24 hours before, the word went out through the wards via the home teaching and visiting teaching to take a survey of who had at least two weeks’ worth of food and water in their FS. The percentages were shared at Stake Conference the next day. They were sobering; only 30% of the members who responded to the survey had two weeks of both for their families.
This past week, Atlanta flooded. Badly. People couldn’t get out or had to leave. However, if there were those, members or not, who had the minimum of two weeks of both food and water, they can focus on cleanup and not have to worry about feeding their families, or burdening the system with needs that have to stretch to help others.
I felt so blessed to be able to say that we had both for our families.
We also started a garden; it did rather well for our first year of trying to grow something here!
October 1st, 2009 at 12:11 am
I love the idea of neighborhood/ward inventories. I think they are great wake-up calls and tend to expose the gaps. Thanks very much for sharing this example, Carolyn.
In the past, these types of surveys have motivated ME to take a hard look at my priorities. Do I choose to be on the prepared team, with something to offer to my family and others, OR do I choose to be on the team betting that others will have prepared enough to share with me? There have been many times when I really needed a nudge from the Bishop or Stake President. Their gentle questions about our family’s level of preparation have often been just what we needed to refocus our efforts and define new goals.
“When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.” -President Thomas S. Monson, June 2004, Worldwide Leadership Training Broadcast
October 3rd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I agree with that. I have one friend who is willing to share with her neighbors, and I have no doubt that she will be blessed, but when push comes to shove, our SP has reminded us of the parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins. At some point in time, we will be unable to share what we have because of supply lines. We are in the process of rebuilding our back deck. It will have a nice, 2 foot wide by 36 foot long planting area. It is a southern exposure, so I should be able to have something edible growing year round.
October 6th, 2009 at 8:17 am
With fall upon us it put me in the mood for something made with apples. Not having any at the moment and being it was a sunday I decided to try a food storage recipe made with dehydrated apples from the church cannery. It was sooooo gooood!!! My family loved it. We made dutch apple pie and served it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I will surley make that again!!
I thought I’d share the recipe with you because we really did enjoy it and it was made entirely from food storage.
Dutch Apple Pie
Spray a 7×11 pan with Pam
Pre-heat oven to 350
Filling:
4 cups dried apples, firmly packed
4 cups water
2/3 cup sugar
4 tbsp flour
1 tsp cinnamon
Bring water to a boil in a 3 qt pan. Add apples, stir and let stand for 5 minutes. Add sugar, flour and cinnamon to apples. Cook, stiring constantly until thick and bubbly. Pour into the 7×11 pan.
Topping:
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup butter
Cut butter into flour and sugar until crumbly. Sprinkle over the apple mixture. Bake uncovered for 55 minutes.
Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or with half and half.
Don’t you just love fall! Enjoy
October 6th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Bwahahaha! I am going to make this evil dessert…even if it kills me! Sounds wicked-good. Thank you Kris!
October 9th, 2009 at 6:58 am
Amazing…I was at my neighbors house last night returning something I had borrowed. She was so excited to show me her latest science project (that is what her husband called it). The grocery store macy’s had put their chicken on sale for a very low price and my friend decided that she was going to bottle some.
We recently had an emergency preparedness fair and my friend had gone to it and learned how to bottle meat and poultry. I missed out on that class because I was teaching my own class, dang! Anyway, to make a longer story short…the bottled chicken turned out WONDERFUL! She said it’s even better than the canned stuff you get from Costco.
The science project was cheep, fairly easy and yielded the most dilectible chicken ever. Next on her list, bottled beef! (Jodene, don’t forget to call ME next time)
October 9th, 2009 at 9:58 am
I WANT TO LEARN!!!
(Jodene, don’t forget to call MEEEE next time.)
October 9th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
What a day. My 9 year old is off track for a couple of weeks and I wanted to let him do some service work (he still gets excited about the service, my 16 thinks it’s tourcher).
Anyway, I took him to the Bishops store house this morning to see what we could help with. We started out bagging grapefruits, then oranges. He was having such a wonderful time that he wanted to come back after lunch. So, after a bite of luch with daddy we went back and re-stocked the shelfs. The service missionaries and the patrons of the store were so sweet and kind to him.
I asked him where he would like to do some service next week, no surprise he said the Bishops store house again. “And mom, if we go back on friday Elder ____ will be there and we can quiz each other some more”. (Elder ____ is a service missionary that only works on friday and he and my son were have such a fun time with math problems.)
This was such a wonderful day for both of us and my son really truly enjoyed himself, really put a good attitude into it. We can’t help but feel good about helping those who for whatever reason can’t help themselfs or are just down on thier luck.
October 10th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Kris, what a great experience. I’m glad that you shared this example of taking children to a Bishop’s Store House for service opportunities. I haven’t ever done that but it sounds wonderful! Seems like an excellent, other than Monday night, Family Home Evening activity. I’m going to make a phone call and ask about their current needs and hours of operation.
A couple of our daughters have gone with me to serve at the Welfare Square Bakery and Cheese Factory. Both were awesome adventures! Not sure what the ‘age limit’ is on volunteers, so maybe I’ve just been successful in sneaking them in. What I know for sure is that the girls completed the service work with a feeling of accomplishment and even love for people they’ll never know. Leaving the parking lot Lizzie said, “That felt so good. It felt like I was really needed.” Thank you for reminding us.
October 15th, 2009 at 6:40 am
So last night’s dinner was a very yummy experiment and one that my family likes much better than the original.
My dinner menu for wednesday was to be shepherds pie. You know, like the one we all learned in j. high school with ground beef, a vegetable, tomato soup and mashed potatoes.
My 9 year old son loves this dish, just not the tomato soup part so…here is what we did instead and it was sooooo much better than the original.
in an oiled 7×11 add:
12 oz shredded or canned beef, liquid drianed
2 cans french style cut green beens, liquid drained
1 to 2 pkgs brown gravy mix, prepared
1 recipe of potato flakes (i used my food storage #10 can type)
1 to 1 1/2 cups grated cheese
Layer in oil pan in the above order. Heat, uncovered at 350 for about 30 minutes or until the sides begin to bubble.
This can now be a total food storage dinner (minus the cheese) because I used the canned beef instead of fresh ground beef and it tasted more like a sunday roast dinner instead of a mid week here is something to eat dinner. Enjoy!!
October 15th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Great idea. Thanks Kris. I bet my family would love this recipe. We’ll have to give it a try.