That’s the method some people use for building their food storage, which is fine if it works for them. I’m not an especially creative cook. I need to plan my meals and practice cooking a relatively small number of dishes in order to become comfortable with the preparation, and fast.

Besides that, in the event of an emergency, I don’t want to be trying to figure out, under pressure, what to cook with random ingredients. We don’t do that when we plan meals for vacations. The food for a trip to the mountains, lake, or cabin is planned well in advance with extensive lists. We purchase only the ingredients we’re actually planning to serve. Why would we plan so carefully for vacations and then plan to wing it during an emergency?

Even if you start with only one dinner, buy all the ingredients that can be stored in groups of three, and then make a specific plan for eating it, like the first Monday of each month, you will become more organized, more prepared, and more capable. As soon as you have one recipe organized into the process of food storage, move on to a second and third meal, and then just keep going.

Every time I use my food storage it’s like a cooking fire drill. Why wait for the emergency?

Designing a three-month supply is the best way I know to create your very own take and bake kitchen. Just think of the easy meals from your family’s favorites and start buying the dried, canned, or bottled ingredients in groups of three. Hopefully the recipes will call for, or could be laced with, a little wheat, rice, beans, pasta, or potatoes from your long-term storage so that those ingredients naturally get rotated. If you design your family’s selection of meals you eat regularly and enjoy and then purchase all the short-term storage ingredients in groups of three, you’ll automatically be building a three-month supply of every-day meals. And you don’t have to wear mascara or boots to cook dinner. What’s not to love?