Dear Brothers and Sisters:

Our Heavenly Father created this beautiful earth, with all its abundance, for our benefit and use. His purpose is to provide for our needs as we walk in faith and obedience. He has lovingly commanded us to “prepare every needful thing” (see D&C 109:8) so that, should adversity come, we may care for ourselves and our neighbors and support bishops as they care for others. (All Is Safely Gathered In pamphlet, www.providentliving.org)

Maybe food storage reflects our stewardship and charity. Investing in provident living, many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are choosing to be part of a worldwide team, prepared with extra food, “so that, should adversity come, we may care for ourselves and our neighbors and support bishops as they care for others.”

The goal has always been sharing, not hoarding. Let’s choose now to make the necessary preparations, both spiritual and temporal, which will enable us to say yes if the Bishop needs to call for our food storage. That’s the team I want to be on.

Fear:  I’m worried about total economic melt-down.

Experience:  I know people in Texas.

Example:  My parents had food storage.

Logic:  It makes sense to me.

Ease:  It simplifies my life.

Obedience:  I choose to follow the prophet.

Service:  I’ll be ready to help others.

Faith:  I believe the prophet is inspired.

Love:  I love people and I love the Lord.

I’ve been thinking about what motivates me. Tonight, the force that seems most important is the connection between hearing the words of a prophet and hearing the words of the Holy Ghost. Everything I know about the Gospel says that those blessings are connected.  In fact, it seems to me that choosing to follow the prophet, my repentance and compliance, is directly connected to the volume of the still small voice.

Guidance: In difficult times I want more direction.

What I can do, in good conscience, is share all the new recipes I find…and I would love you to help. I’m always on the hunt for recipes that are easy to prepare and use a portion of the long-term storage ingredients (wheat, rice, beans, pasta, and potatoes) in combinations with short-term storage (three-month supply) ingredients. It’s okay if these food storage recipes call for a few fresh ingredients. The prophet has never asked us to stop going to the grocery store. Sometimes we make food storage harder than it needs to be. I’m trying to make my food storage as normal as possible and the fresh ingredients make all the difference in the world.

If you have a recipe you would like to share, please send it to me! With as few as only six recipes in each of the five categories of wheat, rice, beans, pasta, and potatoes, you can have a month’s worth of menus compiled. Then, all you need to do is purchase the specific recipe ingredients (bottled, canned, or dried) in groups of three and your three-month supply will be completed and ready to be used.

Besides the fact that the prophet has asked us to live this way, the advantage of having meals organized for at least the next three months is incredibly liberating and actually frees up time, every single day.

Tomorrow, or the next day, I’ll try to post the recipe for Hippie Tacos. Peace out.

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?