What Do I Do With All That Wheat?

was the topic of this month's Women Living Wisely meeting. We had a bigger than normal turnout, and I feel like people were able to get a lot of the meeting. I talked about wheat and the common ways of using it (flour, cracked, wheat berries, bulgar, wheat grass, etc.). Everyone was supposed to bring something made out with wheat and the recipe for it. There were some seriously YUMMY food there, and a lot of people were very original with their uses too. After we sampled everything, then we started grinding wheat with grinders that people had brought. It was really good to find out who in our group has what, and what the different grinders are like, etc.

(When I get a chance, I'll post the handout and the recipes up in the documents area. Hopefully within a week.)

I know that storing wheat is one of the most basic items to store, and many people who store food focus on acquire the basic items first (wheat, water, salt, sugar, pasta, rice, dried milk, legumes). It was not the way that I decided to start though. I decided to start with canned goods, and then exanded it to frozen food, then hygeine and paper goods, and my goal was to have a three month supply (well, two weeks of water). I am pretty close to my goal for those items, and so my next goal is to start expanding our basic food storage. Part of my hesitation for storing the basic items is that I don't have storage space for those items. So my goal for 2009 is to move things out of our seasonal/long term closet and put them in our garage, put shelves along one wall of the closet, and store 3 months of the basic items for each member of the family. I am using the following chart and times it by 5 for us (and then by 3, for a three month supply for 5 people). The cans are #10 cans, unless otherwise noted. I also plan on buying a hand grinder for 2009. The electric grinder is budgeted for 2010. But now that we had this meeting, I know who I can bring a meal to in exchange for letting me use their grinder. LOL. Except not really. I totally plan on bartering for the use of the grinder for this year. I think that it is more provident for me to do it this way. And that is sort of the overall goal.

Wheat - 3 cans
Flour - 1 can
Rice - 2 cans
Oats - 1 can
Macaroni - 1 can
Pinto Beans - 1 can
White Sugar - 1 can
Powdered Milk - 1 can
Shortening - 2 3 pound cans
Salt - 2 8 oz. shakers