Eating down our Food Storage

This is just one of our food storage closets!
It is getting really lean, usually it is packed full.

With the impending move we have been trying to "eat down" our food storage.  I was proud in the fall to have at least three months of food stored for us in case of emergencies and for lean times.

We had some lean times this past winter when my husband was hardly working and money was thin.  We ate quite a bit of what we had then.  But as the move is quickly approaching we have been more diligent to eat down our food storage.

I have learned a few things in the process:

1. My kids like creamed corn.  I bought several cans to make corn pudding with over the holidays but never had a chance to make it.  I ran out of regular corn the other day and grabbed a can of creamed corn.  For the first time my kids tried it.  All three LOVED it.  I love it too.  So we will add this to our food storage next time.  It is quite a treat, a bit sweet, to keep in the food storage rotation.

2.  I need to store more vegetables.  This is the one thing that we have run really low on.  The other thing we need to store more of is "junk food" like chips, cookie mixes, and popcorn.

3.  What is it again that you can replace an egg with when baking? I forget and I run out of eggs quickly.

4.  I would so rather buy bread on busy weeks than bake it.  But we DO have enough flour.

5.  15 bottles of relish is probably a year and a half worth.  I still have eleven bottles of relish and 8 bottles of BBQ sauce.  We obviously do not use as much of this as I thought we did.

6.  If you store cake mixes and cookie mixes then you need to find a way to store eggs and milk. Enough said!

Some dinners we have been eating:

Chicken, pasta, and a canned veggie.

Chicken, mashed potatoes and a canned veggie.

Kielbasa and dirty rice or a box of jambalaya.

Spaghetti sauce, frozen chicken patties and mozzarella cheese over spaghetti noodles. (quick chicken parmigiana)

Chicken pot pie (made with cream of chicken soup, can of mixed veggies, and biscuits)

Beef Stroganoff (stew beef in crock pot with cream of mushroom soup and an envelope of beefy onion soup mix over egg noodles)

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I can't tell you how much our food storage means to us.  It gives us such a comfort knowing that in the lean times we don't have to worry about spending our hard earned money on food.  It has saved us so much money in the last several months.