Our Experiment

Charles was preparing for a financial class he taught at church. He reviewed counsel to have a financial reserve, along with food storage, starting with a three month supply. He suggested we try going one month without buying food to see how our food storage would stand up. We thought about it. After a week and a couple trips to the grocery store we started the experiment. Our one exception was milk. We know we have plenty of powdered milk and we know that we don't care to drink it, so we did buy milk.

Our four weeks ended today. What we discovered is our food storage is pretty good. I was pleased that noone was very grouchy about it. I think everyone had a time or two when they said "We need to go to the store." Yet we got by OK. What we missed the most was quick, fill-in foods. Frozen pizza was missed, but yogurt, fresh fruit and lunchmeat were at the top of the list. I did make adjustments, but I felt like I had more time to do so (without going to the grocery store). I was more prepared for dinners because we had fewer fallbacks. When we ran out of store-bought bread I made sandwich rolls for the kids lunches. They liked them and I will keep doing that. I realized that canned and dried fruit is important. The kids take fruit in their lunch everyday and obviously the fresh fruit ran out before the month was up. Lemon juice and evaporated milk came in handy for substitutes.

It was a good experiment. I feel better prepared to build up a food storage appropriate for our family. I am glad that we have followed this counsel. We have peace knowing that we have food to eat if we couldn't go to the store.