Sunday, March 16, 2008

Don't Do As I Do...

So, now that you know all about my buggy bag o' wheat, I'll let you in on another secret. I have a couple hundred pounds of wheat, rice and beans in my bedroom. Romantic, huh? Some of it is still in the original paper bags. I just realized it's been there about a year now. I probably ought to get on "improving" that situation. I promised you when I started this blog that I would reveal to you all the things I do that break the food storage rules. So in the interest of keepin' it real, I will share with you the fact that I put my bulk dry foods in plastic 5 gallon buckets recycled from Wal-mart's bakery. Yep. They are food grade plastic, I wash and dry them well, they each hold about 35 pounds of whatever I put in there and best of all, they were free. Food Storage Natzi's will tell you that the only way to store wheat properly is to put it in cans, or buy it from someplace like Walton's in a mylar Super Pail. And goody for them. I'm doing the best I can over here, and it's way better than nothing at all. For sure there are a few things I will go to the extra expense and effort to put in cans and sealed Super Pails, powdered milk, dehydrated vegetables and pricier stuff like that, but the cheap stuff that has already had Mother Nature all over it, it's going in the buckets.

1 comment:

Kacey said...

My hubby went to the Red Cross and bought 25 gallon red plastic water storage containers. We cleaned them well and then put in water with a teaspoonful of Chlorox. After a year, you can water your flowers and refresh the water in the containes. He bought two for each of our childrens' families. Now, they are sitting in the attic with nothing in them---they will come in handy when we are dying of thirst! (You shame me)
Also, one Thanksgiving when we were very young and poor--- the only flour we (my two sisters and I) were making pies and the only flour available had a few weevils in it. We rolled out the crusts and picked out the little black spots, then baked. We didn't tell anyone and the pies tasted great. Our families wouldn't have known a saw-tooth grain beetle from a gnat. You are so right about hungry people will pick out the buggies.