First of all, I want you to know that this idea is not something that you have to do. It is simply an idea our family has come up with. We believe it will work for us and hope by sharing our idea with others it will help them achieve a goal of self reliance. Thus we have called it "THE HUNTER PLAN"

Firstly, there are a few quotes that I would like to share with you:

So, don't get hung up with food storage being for doomsday - it is more likely to be needed for periods of unemployment, minor emergencies etc. Just knowing that we have enough food to support our family for a year gives one a great feeling of peace and self assurance. Food storage and living from it needs to become a new way of life for you.

There is absolutely no doubt about this; IT IS A PRIESTHOOD RESPONSIBILITY

In his recent conference talk on "getting our houses in order" (Oct 98 Gen Con), President Hinckley made his address in the PRIESTHOOD session of conference.

President J Reuben Clark Jr counselled "Let every HEAD of every Household see to that he has on hand enough food clothing and where possible fuel also for at least a year ahead"

The only assurance we can give is that since we (my husband and I) have worked on this project together we have been greatly blessed and we know that it is because we have done it together.

(a) Basically - the General Authorities have told us to.

Through them the Lord has counselled us:

Ezra Taft Benson stated "The revelation to store food may be as essential to our temporal salvation today as boarding the ark was to the people of Noah" (Oct 1973 Conference)

Spencer W Kimbell stated "We encourage families to have on hand this year's supply; and we say it over and over and over and repeat over and over the scripture of the Lord where He says: 'Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say'. How empty it is as they put their sprituality, so called, into action and call Him by his important names, but fail to do the things which he says" (May 1976 Conference)

(b) To protect ourselves for the unforeseen happenings of the future

(c) To provide re-assurance for your immediate family - even if you are never put in a "disastor" scenario, you don't have to worry about the "what-ifs"

(d) To help others - if your extended family or friends ever need help, it gives you the means to provide assistance

(e) To help budgetting - if you know what you eat on a yearly basis, then you can plan ahead (more in rotating food)

There are many references to this, and most involve the very clincal breaking down of food into limited types, and then into amounts, so for example it will be broken down into cereals 365 lb per person per year. Generally there is a limited amount of information as to how to manage this resource.

However, we do know that the prophets have counselled us to store a year's supply of food, clothing, bedding, and if possible, and where legal, fuel. They have also counselled us to store 2 weeks supply of water.

This is one of the most off-putting elements of food storage. Even if we have the will, have found the cash, found space to store, and are all prepared to go, the sight of the many published articles and books on what to store is enough to put anyone off. Too often there is a division into food types: e.g. grains/proteins; carbohydrtes; fruit and veg.. The trouble is that most of us find this division of food into types too rigid, and even if we do store so much of each food type, without a plan we generally end up with foodstuffs that we don't know how to or are not inclined to use.

"The worst thing to do with food storage, apart from not doing it at all, is to store foods which we cannot or are not inclined to eat. One is reminded of the story of the young couple who had diligently provided X lbs of grain Y lbs of carbohydrate etc etc., but failed to plan what to do with this food, and for example didn't even own a wheat grinder to grind the wheat they had collected".

Do you ever go for your week's shopping and stand there going "now what food types do I need to get this week". No, we all use common sense about what to buy, and this should equally apply to storage.

�

Well, we had tried doing our food storage when we first got married. We bought a lot of cans knowing they would store well. For example, we purchased about 24 cans of corned beef. However, all that happened was that we didn't know what to do with them, and were left with 24 cans of out-of-date corned beef. When we looked through food storage books and they would say have 365lbs of wheat we would say to ourselves, What do you do with 365lbs of wheat? and I don't even like it!. There is a saying "STORE WHAT YOU EAT AND EAT WHAT YOU STORE" We decided that we needed a plan.....

Every night I would look into the freezer and ask myself 'what shall I make tonight?' thinking to myself, I need to get more organised here. I would also go to the supermarket, spend a small fortune, come back with a trolley load and still feel like I hadn't bought anything. Or I'd make a meal, realise I was missing an ingredient, pop down to the shops and spend more money on things I didn't really need. I really didn't feel I was in control of things.

I had some friends who were at university and survived on a monthly food budget of around �70.00. I asked them how they managed to do it. They said that one of the things they did was to have a list of menus, and therefore were able to budget out their money. I decided then that this was something I needed to consider in our plan.

My husband and I sat down together and made a list of all the meals we liked. We tried to especially think of meals which could be made using ingredients that had a long shelf life.

�

For example Spaghetti Bolognase

Ingredient Tin Storage time (Which probably would last longer)

Once we decided on our month's worth of menus, we decided we needed to work out what ingredients we would need to make the meals. We used a spread sheet to plot it.

- Menus on top, ingredients on the side.

As we plotted down each meal, we ticked off each ingredient. Therefore, at the end of the 30 menus we could tell, for example, how many cans of corned beef we would need for a month. From that we could multiply that number by 12 to give a yearly figure.

I went to all the main shops around town and priced up the ingredients. I noted where the cheapest place was to buy them and then because I knew how many I needed for my months menus I knew how much it was going to cost me per month and per year.

After pricing the ingredients you can then decide how you are going to finance your food storage. If your finances are not sufficient you could perhaps re-evaluate your menus to see if you could make any of the menus cheaper.

However, don't be put off by the "mountain" buying a year's supply may seem - it doesn't all have to be done at once. The beauty of this idea is that it allows you to buy as much as you can afford at the time, and still have food storage, though for a shorter period. For example, if you can afford to buy 2 months at one time, then you have 1 "active" month (which you replace as your monthly shop), and 1 storage month, (which you rotate). If you can afford to buy 2 months worth of food on a monthly basis, then within a year you have a year's supply.

This is better than having some extra money, and buying a year's supply of one ingredient, which, in effect, means you still have zero, or unusable, storage.

You need to make sure that you are completely happy with the menus you have chosen. You need to make sure you like the meals and that the quantities you have chosen are sufficient for your family.

Buy all the ingredients and decide for a month that you will only use those ingredients bought to make the menus. At the end of the month, review your menus. Take off your spreadsheet any meals you aren't keen on and amend any quantities.

Now that you know how many ingredients you need for one month and how much it will cost you to buy them, you can multiply that figure by 12 to give you a years supply. Buying your food storage has never been so easy. You know exactly what to buy and you know exactly what meals the stored ingredients will make and how much it will cost you.

This is the hardest part. The joy of storing long life ingredients is that they last a long time - but they don't last forever!!! If you don't have a system of rotating your storage it will go off. Another problem is keeping track of what you have. If you need a can of food and you keep taking cans out of your storage without making a note of it, you will end up being short of an item for a menu and you also won't know what you need to buy.

We decided to store our food in 12 areas/cupboards/boxes around the house and put one months supply in each area. We empty the box and put it in our 'current month' cupboard and buy the next months supply to be put in a box which will be opened in 12 months time. This way you don't end up with cans at the back of the cupboard which you can't see to rotate and you know that everything in that box will enable you to make a months worth of menus. (Useful tip: Banana boxes from the local supe rmarket are very useful for storing things in as they are made to be very strong)

We have also made menu/recipe cards which are placed in an envelope in the current month cupboard. As we make the meal we take the card from the 'in' envelope and place it in the 'out' envelope. This way we know exactly what meals we have left to make that month, we can view the cards left to help choose a meal for that evening's meal . Also, because the recipe cards have full instructions on how to make the meal, there are no excuses for anyone not being able to grab the current ingredients out of the cupboards, follow the instructions and make it themselves!

Having the set menus for the month doesn't mean that I can't have a meal that is not from my storage - if I do decide to have something different it just means that I have an extra meal to be carried over to the next month and I don't have to buy as many ingredients.

You can also have a years supply of a particular meal in your freezer.- you just have to remember that should there be a power failure some of your ingredients may go off. You should, therefore, make an allowance for this in your other storage i.e. have some "spare meals". There is however, in the non-crisis way of thinking, no reason not to use a freezer for some items of storage.

We have also bought a bread machine (at a very good price �38.00) so that we can make our own bread. Flour and yeast have a year's shelf life therefore we can buy a years supply of flour, yeast and know it will be rotated. If we didn't have a machine I very much doubt I would make bread myself and I doubt that it would have been rotated. Some people have said to me 'Ah, what if there is a power shortage - what will you do them'. My only reply is 'well at least I have fresh ingredients which I know I can rotate - I can always bake it some other way, but unless you have the ingredients first you are stuck. Again, we are not necessarily thinking of disasters, but of a provident way of living.

�

Some people have said to me that they don't feel they could live on tin/dried foods. I think it's just a matter of fact that if you want to have food storage you are going to have to have some tinned/dried foods. If you think back to the parable of the 10 virgins you can't say I'll get my oil later - you need to store. I feel there is a way round this though. If you desperately feel that you couldn't last a month on stored food and wanted fresh, why not have two weeks of meals using stored foods inter-mingled with two weeks of meals using fresh food. Buy enough food of your stored ingredients to last a year and rotate it over 2 years instead of one. Then should there ever be a need to live on your food storage you have a years supply of food available.

Why not plant vegetables and fruit. You can use these to supplement your food storage and also save you money.

Now that we have a years supply of main meals we will concentrate on Water and Breakfast and Lunch meals. Don't forget, your water storage doesn't only have be water - we will have a water butt kept outside which we will use for washing and cooking. We also store lemonade, fruit juices and UHT milk etc, as well as bottled water, which we can use for drinking. It is also provident to store water purification tablets.

Why do I like this plan?