Monday Message

"Today, I emphasize a most basic principle: home production and storage. Have you ever paused to realize what would happen to your community or nation if transportation were paralyzed or if we had a war or depression? How would you and your neighbors obtain food? How long would the corner grocery store—or supermarket—sustain the needs of the community?" (President Ezra Taft Benson)

I was able to get a few groceries this week and oh my have prices gone high! Not only that but quite a few things have gone away and are no longer in the stores. Plus, the Sam's Club in our area has quit selling cheddar cheese in five pound blocks, now they sell just two pound blocks.  

I did get my one storage item - a 25 pound bag of flour, the price for that was down a bit so that was good. However, I went to Aldi and looked for shortening. They had several brands and places for vegetable oil but no shortening. I asked the checker who went to look then called his boss about it. His reply was that it was seasonal…. No, it's not seasonal. I informed his boss it was no more seasonal than gas for your car.  

I guess the point of me sharing this with you is to show you that a shortage can be from something like this, it doesn’t even need to be a world event. I was just getting it to put in storage, it wasn’t an immediate need but for another person it might be. That was why I bothered to inform them. I checked at another store and they had only about six cans of just the major brand, no other option, and it was $5.79 which I thought was up too much for me. So check your prices as you shop to help you know what they run.

I cannot stress enough that having your storage going is more important than ever. Hand-in-hand with that is living frugally and building on your skills. I heard an older woman say her skills have saved her so much over the years.

http://icandy-handmade.com/2014/07/diy-fun-summer-tee.html - this looks like an easy sew pattern, it would help with your sewing skills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXJbrFvOksM - this is fantastic, it shows building skills in using food storage to make great buttermilk biscuits with no buttermilk.

I think it is such great thing to learn how to make do with what you have on hand. For example, you don’t have to run to the store to get buttermilk. But there are so many things just like that if we learn them we could save so much.

As groceries continue to rise in price the more things we can cook from scratch, the better we will be able to manage. Wages rarely keep up with the increase in food prices. This is why over the years I have picked up cookbooks that help in making food stretch and making from scratch. 

I know we have the internet but please keep a hard copy!

How many of you have been killing time in the checkout line? You pick up a magazine turn it to the great looking recipe from the front cover only to find out that there are twenty ingredients listed... this is sadly the case with most. That is why I suggest you get the older church-type cookbooks. Any church or other organization even schools, hospitals, music schools, even radio channels they all have everyone’s favorite recipes.

I just pulled these four, two happen to be from Methodist churches, one from Ames, Iowa, and one from Forest City, Iowa. I have many different church cookbooks. The other two are a women's business cookbook and one from Story City Memorial Hospital. 

I wanted you to see the year on the one 1985 the hospital is 1984 and the yellow one I wanted you to see the price I paid - 25 cents! So look around, even a dollar is a good price. I opened the book to show you how they usually look. Each recipe has the person’s name who donated the recipe… I just randomly opened the book to the page below, you can see that these recipes don’t have twenty ingredients. They usually take ingredients you most likely already have on hand. Real recipes I say.

This recipe for Texas Hash is from the 1985 cookbook from Forest City. I wanted to show you how easy this recipe is, not to mention I could make this recipe with my storage. 

So don’t pass up these types of cookbooks thinking they're old fashioned and with no pictures. I say, exactly! That is why they are the best, it usually means before computers. And pictures that look great don’t always taste good.

I suggest you sit with one of these books and a cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows and look through. I can go from front to back but have been known to hit breads then casseroles often times too.

This is just one of the frugal things I do.

Let us know what frugal things you do, we all love ideas!

Do the best you can at storage building and skill building and being frugal.