Monday Message

"I wish to urge again the importance of self-reliance on the part of every individual Church member and family. None of us knows when a catastrophe might strike. Sickness, injury, unemployment may affect any of us. We have a great welfare program with facilities for such things as grain storage in various areas. It is important that we do this. But the best place to have some food set aside is within our homes, together with a little money in savings. The best welfare program is our own welfare program. Five or six cans of wheat in the home are better than a bushel in the welfare granary." (President Gordon B. Hinckley)

I think we may have trouble either way the election goes...we should step up our storage and skill growing. Here's a reminder to pick up an item every time you go to the store.

We cannot prepare for everything, but we can ease the pain of hard times.

Go through your recipes and if you have them online, make a hard copy to have as a back up. You can still use online but if one day your server has issues and you are in the middle of a recipe, you can go get out your binder. We all know they go down from time to time. But go through your recipes, study them, find which ones are cheaper to fix but that your family still likes. Work with those and use the difference you normally spend for stocking up.

We are all having angry weather events so it is better to be prepared as much as we can.

https://www.self-reliance.com/2015/02/basic-long-term-food-storage/ - this has inspiring pictures of his pantry.

https://www.thehappyflammily.com/2020/03/month-supply-food-storage-family-four.html - this is interesting.

https://seasonedcitizenprepper.com/feed-a-family-of-4-for-1-year-for-less-than-300/ - this has some helpful lists.

https://foodstorageorganizer.com/printables/ - this has helpful info.

The few things I want to remind you are to store your yeast in the freezer and store what your family eats. If you store the food they don't eat, they will not eat it. Think of a food you hate...now think that is what is in your storage. First you would eat everything but that, oh yes, that is what I would do.

Also, there is food fatigue. Make sure you have plenty of variety - if all you store is beans and rice, no matter how much you like them, you will come to hate them in time. So store variety.

In my storage, there is always ingredients to make my chocolate cake, get the recipe HERE.

No matter what goes wrong, we can have chocolate cake.  

This brings me back to skills...

If you are someone who grabs a can of cinnamon rolls and one day that product is no longer available...and if you are saying it's never going to happen...it has happened to a lot of my favorite items. They either are cutting the product to cut costs or the store stops getting it as they are cutting their cost by offering less choice. So back to if you only do cinnamon rolls that way and for some reason you can't get them. Are you prepared to make them? Yes, you could go without them but who wants to do that?? If you have supplies on hand to make them from scratch and have that skill built up....yum!!  Really, which do you want - a life without cinnamon rolls or a life with them?

Now, I know you all want one now as do I.

This is the recipe I use for cinnamon rolls. Get more recipes HERE. Yes, I can make them by hand but if I can use a bread machine, I will. And can you take this recipe and do it by hand? Yes, you can. I did one at the same time - one in the machine and one by hand and you cannot tell the difference at all. The recipe was from before bread machines were a thing.

I make my own bread flour by adding one teaspoon of vital wheat gluten to one cup of flour and that equals a cup of bread flour.

Skill building...

I have shifted my sewing space to be more efficient and so far it works fantastically! I am in the middle of sewing a dress, it's almost done. You can see it there on the table

The space is small but I worked hard to get it to this place where I can function more smoothly in.

This gal is a weaver (a good one but) is talking about sewing machines....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHaxS1goq-s - video one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd-_w80fVGs - video two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI7WSb1ZLc0 - video three.

I think these are very helpful.

To me, having a dedicated space set up so I don't have to keep dragging out stuff every time I sew is huge. I always have had a spot even if in the corner of my bedroom or living room, wherever, I would make it work. If I would have to drag it out every time, I would be wore out before I did anything.  

Missy says build those skills while you can. 

Tippy Longstockings says be working on your storage, the weather is angry.