GF Food Storage

One thing that I struggled with when Jake became gluten-free was our food storage. Our church puts a big emphasis on being self reliant, including having food storage in case of loss of job or another emergency. We had a good 3 month supply of food that we ate regularly, and were maybe halfway to having a year supply of the basic staples like wheat, oats, rice, dried milk, dried carrots and onions, sugar, potato flakes, etc. Of course what I had the most of was wheat and oats, both of which are decidedly not gluten-free. So we had to figure out how to do food storage all over again. I found a couple of good websites that helped point me in the right direction, particularly this one. I put all my wheat and about half of my oats up on craigslist to make space for new GF storage (Rachel and I eat oats, so I figure we'll use up the regular oats we have now).

I am not making very fast progress, but at least I'm making some progress. I've set a goal to get a few new things every month. There are about 3 or 4 places I get stuff for my food storage: our church cannery, amazon, Augason Farms, and Shelf Reliance. I've also picked up some bulk bags of brown rice and quinoa from Sunflower Market when there have been good sales (buying from the bulk bins isn't all that safe, since people may use the same scoops to scoop oats or granola as they use for rice, but they will sell you a 25 or 50 pound bag if you ask for it). And last Christmas when I was up in Utah I went up to Draper to get some bulk potato starch and GF pasta at Against the Grain. The stuff I got in bulk bags I put in PETE containers I got from here along with an oxygen absorber to keep them fresh longer. I know brown rice doesn't keep for long, so my extra cans of brown rice I keep in my freezer.

 

Here's some of my GF pasta, quinoa, and potato starch.

I happened to get my shipment from Augason Farms today, which is what put me to thinking again about food storage (trying to find room to keep food is half the challenge).

I like their muffin mixes--they're a lot like this recipe, only I don't have to get all those ingredients and mix them all together. I also get my tapioca flour, xanthan gum and pizza dough mix from them. I used to get soy flour from them, but I couldn't find any this time, so I ended up going with Amazon, which may end up being cheaper anyway.

I may rely a bit too much on Amazon these days. But I love their subscribe & save option. I get 15% off, free shipping, and the stuff gets automatically shipped, so I don't forget to build up my food storage. I get a shipment of GF oats every month (that also came today--it was a good day for packages!). I figure one of these days I may transfer the oats to a PETE container and add oxygen absorbers and they'll last a good long while.

We also get a few boxes of Kind Bars every month, and boxes of Nut Thins every 3 months from Amazon. It's cheaper than the grocery store and they're Jake's staple snacks.

So my goal/plan is to put in an order every month rotating through Shelf Reliance, Augason Farms, and the cannery, in order to build up our food storage with some regularity (besides the oats that are already automatically coming). We'll see how well I do....