Food Storage--it's about time

(Our official food storage cupboard at the end of the hall--it's a start)

We figure we have no excuse to put off food storage any longer. We can't blame it on a little apartment with no space, for instance. In fact we have built-in shelves and cabinets that are half empty. Imagine.

Then, in the March Ensign we read the article, "Family Home Storage: A New Message." We like their approach--skip all the plastic barrels of wheat and instead build up a store of what you always eat anyway, first a month's worth, then three months, and so on. As Uchenna said, food storage has now become like the Word of Wisdom, "adapted to the weak and the weakest of Saints." That's us.

A couple of weeks ago when we had a doctor's appointment in Oklahoma City, we also scheduled a trip to Sam's Club to start our food storage officially. I've tried buying extra food from time to time, but we always end up eating it. This time, though, we made a list. Actually, we went to the Sam's Club website and made a huge master list of all the store-able food we wanted, which would have cost huge amounts. But then we remembered we were doing this in easy stages, so we pared it way back.

Then I forgot the list.

There's a reason for that. The weather forecast was scary, and we wondered if we should make the trip at all. We hate being caught on the road with big wind and rain and possibly hail and tornadoes. But these appointments can take months to get, so we figured we'd run down and run back as quickly as possible. No stop-offs. That's why I didn't bring the list.

Once we were done with the doctor, though, the forecasted storm had been pushed back. As we stopped for lunch, we called a couple of friends from our ward and asked them to check the radar on weather.com, one of our most visited sites. They said we probably had a couple of hours, so we dashed around Sam's Club grabbing the things we thought were on our list. We ended up spending more than we'd intended after all our careful planning, but it's all good. And less than an hour after we got home, places along our road--like Marlan and Perry--got hit with tornado warnings and hail. Shwew!

The next weekend we labled and organized. We put little stickers on all our food items with the date that we bought it. We also added to our list (which we still had, right where I had left it) important information like quantities on hand and expiration dates. I'm glad we took note of that, because some expirations come up pretty quickly; besides building up our small store of food, we're going to have to do some rapid rotating.

And finally, today we received our order of wheat from the cannery. Yes, really--wheat. Just six #10 cans, but hey, it's a start.

A lovely quiet Easter

Uchenna says that back home, the whole country gets off for both Good Friday and Easter Monday, which makes for a great holiday. So he felt a little gipped this year only getting off Good Friday. I was surprised they even got that one day off. I never have, not from work.

We figured we didn't want to spend three days hanging around the house, so we jumped in the car and headed to Oklahoma City. Our main purpose was to go to the temple, which seemed appropriate for Easter. Apparently half the temple district had the same thought; I've never seen that little parking lot so packed.

Anyway, we went down Friday night, did a session, and stayed at a hotel. The next morning we took our time waking up, went to the temple again, then went for lunch, found some things we just had to buy, and headed home. We didn't even have to race the weather and try to get home before a storm let loose. Easy-peasy.

We've decided we like staying over, rather than trying to cram the temple and all that driving into one day. Also, with a hotel, you have a kind of home base or staging area, so you don't have to show up to the temple all tired out already and you have a place to rest afterwards. It makes for a much more pleasant, relaxed experience.

Of course it can start to add up if you try to do that every month. Because besides paying for a hotel, we also feel like we need to eat at a nice-ish place, a restaurant we don't have here in town. And when we go to a town with real stores, we feel a great need to buy something that we can't find here. So you gotta watch out for that.

On Sunday, our friends, the Meldrums, invited us and another family over for dinner, so that was festive. They had chicken and salmon. I think since ham isn't an option for us, salmon should become our traditional Easter feast. We quite like fish and don't have it all the time. Ta-duh--holiday meal tradition right there.