We’re already on week six! How is it going for you? Are you playing along? Have you managed to buy a little something extra every time you go to the store?
This week we’ll be working on adding fruit to our pantries and freezers. I’d like you to get mostly canned. This shouldn’t be a problem: most everyone can stomach canned pineapple or mandarin oranges. I always have frozen fruit on hand too; it’s great for smoothies or muffins. Keep in mind, though, that we don’t have nearly as much room for frozen foods as we do for canned foods. You can store canned food just about anywhere: under beds, at the tops of closets, in the back of hard to reach shelves. So it makes more sense to have more canned goods on hand. Plus you don’t need to worry about losing power; you’re not at the mercy of your freezer if most of your fruit is in cans or jars.
Get 5-10 cans per person. For my family of eight that’s somewhere between 50-80 cans. Holy crap, that’s a lot of cans! Since I go to Costco every week I’ll just load up several 8-packs of fruits and call it good. Shall we consider olives to be fruit? I think technically they are. If your family is like mine, they can never get enough black olives so throw some of those in your shopping buggy too.
Remember, just get it done. Don’t put it off and don’t over-think it. Just buy extras whenever you go to the store!
P.S. I’ve put a box up on the sidebar to remind you of past items in case you missed a week. ——>
APPLESAUCE! I’ll totally be loading up on that. And peaches. And pears. This is way easier than veggies when it comes to canned goods, IMHO.
Also, thanks for the sidebar. We’ll be out of town quite a bit in the next few months, so having the reminder is very helpful 🙂
I agree! Canned fruit is so much better. I forgot about applesauce!
OK, I got 8 quarts of applesauce and 4 cans of apricots. I also have glass quarts and sealed cans of dried fruits, which I hope will last forever. I’ll get the pineapple and mandarin oranges, too, but I’ll have to hide them from myself or eat those out piggishly in a week. Yeah, the sidebar is a good reminder!
Do you regularly eat the fruit and rice etc that you buy and put under the bed? Or is it purely for food storage.
We totally eat all the food storage stuff. It’s best to rotate through it. That’s why it’s a good idea to buy stuff you actually eat. But you have to remember to replenish on a regular basis. The only things we don’t eat are the freeze-dried food we get from those long-term storage places. It lasts for 15+ years so we’re saving it for . . . I don’t know what.