Emergency Food Supplies

Elizabeth L. Andress, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Extension Food Safety Specialist, Department of Food and Nutrition, prepared this very helpful Consumer's Guide:Preparing an Emergency Food Supply. This is located on the University of Georgia website.

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Gourmet Cooking and other Stuff for Hard Times

Turn off your radio, turn off your TV, folks, or you will find yourself living in the great depression and I do not mean the Great Depression of the 1930s! Enough already, of doomngloom! Hard times are upon us. So freakin' what?! Everyone is cutting back, too. You see signs of it everywhere. You hear signs of it too. Have you noticed that radio stations are a bit fuzzy and TV stations are not coming in very well lately? I suspect they've been cutting back on their transmission power, just enough to make it irritating. Probably save a ton of money. However, they aren't saying.

I've been cutting back too, but how much can one person do? I didn't turn on the heat until the temp dropped to near freezing, then I was so cold that even the heat didn't do any good so I had to soak in a hot bath and put on sunlamps just to warm up again, completely defeating all of my well-intentioned conservation efforts. In addition, to save water I re-used the bath water to wash the dishes, but waited until my family wasn't looking. Don't know about you, but I find it's better not to wash them for a week. You save a lot of water and energy.

All of this doomngloom talk has me thinking though, about being frugal and living a simpler life. I have had some good ideas on the subject. If you have ever gone to a fine restaurant I am sure you have noticed that the more expensive the food, the smaller the portions. This seems to be a law of restauranteering: less means more. And the higher they pile it! I always get a sinking feeling when a waiter brings me a single morsel that is about one inch in diameter but somehow stands up to a height of six inches with some little curly thing on top of it. I know it's gonna cost me a bundle.

Therefore, I thought, I can do that! Here is my low-cost version of gourmet: make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and...now wait, you do remember peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, don't you? Actually, they are called samitches. Make sure you choose the softest, whitest bread, although these days you can get white bread that is somehow brown, which makes you feel like you are doing something good for your body. Use only generic grape jelly and the cheapest creamy peanut butter. (FYI, read the labels, some of our favorite brands no longer say "Peanut Butter" but finally tell the truth: "Peanut Spread". The word "Spread" being very, very, very, eeenie weenie small.)

So far, nothing new in this idea but here is the "gourmet" part. Cut the crust off (you probably would have done that anyway) and cut the samitch into one inch squares, and stack them up six inches high, in the middle of a plate, the bigger the plate the better in order to enhance the effect. (That’s another corollary to the "less is more" law: large plates mean very expensive.) Top the samitch with something, anything, that is curly. Celery leaves? Dried fusilli? I don't know. You decide. When you place this gourmet samitch before your loved one you will hear a gasp and their eyes will bug with joy.

But seriously, I heard on the radio today that big companies are so strapped for cash that they can't afford to hire lobbyists. Excuse me while I whine sarcastically: "Awwww, pooooor babies!” Imagine. Empty lobbies. Well, everyone is making sacrifices. I decided to fire my lobbyist last year so what are they whining about?

Oh, and one more thought on saving money. I have one word for you: Slow Cookers. You would not believe how great they are if you have not gone down the slow cooker path yet. I like them so much I have a blog about slow cookers called Slowcooker Soups (slowcookersoups.blogspot.com). No, really. So easy. Two things: a) you throw all the ingredients in the crock-pot at night or in the morning and 2) when you wake up or when you get home after work there is a good healthy meal. And cheap.

One last word on surviving these "hard times". Embrace the opportunities that abound in an atmosphere like this and don't get too scared by it all. Our grandparents survived worse, and they did not have the Great Depression to look back on with fear and loathing.

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