How this all began...

I have always been a food storer even at my young age of 18 in my first apartment. I learned a lot of frugalness from my grandmother and her food storing ways. Now we will fast forward to the year 2006. I started a group that would come to my home once a month and there was an amazing woman there who was trying to figure out food storage not only how to store long term goods but what to do with it once you had it. Basically how am I going to get this food into my kids not just in an emergency but using it frequently enough so if there was an emergency they would be used to eating beans, wheat, and rice and even powdered milk. She was and still is very inspiring to me.

Now full of inspiration and no place to go I would frequently(and I still do)call my amazing friend and ask all kinds of questions and then I decided to come up with a plan. Here is my 3 step plan:

1. Get food and storage containers

2. Get food into containers properly and find places to store it in my house(and without a basement or a garage I had to be quite inventive and please if you come to my home don't go snooping around too much because I am sure you will find food stored somewhere)

3. As stated above-how am I going to get this food into my kids

Funny enough steps 1 and 2 came quite easily. A couple of trips to Farmington Hills and to local bakeries and tada food storage. I also changed how I grocery shopped to buying only what was on sale(except for fresh produce and five items) which really did help get more food for my dollar and I am still amazed at how much food I can buy in a week which means I am always adding to my food storage. I go to Farmington Hills biannually and to Sam's quarterly.

Now step 3 not as easy and still working on it and probably will always be adding new recipes to use my food storage.

Wheat- I found out very quickly that waffles were #1 on the kids list so once this was realized in came 32 pounds of syrup.

Beans -4 family members love black beans in whatever even cooked plain and eaten with little fingers and 2 do not but evertime we have them they have to eat their ages and they do so willingly now. In matter of fact one of my little jewels states I like the taste not the feel or visa versa and this is how he lets me know how he feels about all of his food

Rice- Our family loves rice and so I never was very concerned about this item. I do however store 3 varieties.

Powdered Milk- Now this is trickier and I am still working on it but I have a fail safe and that is chocolate. I have enough nestle chocolate mix for a couple of monthes. But as I posted earlier I made ricotta and I am sure the kids will love it! I will let you know how it all turns out!

This is how Jewels of a Kitchen started: one amazing friend's inspiration, wanting to be prepared no matter what lies ahead and a love for my family and that is truly what keeps it going. I will continue to share Jewels from my kitchen and my adventures in using food storage and other twists and turns in my kitchen.