Make A Plan Monday: Making a Plan to Use Food Storage

Making a plan to use your food storage regularly doesn't have to be an intense and undesirable work.  Here are some simple ideas that could help incorporate food storage regularly as far as planning it, last week I shared some ideas on using specific long-term food items in this post: Miscellaneous Monday:  Ideas On Incorporating Food Storage.

By choosing a meal or a day each week or month to focus on using food storage items--either in recipes you already know and like or in trying new ones--you are planning a way to rotate and use your food storage.  Examples:  Make at least one dish using food storage items that you need to rotate through--every 1st Saturday, or every Friday or every day of the first week in the month, etc.  Fridays are my day to focus on food storage items, but I tend to slip them in other days too.  Plan and do what works for you.

Also, when you make your shopping list and menu plan, plan meals and recipes based first on what you have on hand that needs to be used, then what is on sale both for stocking up and for using that week to make meals cost less, then choose meals/recipes that will allow you to use something from your food storage, and then of course any special occasions that you need to plan and shop for like birthdays, parties and such.

If you have food storage items that you aren't familiar with in taste and use, start small and simple.  Don't start using recipes that you are unfamiliar with and totally different from what you normally eat, but rather start using your food storage by adding it to meals you already enjoy.  Like adding a little whole wheat flour into baked goods, or adding a little cooked cracked wheat to ground meat dishes that you already enjoy.  Once you become accustomed to using food storage in everyday ways, and you want to expand your usage and tastes, you can try new recipes and techniques for preparing the food like making wheat gluten mock meats and such.

Most of the long-term food storage items can simply be added or used to substitute ingredients in many recipes you may already make; but it can also be fun to try completely new recipes and techniques using these and other food storage items.   Using some of the food storage will take advanced planning to be able to incorporate it; an example is wheat, it will need to be cooked, ground or sprouted first before it can be used.

Have fun planning and using your food storage.