Where’s the Food?

100 Days of Camping Day #11

Another rainy day, and I didn't feel like driving anywhere, so today I'm going to address a F.A.Q., which is, "Where do you put your food?" 

This is an item of curiosity to all, but of special importance to us as we have been admonished as Latter-Day-Saints to have food storage. Naturally, not all of our readers are LDS, but many of our LDS friends have expressed great concern at how we can't have a year's supply of food.  We also have LDS friends who say they would love to live in an RV but the food storage issue is one of the biggest factors holding them back.  Today's post, therefore, is written with an LDS perspective.

When we had a brick-and-mortar home in Utah, we always had a years supply, and we loved shopping the case-lot sales- something I've really missed in California.  We gave away much of our food storage when we came out here, but still brought a significant amount of food with us.  This last year has been a time when we have been very grateful that we did.  Money has been tight, and I am so grateful that we had food storage.  We've learned how to eat it.  When we moved into the RV, again we gave away much of our food storage because there's simply not enough room for it all.  It really isn't feasible to have a year's supply in an RV.  Sure, there's plenty of room if you want to give the space to it, but the weight is also a deciding factor if you plan on traveling.  We would make more room for food storage if we didn't have to move it.  We have a BIG motor-home.  There's plenty of space here, but food is heavy.

We had a washer and dryer in this unit when we first bought it.  It was old and we had no idea if it worked or what would be involved in fixing it.  We decided we were tired of kicking around buckets, so we gave them away and placed our buckets in that space.  We also brought a couple of buckets from underneath the RV since there is now room atop, grateful for the space to bring the kids' bikes out of storage and put them in our little "garage".

I reckon we have about a 3-month's supply of food if we were unable to purchase something from the store.  Moving forward, we favor freeze-dried foods because they are lighter.  We have a bucket for oatmeal as well, not pictured because it makes a nicer seat than the rest, and we buy oats by the 25lb bag.  My grocery shopping habits haven't really changed that much since we moved into an RV, actually.  When food is on sale, I buy it.  We have lots of nooks and crannies to put things in, and we are willing to step around bags of oranges in order to enjoy having, well, bags of oranges.  At the time of this writing, we are due for another grocery trip, but I needed something to write about, so you get to see a half-empty fridge.  It is what it is!  We like to eat, so we have food.  Under the sink we have pots and pans, we have a nice big oven that I can still cook my 18-cup recipe of granola in, a blendtec blender which doubles as a wheat grinder, a juicer, a waffle iron, a convection hotplate in addition to the propane stovetop (it's electric, so we don't have to buy propane.  Tee-hee), and of course our air popcorn maker, which Michael has labeled "Apricot tree".  We usually wash our dishes, but we often use disposable dishes as well, especially when we don't have full hook-ups in order to not fill our water tank up as fast.

As far as being prepared, where we have a generator and can move quickly when the need arises, I would say our family is, in some respects, more prepared for a disaster than ever.  There is no way to be 100% prepared for any disaster, natural or man-made.  All we can do is do our best given the circumstances.  I would rather be in a stick-and-bricks than this RV during a tornado, but preparing a hurricane shouldn't be a problem.  In fact, some families living in RVs follow disasters in order to serve those who have suffered such loss. 

Parting with so much of our stuff has made us less attached to material goods, a hard lesson to be sure, but one I'm glad to have had.  It's all just stuff.  I feel that God wanted us to live in an RV, and if that means that we had to let go of having that year's supply of food, so be it.  After all, I doubt Lehi had a year's supply of food when he dwelt in a tent.  Just saying.  🙂  We all must do what the Lord wants us to do, in His timing.