Tip Of The Day

If you have been reading my blog posts and your thinking along the lines I've set out in the below articles, then you can see that it's not always safe to count on "always" having the luxury of electricity, so putting up items that can be eaten in such dire emergencies can be helpful in stressful situations.

Another food to consider having plenty on hand is Oatmeal.
Oatmeal is extremely useful and can not only be made into a bowl of belly filling hot cereal, but it can be made into quick breads, cookies, bars, home made granola and many other dishes if you use your imagination. It can also be ground into flour for use in all things where flour is required.

Oatmeal is very inexpensive, you can either buy it from the store for a few bucks, about(2.79) for a 48 ounce container (regular or old fashioned) are usually the same price, or buy it bulk for much less.
Also you can buy the prepackaged for a bit more money that has the sugar, spices and milk products already in the mix just at water. Either way it's inexpensive and good for you.

Quick cooking Oatmeal requires less time to prepare the regular Oats however I always strive to have both in abundance on hand as you wouldn't want to use Quick cooking oats for making granola, however the quick cooking cooks way faster then the whole oats and its can just be soaked in water to make it edible.

Note: Most Oatmeal is sold in cardboard box containers, I would for (food safety) open my containers and place them in heavy freezer zip lock bags to keep them pest free – once in the bag you can either store them in a larger plastic container or put them back into the round boxes originally came in and re-seal them back up with packaging tape to keep them from being attacked by rodents.

Always remember when storing such items as grains and such, you have to always consider the possibility of rodents. In some situations its best to double store by securing the grains in a zip lock bag then back into another plastic container. Rodents are known for eating right through cardboard containers and even plastic ones are not always 100% safe if the plastic is very cheap and thin. Make sure to save yourself money in the long run by investing in GOOD heavy duty containers. The worse possible thing is to have this food stored up, then when and if you need it you come to find someone had beaten you to it and contaminated whatever was left. It always pays to not scrimp on your investments and buy good heavy duty continers..