How to Calculate Food Storage Amounts

In today's economy, between unemployment and rapidly rising food prices, it's a good idea to keep a well-stocked pantry. In fact, storing food has a higher rate of return than the stock market right now. However, how do you decide how much and what kind of food to store? This article will help you make a list based on what you actually eat.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• pen and paper

1. Make a list of every recipe you routinely make as well as how often you make it over a one month period.

2. 

   List the ingredients for your recipes keeping track of how many times the same ingredient is used. For example, if you have four recipes that use tomato paste, your list should reflect 4 tomato pastes.

3. Factor in how often you make a recipe. If you make the four recipes using tomato paste 8 times a month, multiply 8 by 4 to come up with a monthly usage rate. This is your basic pantry list for one month.

4. Decide on the amount of food you want to store in your pantry--3 months, 6 months or longer

5. Multiply items on your one month pantry list by the amount of time you wish to store food. This gives you the products and quantities you need to purchase to fully stock your pantry.

Tips & Warnings

• Also consider including ingredients for holiday baking and special meals.

• Scan your pantry list and identify items that might be cheaper if you purchased them in bulk. For example, bulk flour at a wholesale outlet such as Sam's Club or Costco is much less expensive than the grocery store.

• If you don't have a lot of money to spare, buy one or two extras for your pantry each week instead of doing it all at once.

• Now that you know what your pantry staples are you can more effectively use coupons and store sales to your advantage.

• Keep track of food expiration dates and rotate the food in your pantry--use the oldest items first.

• Bulging and dented cans should be disposed of due to the risk of botulism.

• Have a back-up plan for frozen items in the case of a power outage.

Resources

• Steep food price increases on way
• How To Make A Food Storage Plan