Eat What You Store or Store What You Eat?

We know that rotating the food that we store gets us the best bang for our food storage buck. I've heard various philosophies about using our food storage. Should we eat what we store or store what we eat? Some people look at "food-storagers" as either on one side of the coin or the other. The "eating-what-you-storers" are those who try to incorporate the basic long-term storable food into their diets (wheat, beans, powdered milk, etc). The "storing-what-you-eaters" are those who try to find out what their family likes to eat and do their best to store those items and rotate them religiously.

While I was doing the dishes the other day, I came up with my own philosophy that looks at storing food as a process. Rather than a deciding whether we're going to be an "eating-what-you-storer" or a "storing-what-you-eater", we should look at the goal for our food storage success as a combination of both. We know that the best investment of our food storage dollars will be when we are able to rotate and use our storage on a day-to-day basis. In other words, eventually we should progress towards being able to eat what we have stored, whatever it is. But I believe the process should start with storing a supply (say a one, two or three-month supply) of what our family likes to eat right now. Then bit by bit we start introducing long-term storable foods (whole grains, legumes, powdered milk, etc.). We experiment with recipes using these foods and find those that our family enjoys to eat. Gradually over time we can adapt what our family will eat to include more storable things. As we do this, we progress toward a successful food storage program. Not only are we eating what we store, but we are storing what we eat. And here's the best part: what we are eating is healthy!