May Week 1: Flour, Wheat, & a Grinder

This week's food storage items are:

May Week 1: Flour - white, wheat, etc. Whole Wheat: white or hard red wheat, Wheat Grinder

First of all, notice that the highlight color is now green. That will be the color all month long, and will coordinate with colors on the Food Storage Inventory list. For the month of May, we'll concentrate on all the items that are highlighted in green on that Inventory. So, to begin with, this week is flour and wheat.

Flour includes white and wheat, and any other types of flour that you use. For instance, I use both white and wheat, and I also use Gold Medal Wondra, a super-fine flour used for thickening.

As far as wheat goes, I have my buckets of wheat that I bought several years ago.

Those should be good for 30+ years as long as they were packaged correctly. If you have whole wheat stored, you should really think about having a wheat grinder. Having said that, I'm going to go one step further and say that if the only wheat grinder you have is one that needs electricity, you might want to think about getting a hand grinder. If the power goes out for a prolonged period of time, and you are left with whole wheat and an electric wheat grinder, you might starve. Just saying. If you don't really use your whole wheat, so you don't have an electric grinder, just skip that and buy a hand grinder that you keep somewhere very near your whole wheat containers.

As with some of the other food storage items, I also have wheat and flour that I've canned at the Dry Pack Cannery. To read details and information about the Dry Pack Cannery, click here.

Whole wheat can keep for 30+ years, if it is stored correctly. Flour that is packaged with oxygen absorber packets can keep for 10+ years. And flour that you buy in the grocery store has an expiration date on the bag, and I stick pretty close to that. I remember years ago that I dipped into an older bag of flour that had weevils in it. Never again. Trust you me. I don't want to go into the sordid details, but suffice it to say, I had to throw out that batch of cinnamon roll dough. Ugh.

So, there you have it. Decide what your family's needs are for flour and wheat, both long term and short term. If it isn't really feasible to try to store the really long term stuff, then just think about this year and what your family might use for the year. Add it to your shopping list, and in the next couple of days, buy the items and get them on your shelves. Done. You can rest for a week.

If you would like the full info on the Week-By-Week Food Storage Plan, just click on the tab at the top of the page. You can then click on any single week and it will take you to the most up-to-date post that featured that week's items. It also has the information as to how you can get a copy of the weekly schedule as well as the complete inventory sheets.