I have a problem . . .

It's with food. I like it. Actually I love it. I love to buy it, I like to collect it, I like to hoard it, I like to cook with it, can it, freeze it, dry it, organize it and probably most of all EAT IT! My love of food is even safety conveyed in the length of this post and my ever expanding waist line!! I am telling you I have a problem. It makes me so happy to cook. I will even cook knowing I am making a hug mess that I have to clean up later, now that is saying something. I secretly wish I would be called to be the food storage expert in my ward, because I want to, I know I will never be. When Steven and I got married we read an article in the Ensign that talked about the importance of food storage. So we tried to do it. I bought a food safe plastic bucket and put a 20 lb bag of flour in it and that was the beginning of this. . .

And this . . .

I now have all my full year supply numbers completed! It does feel good. But to be honest it then created another problem of learning to cook with it all and mainly the half ton of red and white wheat I have in my house. But since I like to cook and especially bake, it has lead to a house full of cookies, rolls, pies, bread and dumplings! Here are my rolls, I made them the Sunday night when my good friend Becca was drving through and happen to be there right at dinner time. I think they look a little better then they tastes so I am still working on them . . .

It's like Christmas to go down stairs and see what I am come up with next and sent me to the Internet every night to see what kind of cooking sites I can find, here is one of my favorites, http://www.dealstomeals.com/. She helps you not only come up with your years supply numbers on the staples, but also on all your others foods like cereal, ketchup and things that you really wouldn't want to be without. I use so many of her recipes, okay so maybe I am related to her and I therefore knew it would be stuff that my family would like to eat too. But her recipes are winners!

Last year I took a cooking class and really liked it. It was fun to get out once a week, but the things they cooked didn't really appeal to me. Things like raw Salmon and Fra Gras (aka duck liver) just weren't things my family were going to eat every day. So me and a few of my friends decided to get together once a month and dry pack. Someone would go get everyone's order at the Bishops Store House and then we all would meet at someones house and dry pack for a few hours. It doesn't take long, we have done 128 #10 cans in a few hours max. And like it's not fun to get together with your friends.

(See even baby Rye, Rye thinks food storage is yummy!!)

This year I decided I wanted to learn to can peaches so I called a few of my friends and chain ganged them into all learning how to can. Yesterday was the big day . . .

Umm think Steph wants to kill me over canning 50 lbs of peaches.

Yummy our finished project.

This is not unlike the day before when I turned 20 lb of tomato's into spaghetti sauce and ended up with 5 ready to frezze lasagnas, 2 gallons of sauce and 6 loafs of french bread. (Hey I figured my kitchen was a mess I might as well make bread to go along with it!)

So needless to say I can now add canning and making my own spaghetti sause to my list of favorite things to do in the kitchen!! (Hey it's more productive then my second favorite hobby . . . shopping.) Also, I can safely say there are two ways in which I would not like to die, being burn at the stake or by starvation. So since I can control the later here is the extreme I feel necessary in order to make sure my last wishes are well known.