This morning I woke up and made biscuits. I found a recipe last night that looked simple enough. I had four pounds of butter in my freezer plus part of a pound in my fridge.  I am rationing the butter.  I used a 1/3 cup for the biscuits. Generally through this challenge I am saving the butter for spreading on top of toast or bread and vegetables. I would rather use oil when I am baking.  I used a packet of gravy mix and some freeze dried sausage. It mixed up fast. The best by date was in August of 2009! I had that packet in my cupboard for quite some time, over three and a half years! Another reason to use your food storage.

For breakfast this morning I made waffles, an easy no fail meal. Sticky sweet syrup and peanut butter. Its a stick-to-your ribs breakfast. Everyone mostly likes waffles in our family except the oldest, but she ate them too.

Earlier in January I bought a box of oranges, 38 pounds of oranges! The kids and Mr. Incredible love oranges. I don’t care for them myself. It was a fantastic deal, $.38 per pound. We finished the oranges up today. Aaah fresh fruit, we will be seriously craving it I’m sure come March.

Growing up, breakfast was my least favorite meal of the day. As I am  getting older I appreciate breakfast foods more. This morning I whipped up an egg scramble. I have a few fresh potatoes in my pantry. I grated 3 or 4 for hash browns. I always use hash browns as my base for a breakfast skillet. The rest of the scramble came from my food storage. Sausage crumbles, onions, and scrambled egg mix. I rehydrated the sausage and onions and added those once the potatoes were crispy. Then added water to a half of cup of the egg mix. This is a high calorie breakfast especially since I use a fourth of a cup of oil to fry the potatoes in. I served this scramble with some salsa in the fridge. Mr. Incredible couldn’t tell the eggs weren’t fresh eggs.

I have planned 15 breakfasts, okay planned it not the right word. I brainstormed with my family 15 breakfasts ideas we can make two times each while we are on our food storage challenge. The challenge, within this challenge, is time. Everything takes longer when dealing with dry goods, like beans, and whole grains that need to be ground up or soaked. My Reese said tonight, “if dinner takes 6 hours to cook, I am done with this food storage thing!” I was making chili with dry beans. I did the quick soak this morning around 11 a.m. The beans soaked for a solid 4 hours or longer. I forgot how long dry beans take to become soft and yummy to eat. I soaked three cups of beans, some for chili and the others to make refried beans later this week. Half of me is thinking ahead, while the other half of me is playing catch-up.

I was having major anxiety today about living on my home store. My fridge and stand-bys are dwindling quickly, crackers, frozen fruit, and other quick frozen snack foods. My children were heading home from school and I wanted to have something yummy for them to eat when they got home. My oldest daughter is not eating sugar, so I am always mindful of that. I thought of making pretzels, but I didn’t have enough time. All my kids like tortillas so I thought I would give it a shot.

I had been contemplating living on my home store for 30 days since last October. With the holidays around the corner I thought better of the idea. I considered January to do this challenge but with a vacation planned to Florida and then babysitting my nephew for a week after, January was shot. Plus my son has a birthday in January and I didn’t want him to have to have a food storage birthday cake. (Which would have been awesome, of course!) Holidays are over, vacation was wonderful, my sweet little nephew is back with his mom and dad, and my son is now 9 years old! I am out of excuses of why I can’t live on my home store for 30 days.