By Brandy Simper\
You need fruits and vegetables in your storage.
If you’re used to eating fruits and vegetables, you’ll find real quickly that you still want them. Include canned fruits and vegetables in your storage, including baby food. Have dried fruits, such as cranberries and raisins. Dried carrots, celery, and onions have been invaluable to us for making soups.

Plant a garden.
You don’t want your only fresh food to be bean sprouts and wheat grass. We have been eating many vegetables and all manner of herbs and fruits fresh from our garden. Many people think you can’t grow a garden in the desert. Here in Las Vegas, we have the opportunity to eat from our garden all year long.

It takes fruit trees and vines a few years to mature. Plant your fruit trees now, so that when the storms of life come, you will have enough fresh fruit to eat and to can. Take advantage of the walls in your garden; grow grapes and blackberries, and espalier fruit trees against your walls. Your small side yard could be the most useful part of your yard: plant tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, and herbs there. Take advantage of every inch of space—especially the vertical inches. Even a small yard can yield a large amount of food for your family.

Variety is very important.

Just because the cannery sells spaghetti noodles doesn’t mean that’s the only kind of pasta you should have in your storage. Buy a few different shapes, like bow ties, penne. Purchase several kinds of beans. Have an assortment of fruits and vegetables. Stock several kinds of sugars (granulated, powdered, brown, honey, molasses, maple syrup). Have canned meat, powdered eggs, and nuts.

If you’re standing in the grocery store, and you get the feeling that you should buy something that you normally don’t eat, do it anyway. I bought evaporated milk, not knowing how to use it. I found out later what a blessing that was.

Likewise, I didn’t buy the cheesecloth when I saw it, figuring I could get it later. When I had no money to go shopping, I found out why I should have listened; I could have made cheese with my powdered milk and strained it through the cheesecloth. The Spirit doesn’t speak loudly; if we listen, He will truly guide us in all things.

Be a gleaner.

The Lord gives us things, but expects us to work for them.

When you’re living on your storage, there comes a time when you start to run out of items. You may still have some food, but the gaps become obvious as they decrease the number of meals that you can make. It’s hard to eat the food you have and not know when you can replace it.

One way to add to your food storage, even while living on it, is to glean. Look at the fruit trees around town that are ripening and going to waste. Ask the home owners if you can pick the fruit in their yard. Most people are happy to have the fruit be used. Can the fruit you cannot eat before it goes bad, and you will have fruit for another day.

You can’t have too much chocolate in your food storage.

There’s a reason the church guidelines have always included cocoa in the list of items we should store. While not necessary to sustain life, chocolate certainly makes it more delicious. In addition to cocoa, stock chocolate chips, baking chocolate, brownie mix, chocolate pudding, etc . Store other sweets as well. If you’re afraid your family will eat it all, borrow the stake canner and can some chocolate chips and hard candy and label it “legumes.”

Children still have birthdays, and having the ingredients to make a cake for your child while you are living on your storage will bless everyone in your family.

Be grateful for all that you have.

Do not be like the Israelites and complain that all that you have to eat is manna (or wheat, rice, and beans). Be thankful that your family is not going hungry. With wise planning, you can provide delicious meals, even when you cannot go to the store.