Preparedness Week 4–Veggies – Hive and Nest

Our item this week is vegetables (canned and frozen). This is where a lot of your vitamins and minerals will be coming from so stock up as much as you can.
A lot of young children may not care for veggies by themselves, but remember that canned tomatoes make great salsa and pasta sauce, canned carrots or peas, although mushy and gross on their own, taste fine in a casserole or pot pie and nearly everyone likes corn with a big dollop of butter.  Think outside the box too; we eat a ton of green chiles in various dishes, so I’ll be sure to buy a bunch of those.

A few people have asked me if it’s OK to buy all frozen veggies because canned don’t taste as good. I generally prefer frozen but it’s incredibly important to have a shelf-stable supply of vegetables. You know how easy it is for the power to go out? Just imagine what’s going to happen to all those frozen veggies if the power stays out for more than a couple of days. Goodbye freezer!

Buy at least five cans of vegetables per person (I’ll leave quantities of frozen items up to you. It really depends on how much room you’ve got in your freezer).  For my family of eight people, that’s at least 40 cans. It’s going to seem like a whole bunch when you load up your cart, but it really isn’t that many.