Too early to think about winter?

I can hear the groans from way over here!

You don't have to think about winter weather or gassing up the snow blower but if you followed any of my advice (not to be mistaken for nagging) last winter about stocking up on a few essentials in the food and water departments, now might be a time to check them over.

The theory on buying some extra "grocery store" types of foods is to get things that you will eat. Sounds pretty basic but surprisingly enough many people (and, yes, people DO prepare) put in supplies of things that only an emergency would force them to eat!  The idea is to eat up your "preps" as you go along and replace them so they never get too old to use.  This way you have your emergency supplies always fresh and current.

But here some of us are several months later with a wonderful supply of brown rice and un-ground wheat and other rather less than appetizing sorts of foods.  Not to mention the 50 cans of kidney beans that are now nearing their expiration dates!

Before these things expire how about take a few minutes (depending on how many cans of those beans you actually laid in) and check for expiration dates.  Local food pantries and shelters could use them all up before they were officially not good (which really isn't real but that's another discussion).

So why not check through your stash (you DID put in a stash, right?) and take the almost obsolete items to a place that will be more than grateful to get them.  And on your way home perhaps buy a few things to replace them.  Face it, you never needed 50 cans of kidney beans but if you got 10 cans of the beans along with some canned tomatoes and tomato sauce all you would need is the meat and you'd be all set to make several batches of chili.

I am not going to go into whether chili should or should not contain meat - or for that matter, beans. That also is a discussion for later...or never!

I'll keep this short and sweet - my point is (here it comes) that the time to think about what you will have for supper when you are housebound and that damn nor 'easter actually arrived isn't just after you have shoveled off the porch for the third time in 2 hours.  It's now.  Take a look at what you have, donate the things that are nearing their expiration date or, in some cases, that you know you would truly rather starve to death than eat.

The whole process will give you a warm feeling of doing something for someone else along with giving your family a running start on the food storage for the winter!

Just sayin!