Tag: food

Maybe we should do emergency planning?

Here’s something you might or might not know about Mormons. Or, as they prefer to be called, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are really big on emergency prepping. Specifically, keeping emergency food stores.

I was raised in the Church. And while my family didn’t go overboard, we did always have a little bit extra around. Extra batteries, extra canned veggies.

When I visited the homes of my church friends, they’d have basements full of canned or preserved food. Around here in Western PA, where the Mormon traditions blend with Appalachian common sense and know-how, lots of women garden and preserve produce. If you want a great deep dive about Mormons and emergency planning, check out this video from Alyssa Grenfell.

Now, I didn’t walk away from the church so much as I put on running shoes and took the hell off. But as I go through my healing journey, I’m learning that not everything I was taught as a child was bad. For instance, emergency prepping and food storage are sensible practices.

If a bad storm hits, you’re going to be happy you have some extra food, candles and batteries. But having a food storage also allows you to bless your community in times of great need. Like when people weren’t getting their SNAP benefits last November. It will also be a blessing to you if you lose your job or if a surprise gas bill wipes out half your paycheck. Then, of course, there’s the ever-present fear of ICE invading your community and making it unsafe to leave your home if your skin happens to be brown or black.

But Nicole, you might be saying, this is a writing and book blog. Food storage doesn’t have anything to do with ghosts, dragons or spaceships. Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Much like you can’t write your stories if ICE kills you, you can’t write your stories if you’re starving. So, let’s get started.

Make a plan

Everything starts with a plan. And for this project, we’re going to start with a list of things you’ll eventually buy for your emergency storage. This can include anything that you might need, but I recommend starting with food.

And I mean food that you won’t mind eating in case of an emergency. Food that your whole family will eat. For instance, most people have dried beans in their food storage. I don’t, because the Darling Husband wouldn’t eat them if we were starving.

I started by making a spreadsheet in Notion. But any spreadsheet software will work. Even a cheap notebook will work.

In the first column, write a list of things to buy for your emergency storage. Everyone’s needs are very different, so my list might not be the same as yours.

If you need a list of suggestions, there are a million online from people far smarter than me. However, one category that I think gets overlooked is spices.

Frankly, some people who look like me could also use a reminder that spices exist in everyday life. Cayenne, curry, cumin, red pepper. All of these are good additions that will be well-appreciated when and if the time comes. I also suggest salt, an extra pack of playing cards, and powdered milk.

Now that we have all of that in our spreadsheet, time to move into column two. In here, we’re going to write down how many of these items our family will need within a time frame. I suggest starting with one week and moving up from there as you grow your food storage.

Column three is where we’re eventually going to keep track of how many of these items we have on hand.

And finally, column four is where we’re going to keep track of expiration dates for these items, if they have them. All food goes bad eventually. So as you’re keeping your food storage and growing it, you’ll want to occasionally weed out things that are about to expire.

Start small

Now, I don’t want you to be overwhelmed. Because I have good news. Once you’ve made your spreadsheet, the hardest part is over. Now, you just have to start slowly getting the items on this list. You do not have to buy everything on your list all at once.

Let me say this louder. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BUY EVERYTHING ON YOUR LIST ALL AT ONCE.

Nor do you need rows and rows of shelving units in your basement to hold all of this. I am just starting this process myself. Right now, my emergency storage looks like one bag of rice, some packets of instant mashed potatoes and a gallon of water, all tucked in a reusable shopping bag in the corner of my dining room.

Think of it like writing a novel. (See, I can always work things back to writing.) You’d never think to sit down and write an entire 50,000 + word rough draft in a day. You write a thousand words, or 500 words. The words add up until you finish your story.

Every time I go grocery shopping, I try to grab one or two things for the food storage. A tub of oatmeal here, a bag of rice there.

Slowly but surely, it all adds up.

And yes, it’s true that an emergency might happen at any time. But any amount of food storage is better than nothing. If tomorrow I lose my job, at least I know I’ve got a few meals’ worth of rice and mashed potatoes standing between me and my family going hungry.

Some bigger items you might consider

Now, if you happen to have some extra money, or if you’re the sort who likes to ask for practical gifts, I do have a list of suggestions. These are some bigger ticket items that will sure come in handy if things go south. I don’t actually have any of these items yet, but I have plans to get them.

– A battery-powered hot plate

– A good first aid kit

– A battery-powered lantern

– A blow-up mattress complete with extra bedding

– A generator

I am sure there are more things to be added to this list. I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Don’t be scared, be prepared

Remember, the point of all of this is not to live in fear. It is, in fact, the opposite.

Things happen in life. Things you never see coming. My God, things you never imagined living through just sneak up on you like fog at night.

Is having a well-stocked food storage going to protect you from everything that might go wrong? Of course not. But knowing that you’ve done what you can is a comfort. Whatever happens, at least you won’t go hungry. And at least you’ll be able to write about it.

I’d love to hear what you think. Is there a crucial item I’ve left off my emergency planning list? Let me know in the comments.

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Want to start of the year with a free book? Check out Seeming, book one of Station 86.

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Writing Prompt Saturday- Fantasy food world.

Remember how I like food? It’s kind of my thing, well one of my things.

It’s not just me, though. Food tells you so much about a person, a culture, a life style.

So for this week’s writing prompt, I want you to spend ten minutes free writing about the most popular food in your book. Is it a modern dish like pizza, or something you make up? How about a world like Firefly where fresh fruit is a delicacy that only the well off can afford?

Take ten minutes to write on that.

Next, consider how your main character feels about that food.

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Creative Currency and Food

When I was world building for Woven, I hated coming up with money methods for my different countries. It just seemed like one of those nitpicky features that really weren’t going to come up much. Then I started writing my book, and realized how often I was using money. Food was a little more fun, because I’m a glutton and I like to talk about what sort of food other people are eating. A lot.

These two topics, of course, have absolutely everything to do with each other. That’s why I chose to group them together instead of giving each their own post. How rich a society is will dictate what sort of food is most common. I know that if I’ve got fifty bucks to get groceries for one week, and a hundred for the next, those two weeks are going to have vastly different menus. (Lots of hot dogs and peanut butter in week one. Maybe some fish and pork chops in week two. Either week, there will be potatoes, because potatoes are awesome and cheap.)

As for money, how people come about their money and what sort of money they have are both things you’ll want to consider. Personally, I went with a really simple method, different shaped coins of precious medals. In my main country, called Septa, I called the coins Octs, after Octavian the first, their first king. In another country people trade coins with numerical symbols that are mealy representative of the gold that the government keeps locked up (Like I used to think we did in America.) A third country uses only bartering, except for traders, who trade in other countries coins. I tried to keep it simple, and to alleviate my own irritation, had one of my main characters constantly messing the coins up and giving people too much and too little money.

Both money and food are going to be largely dictated by four main parts of your society.

Climate.

Obliviously climate and weather are going to have a ton to do with the food your people eat. If they’re near the ocean, fish is their meatloaf. If they’ve got nothing but farmland, there’s going to be a rich diet of vegetables. If it’s cold, stews and canned things will be a staple. If it’s warm, people are pretty big on salads. You get the picture.

When it comes to money, consider what sort of minerals and stones might be mined in your areas. Now, I was more interested in telling the story of a boy who weaves than making up new metals, so I stuck with real ones like gold, copper, silver. You don’t have to do that. Maybe there’s some great metal that these people use for their money, and it’s extra heavy, or knows who its real owner is. Make it fun. Or, you can make it realistic. I know that gold and copper can be mined in Europe and Russia, the two main countries that my world is based on. So, I stuck with that.

Type of People.

What sort of person you are will make a difference in the food you put in your mouth. In fact, it will likely be the biggest indicator of what sort of food your people eat.
* Is there a prevalent faith that makes certain food taboo, like Hindu or Judaism?
* Do people drink alcohol?
* Do they have the extra income and resources to have sweets?
* How much time to they have to make food each day? Is there a mother or father home to bake bread and stew? Or is it more a matter of convenience?
* Are there restaurants, and bakeries?

We’ll ask similar questions about money.
* Does the prevalent faith have rules about giving tithing, or donating to the poor?
* Are people well off enough to indulge in sweets and booze?
* Do people invest in things like art, education or land?

And here’s the real big one. What can a person own in this world that would make them be seen as wealthy?

Relations with other people.

No world exists alone, much as China and North Korea would like to think they can. Your world will likely have multiple countries, unless there’s a reason why.

Now, food is something that is defined by its source. French wine, German sausage, Swiss chocolate, British tea. Then there’s food that you just know where it comes from. Sushi, haluski, lasagna, haggis. You know what country that food comes from. If you’ve got a neighboring country that has a distinctive dish, and it shows up in your country, you can assume they are now or have been friendly.

Money’s the same way. If you can change money from a country in a bank in your country, they were probably on good terms. If someone from your country pulls out a coin and someone from another country has never seen one like it before, they probably aren’t.

Social interactions.

In my hometown, people get together in homes and bars over sports. We drink beer, and eat hot wings. Some people like to gather over wine, some like to collect at coffee shops. Food and drink is a big part of social gatherings.

And what kind of social gathering someone goes to will often depend on what kind of money they have. Rich people gather over good wine and fine cheese with artisan bread. People in my financial bracket meet over beer and pretzels.

What it comes down to is this; show, don’t tell. Do not tell us that your country is wealthy, in a cold district that mines gold. Show me your character ordering a fine buttered rum with a gold coin.

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