What is your back up plan ?

Does Your Family Need Cooking Lessons ?
How do you cook ?
Do you have a Back Up Plan ?
WHAT IF'S.........

  Well Oklahoma has their first confirmed virus now. They don't really have a idea who or where all he has been spreading the virus around before they confirmed it of course. I have lung issues on a good day with nothing floating around making people sick so I have a special interest in trying to avoid it or survive and minimize the damage.
Does Your Family Need Cooking Lessons ?
     After a trip to walmart to pick up a few things it just hit me..... I sure as heck don't eat and cook like most folks do! I take the basics of flour, baking powder, soda, sugar, margarine / shortening, eggs, milk, potatoes and dry beans, rice some canned goods, spices and flavorings and turn it into some pretty tasty food on the table. They had a whole 4 foot section for canned fruit at walmart. Weird. Going to look for flour I see small 5 lb bags. That might last me a week if I'm lucky. You look around some more and you see the bread mixes for your machine. The biscuit or pancake mixes and the all purpose Bisquick. Sugar is the same way. Looking for rice I do see some 1 - 20# bags. Then I look down the isle and I see all these loads and loads of  boxed rice mixes you just add water etc. to. Canned Fruit ? Shoot I was looking for canned peaches for a peach cobbler.
     I don't cook most of that because usually I get sick from whatever additive or preservative or weird flavoring they have. Cake mixes can give me a headache or I can't breathe good even! I know so many people that say they cook.
How do you cook ? If you don't have your favorite cake mix, rice mix or flavor packet what kind of food do you have to feed the folks you love? Same goes for the wonderful handy little coffee cup things that makes your perfect little cup of coffee when you want it. Can you actually brew a cup of coffee in a coffee pot or on the stove if you run out of your handy little coffee packages for the handy dandy machine?
    Then again you have the folks that eat out because they are in a hurry or it's cheaper than buying the food and fixing it at home. Usually they don't have much in the form of I'm hungry lets go into the kitchen and fix a meal foods on hand.
     Do you have a Back Up Plan ?
     It's not like you want to go to the local soup kitchen around a bunch of people that have health issues anyway and want to share their illness with you.
    We are hearing more and more on the news and on the net about the possibility of having to close things down either for a few days or week as with schools and some jobs that have been infected with the virus. Schools shut down parents sometimes have to stay home and take care of them if nobody else can.
   Here we go again with the WHAT IF'S.........
    Do you have lunch or breakfast foods at home to feed the kids? They usually eat that at school so you will need to feed them at home now until this virus thing goes away.
    What if it really got serious and they actually shut down a whole county or restrict travel in your county or state ?
    What if........ Your not used to having food in the house to fix? Sure you go out and buy food and stock up. Here's the kicker folks.... can you cook or prepare it? Sounds funny but I am running into more adults that SIMPLY CAN'T COOK ! Then you have the folks that oh, if I can microwave it I eat it! ( Like that has any nutrition in it! ) You have to wonder if things really get shut down tighter than a vault how many hungry people there is going to be just because they can't cook ?!
   What if........ things haven't shut down tight you can still get out and about but it really worries you or scares you silly? You don't want to get out there and get sick an bring it home your thinking. Everyone has to have food, water and shelter. The only real problem is can you stock up on enough food either because you do or don't have enough money or room to put it. Oh I forgot.... I hope you can enjoy the food your storing with the food skills you have. That would be the pits to have a whole bunch of food but can't really prepare it. Sounds unbelievable I know. But you really have to wonder with the way modern eating habits are.
Common mixes out there
Cake mix ( flour, baking powder, salt, butter, eggs, milk, vanilla)
Frosting mix (powdered sugar, butter/ margarine / cream cheese milk, vanilla)
Cookie Mix
Pancake Mix  ( flour,baking powder, salt, shortening, eggs, milk)
Biscuit Mix or canned biscuits ( flour,baking powder, salt, shortening, milk)
Seasoning Mixes
Scalloped Potato boxes
Mashed potato ( take raw potato peel, cut, boil. mash season )
Rice Mixes
Hamburger helper ( browned meat, boiled noodles /potatoes, cornstarch, seasoning)
Soup Mixes
Bean Mixes
Whole Food Kits
Dehydrated long term foods
    Now can you fix any of those items without a mix?  Why would you have to if you have the mixes you say? Well things do run out if nothing else. For that matter I have had ladies tell me that they can't even fix a simple cake mix.
    These are all the simple foods.
    How are you at cooking meat if your a meat eater? Some folks do some mighty good grill cooking when it comes to cooking meat. What if you go to the store to get some big package of drumsticks and they are all out. So you look around and all they have left of the whole chicken. Dang! How many of you have actually cut up a whole chicken for a chicken dinner. Here's a good one..... no chicken in the stores but you have yard birds and your neighbors have yard birds you can swap them for. Go ahead...... kill that chicken, pluck those feathers and gut it and cut it up to do whatever you do to it before putting it on the grill! LOL Same pretty much goes for Deer, rabbits and hogs.

I have a back up plan..... I cook from scratch on 95% of things.

What is your plan ?

Love
Ranchmama