Boogers on the Wall

For years I have spent a lot of time and money on building up my long-term food storage.

No one ever told me I would never want to use it.

I’m not saying I won’t ever need to use it, I’m just saying that after my cookies tasted like cardboard last week, it’s doubtful I’ll ever crack open another can.

I had the thought recently that I needed to start rotating my stored-up food supply. I have cans of flour that I packaged at my church’s food storehouse that date back to 2006. Others I packaged at my home in 2010.

Instead of buying fresh flour from the store, I’ve been opening cans from my basement and using what I’ve stored. I noticed that my baked goods have been coming out flat. I’ve had to add extra flour to each recipe to compensate.

I can deal with collapsed cookies, but I just can’t stomach ones that taste just plain out nasty.

Each Halloween our family makes ghost sugar cookies with M&M eyes. Last week, those poor ghosts tasted ghastly. I knew was something was amuck when the dough tasted a little bitter. But my two oldest boys keep asking for more samples and reassured me it was delicious.

They must have no taste buds.

After rolling out more than 60 ghosts, baking and then frosting them, I let them sit for the night. The next day, before I took the cookies to a Halloween party, I finally tasted one.

YUCK! I told my husband I was going to trash them all and he let me. That’s when I knew they were bad.

Making sugar cookies is hard work. I nearly cried when I had to dump the 5-dozen ghosts into my outside trash bin.

I really think it was the old flour.

My church encourages its members to have a well-established food reserve to draw on in times of natural disaster or personal crisis. I’ve been trying to slowly grow our hoard. I can’t imagine not being able to feed my little family if we fall on hard times.

But I am going to have to do some research and try something else when it comes to flour storage.  I may end up purchasing a wheat grinder and canning wheat from now on. But who know what that type of diet will do to our tummies if we ever have to use it.

And who knows what I am going to do with the dozens of #10 metal cans filled with musty old flour lining the shelves in my basement.

It sickens me to think that I’m not going to want to cook with any of it. Not even in a disaster – or personal crisis.

Then again, maybe it won’t matter if I am starving. Maybe cardboard tastes loads better when your stomach is empty.

What’s in your long-term food supply? Have you had any success cooking from food storage?