For January's family dinner the theme was Emergency Preparedness. We all agreed that whatever we made would use emergency preparedness tools, or have ingredients from our storage in it. The guys used their dutch ovens to make dinner, which was amazing, and the women successfully used storage items to make wonderful contributions. For example, Jenna used her wheat grinder to make wonderful bread. For me, one of the lessons learned was that food can take on a metallic taste if stored in #10 cans for 15 years. I'm sure in a true emergency that would be no big deal, but I need to rotate better. I threw out some stuff I should have used sooner. I also made a great cake, but used frosting in a plastic container that tasted like plastic. I scraped it off and made homemade from powdered sugar I had in storage. But that was the point!! We used it, we learned, and we had a great time. I got our candles and lanterns, and bit by bit over the course of dinner I turned off all the lights, until we were eating by candlelight. It was great fun, and the kids thought it was very adventurous. Chris decided we weren't heating water on the campstoves for clean up, though, not with dutch ovens and dinner for 20 people to clean up. (I didn't argue!) In an emergency, like camping, it seems like you just work on food for a majority of your day, either preparing it or cleaning it up. Everyone took home a little green lantern as a reminder that we want to stay focused on our goal to be prepared.
