Food Storage is Like a Jigsaw Puzzle

I liken food storage to our progression of skill at putting together jigsaw puzzles. We don’t expect a toddler to be able to put together a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Most likely the toddler would spend a minute or two pretending to try, jam a couple of pieces together, chew a piece, then eventually get bored and move on to the next activity leaving a mess to be cleaned up. So instead, we start them out on wooden puzzles with the small little peg handles. Once they master them, they move up to 6-10 piece heavy duty cardboard puzzles. Then at about age 3 get them the 24 piece jigsaw puzzles and so on and so on until they accomplish 1000 pieces, the double sided puzzle, the 3D puzzle, etc. So it is with food storage. We live in a Super Store, one-stop-shop society. You throw a raw grain with no packaging or labeling at us and we give a blank stare and assume it is not edible and throw it away. As much as convenience is a blessing, we’ve been a bit spoiled and have become a bit clueless when it comes to raw grains, vegetable growing, cucumber pickling, dry milk reconstituting, and brow sweating for food. So the old Church Food Storage Calculator was like throwing a 1000 piece puzzle to a bunch of small children. We looked at it, plugged away for a little bit, became overwhelmed and walked away to our next activity. The new calculator is our wooden peg puzzle – nice and simple. Once we accomplish it, we will desire to advance to the next level until we have become full blown food storage junkies with a supply that actually does include sugar, milk, oil, AND fruits and vegetables.