This is a part of the Home & Garden 2025, a yearly supplement to the Sanpete Messenger. To view the rest of the articles, click this banner.

MANTI—Whether by bottling, freezing, dehydrating or freeze-drying, people preserve food for lots of reasons.

One reason is to keep the bounty from their home gardens and fruit trees for use through the coming year. People get satisfaction from the food preservation process. Sometimes families and friends do the work together.

Another reason is to save money. Home-grown food, even food purchased at farmer’s markets, can cost a lot less than food in grocery stores, especially with the inflation that has hit over the past few years.

Then there are the “preppers.” (The term comes from the word “preparation.”) These people are concerned about surviving if a natural disaster or political crisis shuts off food distribution.

And disasters do happen. In 2002, power went out in Salt Lake County during the Olympics, affecting 1.3 million customers. It was out for four days.

In 2021, a cyber attack forced shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline, which provides gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel to the East Coast. Seventeen states were affected.

The shutdown lasted eight days. The only impact was shortages at some gas stations, but if the shutdown had lasted a lot longer, truck delivery of food to warehouses and stores could have been impacted.

We’ll cover some of the how-to’s of food storage in this article. But food storage is a complicated subject. If you’re serious, you need to get a book (or books) about it.

Peggy Layton of Manti, who has a degree in home economics from BYU and was a home economist for a food storage company, has written seven books on food storage and emergency preparation, ranging from a book, just over 100 pages, titled “Food Storage 101, Where do I begin,” to “Emergency Food Storage & Survival Guide,” a comprehensive book published by Random House of New York. All of her books are available on Amazon or from http://www.peggylayton.com.

How to start

One of Layton’s mantras is “Store what you eat, eat what you store.” She suggests making menus, or even tracking what your family actually eats, for two weeks. Then put together the foods you would need to replicate that menu over three months.

Soup and bread: If your family’s current diet isn’t particularly healthy or adaptable to preservation and you want to start over, Layton recommends starting with soup and bread.

If you know the basics of making soup, how to make a roux (mixing oil and flour to make a paste and using the paste to thicken a broth), you’re on your way, she says.

“If you have a roast in the freezer, boil it and make broth. If you have a chicken, boil it until the meat is falling apart. That becomes your broth. I add extra bouillon to make my soups taste better.

“Once you have a broth, you can add almost anything to it, such as barley, vegetables you’ve bottled or have on hand, or scraps of beef or other meat.”

Your bread can be Indian fry bread. Mix flour, powdered milk, baking powder, shortening, salt and water. Form the dough into flat circles and fry on both sides. The recipe is in Layton’s earliest book, “Cookin’ with home storage.”

Rice and beans: Another basic, healthy meal is rice and beans. Both commodities can be stored for long periods. The combination of the two gives you protein that is pretty much as good as meat.

Layton’s book, “Cookin’ with Home Storage” advises, “Whenever you serve a bean dish, include rice, wheat, legumes or corn as part of the meal. Some suggestions might be beans served over rice, chili and cornbread, or bean soup and wheat bread.”

What to store

If you’re serious about storing enough food to get through a serious emergency, Layton says, your list should include the following:

Meat: “Meat’s more important than anything because it provides protein,” she says. Meat in the freezer is good, but it wouldn’t last long if power was out. “I store tuna and any kind of meat that’s bottled or canned. I bottle my own meat.”

Beans: Layton recommends storing several varieties. Choices include navy beans, butter beans, black beans, limas, pinto beans, black beans and split peas.

If your goal is to store a year’s supply of food, a chart in Layton’s “Cookin’ with Home Storage” recommends storing 75 lbs. of beans for an adult man and 50 lbs. for a woman.

Grains: Wheat, barley, rye, oats, millet and quinoa, among other grains, are important because they are relatively high in calories, a good thing when food is scarce. They also contain fiber, Vitamin B and minerals. And you can store gains longer than almost any other food. Wheat can be stored for 20 years.

The top item on Layton’s chart showing recommended quantities for a year’s supply is wheat. She recommends 150 lbs. for a man and 125 lbs. for a woman.

Most of the grains can be turned into a cereal, Layton says. You simply cook one cup of grain in two cups of water, just like you cook oatmeal.

Millet and barley can be added to soup.

You can grind wheat, rye and corn into flour and use them to make various forms of bread, ranging from regular loaves to muffins, tortillas and flat bread. Ground corn can be used to bake cornbread. Recipes for all of these breads are in the “Cookin’” book.

With flour, you can also make noodles. “So as long as I have eggs and flour and salt,” she says, she makes her own noodles. “They’re hardy, and if added to soup, (such as a chicken broth) they absorb the flavor of the soup.”

If you store grains, you need a grinder. She recommends an electric grinder that can be converted to a hand grinder if there’s no power.

There’s a learning curve to using grains. “A crisis period is not the time to learn to cook with these items,” her book advises.

Fruits & Vegetables: You can start by canning fruit from your own trees (or possibly trees of neighbors who don’t want to pick), and the heartier vegetables from your own garden, such as green beans, corn or even winter squash.

You might want to include jams, juices and nectars on your home-canning list

“Because you grew them, you know there are no sprays or chemicals or anything on them. I would say anything you can bottle from your garden, use it.”

“We always keep our carrots in the garden and cover them with lots of leaves and a tarp,” Layton adds. “We can roll back the tarp, dig up the carrots (through the winter), and they’re great.” You can do the same with potatoes and beets.

Other options besides bottling are dehydrating your own vegetables or freeze-drying them. Equipment to do so is described later in this article.

You can purchase gallon cans of fruits and vegetables from a food storage company (basically a large-size version of canned fruits and vegetables you buy at the grocery store).

You can also get dehydrated or freeze-dried fruits and vegetables from a food storage company. They typically come in gallon cans. Based on on-line descriptions, when reconstituted, one can of fruit contains about 100 servings. One can of freeze dried corn contains about 22 servings.

Other important food storage items

• Powdered or instant milk: Instant milk is powdered milk that has gone through further processing to enhance its solubility. You just add water and stir. If you use regular powdered milk, Layton recommends blending, heating to prevent clumping, then cooling.

• Powdered eggs: The eggs, which you can purchase from a food storage company, come in the form of a yellow powder. You mix a tablespoon of water with a tablespoon of powder to get the equivalent of one egg.

You can scramble the powdered mixture and serve like regular eggs, “but that’s not my favorite.” Layton says. She primarily uses the powdered eggs in recipes.

Layton actually makes her own powdered eggs. “We have 15 chickens. And we get a ton of eggs in the summer. I blend them in my blender, put them in trays…and freeze dry them, and they come out as powder.”

• Butter: Like eggs, butter is available in powder form. But Layton bottles her own butter. She melts a pound of butter in a saucepan and skims off the milk solids on top of the liquid. “You have to get those solids off because that’s what makes it go rancid,” she says.

MANTI—Whether by bottling, freezing, dehydrating or freeze-drying, people preserve food for lots of reasons.

One reason is to keep the bounty from their home gardens and fruit trees for use through the coming year. People get satisfaction from the food preservation process. Sometimes families and friends do the work together.

Another reason is to save money. Home-grown food, even food purchased at farmer’s markets, can cost a lot less than food in grocery stores, especially with the inflation that has hit over the past few years.

Then there are the “preppers.” (The term comes from the word “preparation.”) These people are concerned about surviving if a natural disaster or political crisis shuts off food distribution.

And disasters do happen. In 2002, power went out in Salt Lake County during the Olympics, affecting 1.3 million customers. It was out for four days.

In 2021, a cyber attack forced shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline, which provides gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel to the East Coast. Seventeen states were affected.

The shutdown lasted eight days. The only impact was shortages at some gas stations, but if the shutdown had lasted a lot longer, truck delivery of food to warehouses and stores could have been impacted.

We’ll cover some of the how-to’s of food storage in this article. But food storage is a complicated subject. If you’re serious, you need to get a book (or books) about it.

Peggy Layton of Manti, who has a degree in home economics from BYU and was a home economist for a food storage company, has written seven books on food storage and emergency preparation, ranging from a book, just over 100 pages, titled “Food Storage 101, Where do I begin,” to “Emergency Food Storage & Survival Guide,” a comprehensive book published by Random House of New York. All of her books are available on Amazon or from http://www.peggylayton.com.

How to start

One of Layton’s mantras is “Store what you eat, eat what you store.” She suggests making menus, or even tracking what your family actually eats, for two weeks. Then put together the foods you would need to replicate that menu over three months.

Soup and bread: If your family’s current diet isn’t particularly healthy or adaptable to preservation and you want to start over, Layton recommends starting with soup and bread.

If you know the basics of making soup, how to make a roux (mixing oil and flour to make a paste and using the paste to thicken a broth), you’re on your way, she says.

“If you have a roast in the freezer, boil it and make broth. If you have a chicken, boil it until the meat is falling apart. That becomes your broth. I add extra bouillon to make my soups taste better.

“Once you have a broth, you can add almost anything to it, such as barley, vegetables you’ve bottled or have on hand, or scraps of beef or other meat.”

Your bread can be Indian fry bread. Mix flour, powdered milk, baking powder, shortening, salt and water. Form the dough into flat circles and fry on both sides. The recipe is in Layton’s earliest book, “Cookin’ with home storage.”

Rice and beans: Another basic, healthy meal is rice and beans. Both commodities can be stored for long periods. The combination of the two gives you protein that is pretty much as good as meat.

Layton’s book, “Cookin’ with Home Storage” advises, “Whenever you serve a bean dish, include rice, wheat, legumes or corn as part of the meal. Some suggestions might be beans served over rice, chili and cornbread, or bean soup and wheat bread.”

What to store

If you’re serious about storing enough food to get through a serious emergency, Layton says, your list should include the following:

Meat: “Meat’s more important than anything because it provides protein,” she says. Meat in the freezer is good, but it wouldn’t last long if power was out. “I store tuna and any kind of meat that’s bottled or canned. I bottle my own meat.”

Beans: Layton recommends storing several varieties. Choices include navy beans, butter beans, black beans, limas, pinto beans, black beans and split peas.

If your goal is to store a year’s supply of food, a chart in Layton’s “Cookin’ with Home Storage” recommends storing 75 lbs. of beans for an adult man and 50 lbs. for a woman.

Grains: Wheat, barley, rye, oats, millet and quinoa, among other grains, are important because they are relatively high in calories, a good thing when food is scarce. They also contain fiber, Vitamin B and minerals. And you can store gains longer than almost any other food. Wheat can be stored for 20 years.

The top item on Layton’s chart showing recommended quantities for a year’s supply is wheat. She recommends 150 lbs. for a man and 125 lbs. for a woman.

Most of the grains can be turned into a cereal, Layton says. You simply cook one cup of grain in two cups of water, just like you cook oatmeal.

Millet and barley can be added to soup.

You can grind wheat, rye and corn into flour and use them to make various forms of bread, ranging from regular loaves to muffins, tortillas and flat bread. Ground corn can be used to bake cornbread. Recipes for all of these breads are in the “Cookin’” book.

She pours the liquid into half-pint canning jars and processes them for 10 minutes in a boiling-bath canner, or even lets them cool and self-seal. The final product looks and tastes like butter.

• Cooking oil: According to Layton’s book, “Olive oil stores the longest and is good for you.”

• Spices: You’ll want to store salt, pepper and cinnamon, along with other spices you use frequently and have on hand. Layton recommends a large bottle of bouillon, either powdered or cubed, for use in soups. You also need yeast.

Home storage equipment

To dehydrate, rather than bottle, your own fruits and vegetables, you need a home dehydrator. Dehydrators are available from IFA and Home Depot, among other vendors, for $70 to $300.

To store dehydrated food, you need a vacuum sealer. Storage bags come with the sealer. You put your food in a bag. A tube comes out of the machine and connects with the bag. “You turn it on and all of a sudden it collapses the bag and seals it,” Layton says. “The machine does it all.” Vacuum sealers are available at Walmart. Prices range from $60 for “Seal a Meal” to $400.

The other option is freeze drying, which preserves the color and shape of the food better than dehydration. Freeze dryers remove oxygen from food and vacuum seal it in one operation. Freeze dryers are available at IFA and Home Depot for $2,500-$5,000.

Once your dehydrated or freeze-dried food is vacuum sealed, it’s ready for long-term storage. “You just stack the bags and label what they are,” Layton says.

How to store

You can store your grains in 6-gallon white buckets with lids, standard in the food industry. You can buy the buckets at Walmart or possibly pick up some free from bakeries or fast-food stores. They must be “food grade,” which will be indicated by a circular sticker on the bottom.

Line your buckets with mylar bags, which you can buy online. They look a lot like garbage bags. Fit them inside the bucket and pour your grain in. Add oxygen absorbers, which come in small packets and can be purchased from a food storage company—one in the bottom, one in the middle and one on top.

Some of the bags have zip-lock tops. If so, just close the zip-lock. If your bags don’t zip lock, use your vacuum sealer to seal them.

An alternative to vacuum sealing dehydrated or freeze-dried items is to purchase gallon-size cans like the ones commercially dehydrated or freeze-dried food comes in. You can purchase the cans and seal them at various LDS food storage centers. One such center is located behind the Manti Tabernacle. (See accompanying box for more information.)

Where to store

Stored food will last a lot longer if kept in a cool, dark place at a constant temperature, ideally 50-60 degrees. If you don’t have such a location, do the best you can, Layton says. Some people store their food in a closet in their home or even under a bed. “You don’t want it in your garage where it heats up and later freezes.”

Rotating your storage

“You should label everything and date it with a magic marker,” Layton says. “Mark when you bought it and when it expires.”

Ideally, Layton says, you should rotate your stored food based on the acquisition dates. Use the oldest items first, then next oldest.

In her storage area, the shelves are slightly slanted. She places new items at the high end of the slanted shelves. The older items roll to the lower ends. She pulls cans she wants to use from the lower ends.

A way of life

The seven Layton children are all grown, so it’s just Peggy and her husband, Scott, at home. She has more than enough food to feed the two of them for a year or longer. If Manti faced an extended food crisis, she says, she hopes to be able to share with her extended family and neighbors.

“Food storage is a way of life,” she adds. “To be prepared and to eat healthy, to grow your own food, to dehydrate it, freeze dry it, can it, rotate it. Whatever you’re doing to have it on hand and keep it fresh is a huge process.”

This is a part of the Home & Garden 2025, a yearly supplement to the Sanpete Messenger. To view the rest of the articles, click this banner.