If Ye Are Prepared Ye Shall Not Fear

Last night at church we had classes on emergency preparedness. It was a good kick in the butt for Tony and I to refocus on getting our 72 hour emergency kits together and to start working on our food storage! One of the speakers kept asking questions like~ Who has their 72 hour kits now? Who has a one week food supply? Who has a one months, two, three month supply ready? I told Tony Crap I feel like I'm being called out here!
It was interesting. They played a interview by Ted Koppel talking about the dire situation our country is in because of our failure to be prepared for a emergency. There were people there who lived in San Fransisco during the earthquake of 89 and they gave examples of what a blessing it was to have the supplies they needed until the electricity was up and running again and things were back on track again.
What kind of difference did it make for the people who lived through hurricane Katrina to have a personal supply of food and water? How about the folks in the Midwest going through the flooding right now?
This was a good reminder "If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear"
We are recommitting ourselves to become more self reliant and ready for any kind of disaster that comes our way.
So my dear family and friends~ Are you prepared? Are you able to sustain your family for a few days in case of a emergency? If not I would like to challenge you to go to the American Red Cross web site and read about building a 72 hour kit. Start small ~but start. What a blessing it would be to be able to know you can take care of your family if the unimaginable happened!


The following is a recipe I brought last night. It is one of our favorites for using food storage because it uses no eggs or dairy~ Just items you can store long term. My kids are sweet junkies. I like to know if something happened I would be able to cook something occasionally that would be comforting to them! I had lots of requests for the recipe so I am going to post it here for you! Try it~ it's good and easy! Enjoy!

Double Chocolate Cake
3 1/3 C. flour plus
2 C. brown sugar
1/2C. cocoa powder
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp salt
2C. water
2/3 C oil
2 tsp vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 C Chocolate chips
1 tbsp flour

Combine first 5 ingredients (dry)
Stir in liquids
Stir 1 c. chocolate chips and 1 tbsp flour together
Fold into cake batter
Sprinkle top of cake with remaining chocolate chips
Pour into a ungreased 9 X 13 pan
Bake 350 for 35 to 40 min or until cake springs back slightly when touched
Dust with pwdr sugar

Variations of cake recipe~
Chocolate Chip cake~leave out the cocoa and vanilla
you can add 1c. nuts and you can change the chips to vanilla

Apple Spice~omit cocoa and vanilla. Stir in 2 tsp ground allspice to flour mixture.Reduce water to 1 C. and add 1 C. applesauce.
You can also add raisins or dehydrated apples chunks to this!