3 months, 12 weeks---either way it's a lot of storage

Ok, having confessed my shortcomings in the area of emergency cooking sources, I will now mention something I've actually made progress on--the 3 month supply. I don't remember where I originally heard the idea, but it makes sense--make a menu rotation of meals you would normally eat in a 7 day cycle, and then make sure you have the ingredients to make the meals in that cycle 12 times. So far I have only been focused on the dinner portion of the menus.

When I started this blog, my primary concern was getting prepared long-term, especially to learn how to use the food items that would last long term, really long term, like wheat and beans and rice. I wasn't really focused on the 3 months worth of food that we would normally eat--after all, I already knew how to prepare the stuff we were already eating. Thing is, I need the stuff we are already eating to work as conveniently as possible in an emergency situation, so I have been working some of the long term items into our menu rotation, as well as making new dishes with storable items that my children would like. I have mentioned a lot of these before, but the links may be helpful to those who haven't seen them before---I tried to use a lot of food storage items last week and this is how it looked:

--Rice and beans, recipe here. This is now a pretty stable member of the menu rotation, but the uproar if there is no Spam involved (the way I modify it can be found in this post) is to be avoided if at all possible. :) This is definitely one of the meals on the 7 day cycle. I can use long term ingredients for the most part, but that's a lot of Spam to store up....

--Canned soup and rolls, roll recipe here. Ok, the roll recipe wouldn't be my first choice in an emergency situation because of some of the ingredients, such as butter, but I have now practiced enough that I can make this beginner's bread recipe that truly takes long term food storage items, and that's what I plan to do, so soup and bread is another meal on the 7 day cycle. That makes 2...

--Shepherd's pie, the closest recipe to which can be found here, but I just use two ingredients--the stew covered by instant mashed potatoes, and baked at 400 degrees. (Gotta love the recipes on the back of the Dinty Moore Stew cans. :) After all, the whole point of food storage food for me is simplicity and a low number of ingredients, so this really works out for my criteria. A delicious dish that allows me to chalk up #3...

---Spam fried rice, the recipe for which is found here. Only this time I substituted canned chicken for the Spam, and corn for the peas, and like before, used chicken flavored Rice-a-Roni. Not very colorful, but tasty enough, and enjoyed. Ah, number 4....

Four food storage meals in one week is pretty good for me, and the fact that nothing was said about it being food storage is a definite plus. Do I have enough for 12 weeks worth of meals for the 4 recipes I have mentioned? Ummmmm, uh-uh. No. Unfortunately not. But I am working on it, little by little.

I have other food I could make, like the two other bean recipes that I have posted about in this blog, but I am always looking for more variety when it comes to my 3 month supply. I have a few other recipes in mind (some of which can be found on blogs I have mentioned previously) that I haven't tried yet, but need to get to. Here's my question to you--what are the meals in your 3 month plan? I'll be sharing my other choices as I get to them. I may only have a partial menu cycle at this point, but it's better than no menu cycle at all. If you haven't started yet, just add one recipe at a time....