Simply Prepared: A Guide to Emergency Preparedness and Food Storage has its roots in a call to be the Stake Canning Specialist for the Houston Texas North Stake in 1991. The primary responsibilities of that calling were to coordinate and help supervise Church and family wet-pack canning (chili and beef stew) and peanut butter canning for stake members in the Houston canning facility. It also included helping with dry pack canning and training ward canning chairmen. The counselor in the stake presidency that issued my call also charged me with increasing the temporal preparedness in the stake and asked me to come up with a plan.
One of the approved parts of the plan was a series of 4 2-hour classes to “instruct the instructors” in each ward – teach those with leadership responsibility how to teach food storage and preparedness in their wards. I taught them and gave them all the materials they would need to go back to their wards and teach their ward members. That’s how the collection of handouts began.
As other people in the Houston area with a desire to be more prepared and teach others to be more prepared heard about my materials, they wanted copies, too. As this was before email and digital documents were common, it became cumbersome and costly to copy or print and mail all the materials to all the people making the requests. The best way to make it more efficient to provide the materials was to compile and publish a book.
The first edition of Simply Prepared was a plastic ring bound copy of single-sided photocopied pages. It had a green cardstock cover and was about 1/2 to 3/4-inch thick because the pages were one-sided. I made the copies at Office Depot, and I punched and bound them myself on my dining room table. That was September 1995. The next version had a laminated cover which I laminated myself.
In 1998, as a member of the Houston Public Affairs Council for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I was tasked with writing and publishing the history of the Houston Texas Temple which had been announced in October 1997. I found out about a publishing agent that could help. In the process of working on the temple history book, I realized he could also help me professionally publish Simply Prepared and the food storage cookbook I had been working on since 1983 – Pantry Cooking: Unlocking Your Pantry’s Potential. The temple history book took another direction but Simply Prepared was published as a bound 112-page book in April 1999 and Pantry Cooking was published in April 2000. Simply Prepared was out of print by mid-2008 without means or time to republish. Instead, it became the website www.simplyprepared.com.
My work and education in preparedness and food storage continued over the years. Experiences, teaching opportunities, questions, and disasters – Tropical Storm Allison, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, H1N1 avian flu, Hurricane Ike, Hurricane Harvey and catastrophic flooding in Houston, droughts, Winter Storm Uri, COVID-19, the Russian invasion of Ukraine – gave me reasons to write more materials and create more handouts. The newly revised copy of Simply Prepared (still unpublished) has 328 pages. Anything beyond that will be found on the new WordPress version of www.simplyprepared.com.
So what came before that call in 1991? And after Simply Prepared was published in 1999?
In 1973, I was a sophomore at Brigham Young University majoring in Food Science and Nutrition with an emphasis in Food Science. Food storage information was included in our class curriculum. The BYU stakes were also taking the opportunity to teach married students about food storage, family preparedness, and money-saving skills. I attended several of the events organized by my ward and stake after I married in 1974 and was fascinated by what I saw. Being raised in a military family and having weight restrictions on our moves meant we only had a small amount of food set aside wherever we lived. It was only after my father retired that my parents grew a garden, raised rabbits, and made jams even though both sets of grandparents had fruit trees and gardens and preserved some of their food to add to shelves stacked with food in their basement storerooms.
A grocery bridal shower was the beginning of my food storage. All my gifts were cans and packages of food plus toilet paper and other household necessities. After attending family preparedness events, we decided to start accumulating some food storage by purchasing cases of canned goods at a local “no frills” grocery store. We had things like bonita (tuna) and tomato soup. Our first tax return was spent on a Bosch heavy duty mixer for making bread and a Little Giant grain mill.
Once we graduated in 1976 and moved to our first job in West Texas, we continued to store food despite an extremely tight budget. We grew a garden. We purchased a dehydrator to preserve extra garden produce. I made whole wheat bread and gluten (wheat meat) and experimented with lots of new concepts. I realized that I wanted to know if I had enough food to last a year and would it provide variety. That’s when I developed my plan for building food storage based on a menu.
In 1977, I was asked to teach food storage classes in Relief Society, the women’s organization in the Church. They were to be taught once a month for several months. There were not many books to turn to for help. I did have materials from my Food Science classes and a talk given by Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone in 1976 but my main source of information was the book Just in Case: A Manual of Home Preparedness by Barbara G. Salsbury. That book became my “bible” for food storage. She had a practical approach with scientific backing for her methods.
Those classes led to other callings and assignments. My husband and I planned our first Preparedness Fair on a ward level and by 1980 were planning and organizing our first stake-wide Preparedness Fair. It was free and the public was invited to attend. We even appeared on a local television show to advertise the event.
As our income increased, so did our preparedness tools and library. I learned how to can and expanded my knowledge, skills, and pantry shelves. I found more books to help me learn about whole grains and other storable foods and how to use them.
My involvement in food storage and preparedness continued wherever we lived through callings and assignments in Relief Society and Church welfare. I organized more stake preparedness fairs and planned ward food storage socials (disguised, of course, as other events). I sent out newsletters and wrote handouts, taught food storage cooking classes and canning and dehydrating classes. I spoke in Sunday meetings, firesides, and leadership meetings.
In 1996 I moved out into the community with a call to be Stake Director of Public Affairs. During that time, I read about a new committee to be formed at the local Chamber of Commerce – the Emergency Planning Task Force. I felt prompted to become a member of that committee. I eventually became the chair and we renamed it the Emergency Preparedness Task Force to make it more proactive. That’s where I first made my community connections. I spoke about neighborhood emergency plans to HOA’s and Civic Clubs and represented the Chamber at the Neighborhoods USA convention. Then I was released when an additional assignment came to write the history of the Houston Texas Temple.
It wasn’t long after the temple history was finished that I was back in Church Public Affairs. I helped write materials to use in the new Interfaith Disaster Preparedness Conference and gave a presentation on 72-hour kits. That led to a citywide Hurricane Workshop at the convention center where I assisted with the Church display and booth.
I was given a break for a few years from metro level public affairs while my family life was extra busy, but I was still helping with ward emergency plans, writing handouts, and giving classes on pandemic preparedness, food storage, and hurricane preparedness.
Back into Church Public Affairs in 2013, I was called to be Houston Metro Preparedness Specialist. I taught a series of four 2-hour food storage classes, both in and out of the Church, all over the Houston Metro area and East Texas. I became a member of the steering committee for the Hurricane Workshop (which later became the Extreme Weather Ready Expo), represented the Church at VOAD meetings, made connections with CERT, and was a part of the CERT rodeo. The connections I had made at the Chamber of Commerce years before paid off. They gave me credibility with the Hurricane Workshop steering committee and gave me the opportunity to contribute in more ways. It was during this period of time that Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, became Tropical Storm Harvey, and moved into Houston. Flood damage was catastrophic all over the metro area including my neighborhood. There was a steep learning curve for me as I researched and provided reliable materials for the Church and community to aid in preparedness and recovery.
Since 2018 my assignments have not been in preparedness, but the personal call I feel to teach and to share is still there. I now have 2 websites – www.simplyprepared.com and www.pantrycookingplus.com. I have 3 Facebook pages – Simply Prepared with CFD Publications, Simply Prepared Files Group, and Food Storage and Preparedness: A Way of Life. I have one cookbook in print and 2 others in the computer. I have a new edition of Simply Prepared almost ready. I send out emails and make posts at least 3 times a week. I still read preparedness books, still experiment, still learn new skills, and still teach whenever possible.
What have I learned through all of this?
I have learned that I can be on lockdown with COVID-19 and my life doesn’t change that much.
I have learned that natural disasters are a lot less scary when you are prepared.
I have learned that children feel safer when they have a prepared family.
I have learned there is no “one size fits all” preparedness plan, only guidelines to help you create your own.
I have learned that there are so many good things to learn in this world.
I have learned that I can learn more no matter what my age is.
I have learned that natural disasters bring out the best in most people.
I have learned that it feels good to help people be better prepared for all aspects of life.
I have learned that God wants us to be prepared for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our fellowman.
I have learned that God blesses those who prepare for the right reasons.
I have learned that God will guide us in the preparedness direction we each need to take.
I have learned that God will guide in the small and simple things of preparedness.
I have learned that you do all you can with God’s help and then you have to trust the rest to Him.
My Heavenly Father has been there beside me as I have lived and grown through this preparedness process. My mind has been enlightened. Many of my fears have been assuaged. My confidence has grown. My capacities have increased. What I have accomplished and become is because of Him and I am grateful.