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Dry Fields, image by Ben Sutherland

This is a basic famine menu that will keep you alive. Variety of taste will come from supplementation from a vegetable garden, fruit trees, raising animals, bartering, spices and additional items you store. Each family must be creative to vary the taste of the foods and to add additional items that will make the basic foods most appetizing for you.

Adding small farm animals will enhance your diet tremendously such as hens for eggs or chickens for meat, meat rabbits, cows or goats for milk, yogurt, cheese, pigs for meat, and a fish pond stocked for meat. Also storing sprouting seeds will give you needed enzymes through the winter from your kitchen counter. Keep a store of garden seeds to renew the vegetables each season and gain seed saving skills. Using lacto fermentation techniques will bring healthy enzymes and variance in flavors as well as being a means to preserve your harvest without heating your containers (just store extra salt).

This is only one example of a famine menu, modify it to meet your particular needs or share yours with all of us. We welcome all information that will help us in hard times.

Someone looking over my Famine Menu once asked me if the title weren’t an oxymoron-”Famine Menu”-like you have a choice of eating foods when there is a famine. I responded that I was planning to eat during a famine, and eat as well as I can prepare for. God bless us all.

Basic Famine Menu

Per Day for One Person

3 slices of whole wheat bread (lunch and dinner)

1 pot of oatmeal (breakfast, vary with spices and fruit from the orchard or dehydrated or nuts)

1 pot of rice (dinner)

1 pot of beans (dinner, vary with spices and vegetables from the garden)

1 glass of milk

In Addition Per Week

1 pint of jam

1 jar of peanut butter

1 spaghetti dinner with hamburger

4 pots of soup (From leftovers and Soup for A Year)

7 jar sprouting seeds rotation

In Addition Per Month

1/2 -#10 can popcorn

1 can potato flakes

1 can refried Beans

1 can white flour

Amounts to Store for One Person, Two Persons, Three Persons, Four Persons

Wheat:  90 lbs, 168 lbs, 252 lbs, 366 lbs

Rolled Oats:  24 lbs, 48 lbs, 72 lbs, 96 lbs

Rice:  60 lbs, 120 lbs, 180 lbs, 240 lbs

Dry Beans:  60 lbs, 120 lbs, 180 lbs, 240 lbs

Spaghetti Pasta;  60 lbs, 120 lbs, 180 lbs, 240 lbs

Powdered Milk: 16 lbs (kids 32 lbs), 32 lbs, 48 lbs, 64 lbs

Potato Flakes: 18 lbs, 36 lbs, 54 lbs, 72 lbs

Refried Beans:  24 lbs, 48 lbs, 72 lbs, 96 lbs

White Flour:  48 lbs, 96 lbs, 144 lbs, 192 lbs

Honey:  18 lbs (see Bread for a Year), 36 lbs, 57 lbs, 57 lbs

Granulated Sugar:  40 lbs, 80 lbs, 120 lbs, 160 lbs

Oil:  9 Qts (See Bread for a Year), 18 Qts, 18 Qts, 18 Qts

Yeast:  (See Bread for a Year) 2 lbs, 4 lbs, 8 lbs, 8 lbs

Salt:  8 lbs (See Bread for a Year)

Peanut Butter: 17 lbs,34 lbs, 52-16 oz, 52-16 oz jars

Fruit Jam:  52 Pints

Spaghetti Sauce:  52 Quarts

Canned Hamburger or meat:  52 pints

Popcorn:  #10 cans, 6

Multi-Vitamins:  365, 730, 1095, 1460

Spices

Sprouting Seeds (Wheat, beans, seeds), 40 lbs, 80 lbs, 120 lbs, 160 lbs

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