As budgets gat tighter and tighter, analysts are recommending stockpiling food by buying in bulk and keeping a full pantry.

What amuses me about this is, I've been doing this my whole life. And I'm FAR from the only one.

See, keeping a stockpile of food is one of the positive things I owe to my LDS upbringing. While I left the church over twenty years ago, some things stay with you, and the LDS church has always encouraged its members to keep a year's supply of food in their pantry. While we've never had a year's worth, we've rarely had less than a month's worth.

Not only do we save money by buying in bulk, we also save by not having to by food items on impulse. Rather than being forced to buy at market price, we can "wait out" sales, as well as take advantage of closeouts and clearances. We currently have six boxes of CoCo Wheats cereal that we purchased on sale, and are finishing off 100 boxes of Jiffy Muffin Mix that we bought about six weeks ago (at 25 cents a box).

One local store is closing, and I hit it today for the "early closeout" (20%) sales. So now we're stocked up on several more items bought at a discount, and as the closeout sales progress, we hope to get more.

Of course, buying this way sometimes means you have to be used to trying unusual things, but the Internet's a great help in that area. We recently purchased several boxes of tilapia at a good price, which meant learning to cook it (which, fortunately, isn't hard). We have a constant supply of pinto beans, but nobody, and I mean, NOBODY, wants beans and rice for every meal. So you have to find new ways of cooking it. Rice is another staple with the same problem (although we recently began making chorizo and rice burritos that have been a big hit around the house). We purchase chicken leg quarters by the ten pound bag, but of course, finding many recipes for chicken isn't that tricky.

My oldest, though, decided a few weeks ago that on her cooking night, she was going to find a way to get rid of some of the cooked spinach in our pantry (NOT a family favorite!) She found a recipe called "chicken in the grass" (basically, a noodel casserole using chicken and spinach) that has since entered our rotation because it is inexpensive, simple, and tasty.

So the idea of stockpiling food, while apparently new to "experts" is hardly new to us. We've been doing it my whole life, and we learned from people who've been doing it a whole lot longer than that!