This month, Emergency Essentials is offering a free $10 gift card to anyone who tries out their new Food Storage Analyzer program and posts a review. That was enough motivation for me to give it a look, thinking, "They didn't say it had to be a positive review, right?" But I can't help myself - I genuinely like this gizmo! This is not just a calculator that tells you how many calories or pounds you need per day of storage... this analyzer goes much further and lets you see exactly where you are in terms of your food storage.You input the number of family members, ages, and gender. The analyzer pulls up a list of foods with brief comments about their nutritional content (ie - "high in fiber" or "good source of iron"). You can enter in the amounts that you currently have in storage and the program will break it down by calories, nutritional content, and how many days that will last your family. Some items are linked to recipes. (What to do with that wheat? How about Whole Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes, Bread Crust Zucchini Quiche, even Chocolate Cake with Raspberries!) There's also a printer-friendly view with inventory to tuck in your purse when you head to the grocery store.
The Analyzer calculates all types of food storage: dehydrated, wet-pack, MREs, etc, and... it's totally free to use! Create a user account and you can also save your data. I admit it - I'm impressed. I'm also relieved that I never again have to rely on my Excel spreadsheets for this information!
