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Grains are a fairly inexpensive group of foods and perfect for long-term storing food, but before you go stocking, hoarding, piling and storing food, first you have to consider the following.

1) Will you need to cook your food and if so, how will you cook it?

2) Will you need water to cook the food?

3) How long can your food sit on the shelf (expiration date) and how will you keep the food refrigerated after it is opened, not to mention do you have the means to keep your food refrigerated if the power goes out.

So before you stock, hoard, pile and store, consider the above and then get busy stocking, hoarding, piling and storing your food.

As a side note - a gluten-free diet requires the total avoidance of the grains - wheat, barley, rye and all varieties and hybrids of these grains, such as spelt.

Gluten-Free Grains include - amaranth, buckwheat, cornmeal, grits, hominy, millet, oats, polenta, quinoa, rice, sorghum and teff.

Grains include - Cornmeal, Flour, Oats, Pasta, Rice and Wheat. Folks, whatever you do, make certain you stock, hoard, pile and store these grains. You can always make something out of them.

For your basic ingredients to play with these grains, also make certain you buy - salt, yeast, sugar and oil. All your preference of course. I won't get into different salts, sweetners, sugars or oils. Use your brain and your own taste buds.

You might also needs eggs. You can EASILY bake a cake in a cast-iron Dutch oven outside and sometimes cake needs an egg. Bread is one of those first things to leave the shelves in the grocery store, so you might consider stocking up on your baking ingredients.

Making your own bread in a cast-iron Dutch oven outside is so easy you wouldn't believe it. It takes unbleached white flour, salt, yeast, oil and warm water. I will be putting some cast-iron Dutch oven recipes on another page.

Rices include - Basmati, Brown, Jasmine, White, Wild, Yellow and more. Just make certain you choose a variety of rices because you could get tired of the same rice pretty dang fast.

I absolutely LOVE rice. If I had to choose a last meal before leaving the planet, rice would be on my plate. And if I had 'only one food' to choose before I turn to Light and leave the planet, it would be a bowl of rice. Any variety would be fine with me. Myself and Cate Blanchett would choose 'rice' every single time.

You can easily make fried rice. YUM! I even have a cast-iron wok.

Now think about this, rice requires water to cook. You will need one (1) cup (sometimes 1-1/4 cup) per one (1) cup of rice, which then makes three (3) cups of cooked rice. It's quite the belly-filler and it's delicious, of which you can throw in spice into the mix while it cooks.

I think it goes without saying, "Pasta is pretty dang cheap!" You can catch boxes of pasta in different varieties for a couple of bucks a box and sometimes even less than that. Pasta comes in so many different variations that you can hardly get bored with it. Italian restaurants make a killing on their pasta dishes because it's so dang cheap to make.

You can pair the pasta with butter, marinara, tomato sauce, butter, olive oil, pesto, white sauce, etc., and you will never get bored with it. Consider all of the different variations you can concoct when you begin hoarding your pasta noodles.

Also consider if you add to meat to the pasta what that might look like. You can add chicken to the fettucini and pesto (we Love that a little too much in our house), you can add meatballs to the spagetti, you can add sausage and beef to the lasagna and yes, you can cook it out back in the cast-iron Dutch oven.

Also consider the pasta dish being a side dish and not necessarily the main dish. Nothing says it has to be a main dish. Just like macaroni and cheese can be a side dish. No one needs to come out of quarantine or a long-term power outage with 20 extra pounds.

Who knew there were a long list of oats? There is Oat Flour, Raw Oats (newly harvested), Rolled Oats (old-fashioned), Rolled Oats (Instant) Scottish Oatmeal, Steel Cut Oats and Whole Oat Groats (grain kernel).

Oat Bran is just the bran and not the oat. Meaning, there is no oat, so it's just bran.

There is no 'germ' or 'endosperm' so no oat. It's just bran! Get it! So it can't be considered a whole grain if there is no oat (grain). It's just bran!

Cornmeal is as the name implies.

Cornmeal is dried and ground field corn that ranges in texture from medium to coarse.

This is NOT the same type of sweet corn as corn-on-the-cob.

The size of the grain is the indicator for how fast the meal (milled corn) will absorb water. So, the smaller the meal (grind) the faster the absorption. The larger the meal (grind) the slower the absorption.

This is precisely why more coarse meal takes longer to cook.

Wheat or White - it's up to you. Cake flour or OO Flour, it's up to you. Self-Rising or Bread Flour, it's up to you. All-Purpose Flour, it's up to you.

This is personal preference folks and no time for judgie-wudgie. If you want wheat, eat it. If you want white, eat it.

During emergency preparedness, flour could go flying off the shelves faster than toilet paper. I guarantee, flour will be more important than toilet paper.

Think about it - every single culture on the planet has their own tortilla, pita, type of bread. Even we Native Americans have our fry bread. FLOUR IS IMPORTANT!

I had never heard of this, but a friend on social media told me the other day about storing flour in the freezer in an airtight container. This keeps the bugs out. Certainly you can store flour in an airtight container on the shelf, but just so you know there are options.

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