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If you've ever been to a baby shower, you might have played the "safety pins in the rice bowl" game. The player is handed a mixing bowl full of rice with safety pins in it. The object of the game is for the player to find safety pins among the tiny pieces of rice - with her eyes closed. The player who finds the most safety pins is the winner.

Saturday I arrived fashionably late for a shower, hoping I had missed the games. Come to find out, most of the ladies had just arrived, and the games hadn't even begun! When the host pulled out the big bowl of rice, I gasped. "Haven't you heard there's a shortage on rice"? She happily told me if I wanted to take the rice home with me, I was welcome to do so. I declined, knowing I didn't want to eat rice that we'd all run our hands through. How gross is that?

This rice shortage is serious business, though. If you shop for groceries, you know that the prices on just about everything have gone up. I just paid two dollars for a lousy bag of frozen corn. A year ago I could have bought it for about half that price. Milk is close to four dollars where I live. Part of the reason for this increase is the cost of gasoline. Someone has to pay for it when it costs more to get it from Point A to Point B, and that someone is going to be YOU.

While Costco is reportedly putting a limit on the number of 100 lb bags you can buy, or allowing you to buy no more than you generally do, I was curious to see if they were putting limits on brown rice. I haven't cooked white rice in my home for years because I prefer brown rice. I never see brown rice in 100 lb bags, and the reason for that is that it's the real deal and it will go rancid if not stored properly. White rice has been depleted of most, if not all nutrients, and is basically starch. On today's trip to Costco, I bought six containers of brown rice and there was plenty more on the shelf. I didn't buy more because I didn't want to contribute to the shortage, but you can bet that the next time I go back, I'll buy six more.

My church has been encouraging us for years to have a hefty supply of food to sustain our families. Most people think this is to keep us alive when the end of the world comes, but when that time comes, I don't think food is going to help! Now, when food prices are going up and the staples (rice, wheat, and corn) are becoming scarce, it makes you realize that maybe you should have listened.

Would you be prepared if a disaster hit your area? What kind of a disaster are you waiting for?

I remember when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Soon after, we had our own crisis in Houston with Hurricane Rita, and after watching what happened to residents of New Orleans, you can bet that we did everything we could to be prepared! We bought food that could be eaten out of a can hot or cold. We bought extra cases of water. We filled up the gas tanks in our cars. We boarded up our windows.

We decided not to evacuate, but once the hurricane hit, much of the city was without electricity. That meant we couldn't pump gas or access ATM machines. There was a lot of chaos around here until that electricity started flowing again.

Do we need another catastrophe to get prepared?

I sure hope not.

Of course, now that the media is reporting food shortages, if we all run out and buy loads of it, we will create a shortage for others. However, when you're going to the grocery store, buy a few extras. Instead of buying one can of tuna, buy five or six. Instead of buying one bag of rice, buy two or three.

The government started mailing out economic stimulus checks this week in hopes that we will spend the money and help the economy. I heard on the news today that a large percentage of people plan to save their money. One of the smartest things you could do is spend it on food. Put that money back into circulation by filling your pantry. Kroger grocery stores will add 10 percent to the value of rebate checks when customers use them in $300 increments to buy Kroger gift cards.

And Supervalu - the parent company of Albertsons, Jewel-Osco, Shop 'n Save and other grocery chains, says that if you put your tax rebate check on a gift card, you'll get an extra $30 for every $300 in rebate checks. http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/28/pf/saving/toptips/?postversion=2008042812

By investing in the gift cards, you not only increase the value of that $1200 check to $1320, but at my Kroger, you save even more when you use the Kroger gift cards to pay for gasoline. With gasoline at about $3.50 a gallon around here, that's definitely something to consider.

We all want to have money in the bank, and we should all have an emergency fund, but if you've ever been hungry, you know there's no better feeling than having a pantry stocked with food. Why not buy it now before the prices climb even higher?

Now all we need to do is find something besides rice to hide those safety pins in!

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