Food-storage fanatics, listen up.

Here's your chance to see if what you've squirreled away will hold up to a disaster -- without having to wait for the real disaster.

Julie Weiss and Jodi Moore, young Mormon authors of the food-storage blog foodstoragemadeeasy.net, are issuing a challenge to any and all takers.



Contestants will agree to live on their emergency supplies for a seven-day period, starting at some point in September. (The starting date is a secret so it will resemble a disaster as closely as possible.)

The contenders will get an e-mail each day telling them what limitations they have to live with and what tasks must be performed. (Is the power out? What food is available?)

At the end of the seven days, Weiss and Moore want feedback on what happened and what ran out. What proved to be essential and providential?

Some will win prizes -- including wheat grinders and food storage items -- for their efforts and feedback.

Weiss and Moore will then put together a document with all the information learned from the challenge and make it available to their blog followers.

As of Aug. 27, 1,600 people had signed up for the challenge, a number that's heartening to Moore and Weiss.

"Obviously, we're a little bit heavy in Utah," said Moore. "But we're getting a lot from other states, too."

Moore and Weiss, who are both young wives and mothers living in Salt Lake City as well as sisters-in-law, started their Web site "just for fun" in June 2008 and have found what they're doing is having a much bigger impact than they expected.

"We wanted to share what we've learned," Moore said. "It's taking on a life of its own."

Visitors to their site can register for e-mails that come every two weeks and basically talk a person through putting a year's worth of information together one e-mail at a time.

Currently there is no charge for access to the information on the pair's Web site unless someone wants a year's worth of bundled information.

E-mail: haddoc@desnews.com