As I mentioned earlier this morning, I've been conducting an inventory of our emergency supplies, discarding those that are out-of-date or nearly so, and replacing them with fresh. It's something I do every year. In particular, high-acid foods such as canned tomatoes and pineapple can eat their way through a can from the inside out. They're not safe to keep much beyond the sell-by date. I try to pass them on to a food bank before that date, so others can use them safely.
Another very important aspect of the annual inventory check is to determine whether the balance of supplies is where it should be. One doesn't want to have too much vegetables, but not enough meat, or vice versa. There's also the question of what an emergency might mean. Storm damage (e.g. a hurricane or tornado coming through) might mean several days of very hard physical labor clearing trees and debris, making our homes habitable again, and so on. That sort of hard work will need foods focused more on energy than nutrition. One can always pop a few multi-vitamin pills with one's food to get nutritional balance back, but if one's body can't get the fuel (i.e. energy) it needs to do the work, you'll run down your physical reserves very quickly.
For that reason, I check each year to make sure I have supplies like rice, oatmeal, grits, cornmeal and so on in our pantry. We might get bored with oatmeal every day, but it'll stick to our ribs, make us feel full, and give us the raw energy we need to get a lot of work done. It's high-bulk, high-energy food. Low-energy foods like vegetables are very good as part of an overall balanced diet, but they're less necessary in the immediate post-emergency situation, when we're trying to keep our heads above water until help arrives.
Condiments and flavorings are vital, too. Plain ol' rice and beans may be a nutritionally complete food, but they're bland. Adding some Cajun seasoning, or a tasty canned or powdered soup, or powdered gravy, makes them much more palatable. However, note that condiments tend to lose their flavor fairly quickly. After two to three years, Cajun seasoning or gravy won't have a strong flavor, and might even taste stale. Rotate them with fresh supplies as well. Because flavoring is such an important taste consideration, I strongly suggest that you list a dozen or more condiments you like and use regularly, and stock up on them. Figure out how much of each of them you use every year, then stock up on twice or three times that. I'd include variations like:
- Sauces: Heinz 57, A1, Worcestershire, HP, ketchup, sriracha, hot sauce of your choice.
- Gravies: Cajun, brown, chicken and country gravy powders.
- Seasonings: Cajun/Creole, ethnic (enchilada/taco/etc.).
- Other: Salt, pepper, salsa, pasta sauces, etc.
I keep a big storage tote filled with a collection of those seasonings, and add things like malt vinegar and pickling vinegar and salt.
I also suggest thinking about what hot drinks to keep in reserve. Tea is a given, and easily available; but coffee (beans, ground, etc.) doesn't keep very long, even if sealed in mylar bags. Instant coffee, on the other hand, keeps for decades if sealed in its glass jars. I make sure we have plenty of teabags and instant coffee on hand.
On another note: the blogger at Come And Make It, writing from the Philippines, has been trying to eat better, and working through his reserve supplies so he can replace the old stuff with new. He's learned a couple of interesting lessons along the way. Try these articles, in the order listed.
- Another new project. Meals from the long term storage pantry.
- Apocalypse food, and this new diet regimen.
- Experiments in weight loss and the survival pantry day 10
- If you planning for a SHTF no food thing, then you need calories.
- Euro goodies gonna become scarce here
Peter
and test your food before you stock up on it. the philipines guy bought some cheap powdered milk, that turned out to be fake. know the source.
ReplyDeleteJust this morning I rotated stock on pasta and a few other things. I discovered that NOBODY in the home likes whole wheat pasta in any form, so we have some a year out-of-date.
ReplyDeleteWe who keep a sensible stock run into this on occasion. It happens, and we can't always get it to the food bank before it goes out of date. What to do then?
Me, I'll be hydrating this pasta and giving it to our chickens. They care nothing about dates or flavors. They will just nom it up and turn it into lovely, healthy, eggs. So many eggs that we give them away to neighbors, building goodwill.
The same with canned goods, although they are not keen on tomatoes... except my garden fresh ones.
Carteach has a good point, one which I practice as well. What might be out of date for you will be fine for your chickens, pigs, or whatever. If I find outdated vegetables, frozen, canned, or otherwise, I dump it at the base of my compost heap. The chickens take whatever they want. Anything left gets rolled into the compost heap. I do the same when cleaning out the fridge. Chickens will eat almost anything... even chicken... Giving them the tail end of the fridge stores lessens the loss incurred by us not eating whatever we give the chickens. It also lessens their demand for chicken feed, and we end up with eggs to boot!
ReplyDeleteFor extra energy, may I suggest the "Coast Guard" food bars as a possible. These things provide a ton of calories, store VERY well, and don't dehydrate you as they're being metabolized. They're a good supplement to whatever actual food you're eating when you're burning through the calories doing heavy manual labor.
On the hydration tack, be sure to stock Gatorade, Pedialyte, or other similar powder in your larder. The powder keeps longer than the bottled drink and takes up less space. During heavy physical labor, you're going to be sweating away electrolytes as well as burning calories. It's SUPER important to replenish these!
I've actually found that canned coffee, whether in steel or plastic cans, keeps quite well for well over a year. I'm currently using Folger's coffee in the plastic cans that was purchased over a year back, and it's fine. I practice FIFO (First In, First Out), so I'm constantly backfilling the coffee larder with new stuff. It rarely sits for more than a year in my larder. Those "Kurig cups" also tend to keep what's in them fresh for a LONG time. I do also keep instant coffee on the shelf. Coffee is the stuff of life. So is water. If water's in short supply, as it would be in my desert locale, making coffee a cup at a time is wiser than doing up a whole pot.
I purchased a lot of stuff pre 2010 and stored it.. stuff like rice and beans is still good though you might want to over cook the beans in a pressure cooker to make them edible again :)
ReplyDeleteMost of the canned goods now is dog food when we run out of his regular food or chicken food. Still safe but taste is off on stuff 6 and 7 years out of best by date. surprisingly once in a while something tastes just fine. oh well.. A few buckets of wheat etc... went anaerobic and built up gas and exploded from the pressure. But maybe 1 or 2 % so not a horrible loss.
Below is our most massive wastage and loss of food.
The last year we had the mouse apocalypse. only time I have ever seen something like it. I have lived here for 26 years and most winters a mouse or two would come in with the cold weather. Traps would get them and done. This year our old 40+ year old house turned into the ultimate mouse haven. We killed over 50 mice in 9 months. Traps, sticky traps, poison etc... I know that my insulation in the attic has many dead mice in it. So we only caught 50ish.. I would bet the population exceeded 100. My mid term attic goal is to clean up there and probably scrub what needs scrubbing and replace most of the insulation where little nests are everywhere with urine and mouse droppings.
Finally a couple months ago we came out on top. I think the deciding factors was purchasing an ungodly dollar amount of large plastic food containers for the cabinets in the kitchen and removing everything from the pantry and putting it in a couple of the metal rolling cabinets you can buy at Sam's club and putting all that food in them. Every bit of food has to be in some sort of varmint proof location or container now. Between cabinets and containers 800+ dollars.. food thrown out that mice got into over the 9 months probably another similar sum... Even my young children were ok with my killing mice and baby mice out of hand by the end of the battle. After the second or third time in 4 or 5 months that they helped clean cabinets and throw out contaminated food boxes etc.. First ones we caught in sticky traps they begged and begged for me to let them go outside and I did for the ones they saw. 5 months in and my 8 year old is all like "get it dad! Don't let it get away!" All my life I have believed that mice were a nuisance and pest... Now I treat them as an existential threat.
For many years we had cats.. not for the last 8 or so. Wasn't any difference in mouse population until this last year between have cat and no cat. Though most of the cats would just look at a mouse walk in front of them. More Garfield than ultimate predator.
You are assuming that your supplies must sustain you until "help arrives". That's a flawed assumption. Plan for a scenario where you are on your own indefinitely. A natural disaster will probably see outside help arrive eventually. A societal event could mean help is never coming. And as things progress such an event is becoming more and more probable. Failure to plan for long term changes is a recipe for tragedy.
ReplyDeleteI moved almost a month ago. I used to live in a metro suburb where I kept a 4 month supply of food. We ate it down to less than a month's supply before the move. All spices, condiments, and sauces were tossed if were more than half gone or the expiration was within the next 4 months. I am now in a rural small town. We are still getting situated but The "garden" will jump to the top of the ToDo list at the end of the month. I have made connections with local farmers where I have egg, quail, pecan, and Vidalia Onion suppliers.
ReplyDeleteQuality sources are also very important, as RR said!
ReplyDeleteI have had a mouse problem in my dry storage for the first time in over twenty years. The chickens normally get wet food daily usually consisting of boiled potatoes, kitchen parings thickened with a small quantity of cheap rice and 35% protein hog supplement mashed with any outdated leftovers from the refrigerator. Lately this has been supplemented with pasta and oatmeal that was breached by the mice. We call the mix glop and they also get pellets free choice. We have access to a very efective root cellar so the chickens mainly get last year’s leftover potatoes as well as this years culls. We mostly store food that we normally eat so rotate stocks. Fresh vegetables in season with store bought in winter. If things get extreme it will be only canned veg plus root crops from the cellar. Canned meat like spam, corned beaf, commercially and home canned fish and various meat to supplement our 12 volt freezer. We are off grid.
ReplyDeleteWe keep a decent amount of ready to eat foods here, but I've been heading towards just keeping the basic ingredients of foods, and producing items from those basics.
ReplyDeleteI don't do spice blends anymore, for instance. I make them as I need them. Pasta? I make my own. Fermented foods, pickles, etc, I also make. Anyway, instead of buying completed canned foods, take the time to learn different cooking methods. It pays off in the long run. The other factor that I consider is the type of climate. I live in the sub-arctic boreal forest, and my general diet is built around Slavic and Germanic food styles.
I use 5 gal buckets with lids, plastic ziplocs, etc.
ReplyDeleteI have taken to adding a bottle of Franks Red Hot as well as several boxes of dried bullion cubes, to each bucket (of rice and beans). Discount stores have cheap containers of spices usually for 1-dollar. Not the BEST dried herbs I ever used, but each bucket has an assortment.
Salt. Your body needs it, cooking requires it, where you gonna get it? 59 cents a can today, priceless tomorrow.
I have had good luck with tomato products in aseptic packaging keeping past date. Pomi and Colavita are two brands that package that way.
ReplyDeleteFor audeojude, and those with cats, or considering a cat:
ReplyDeleteMany years ago, someone abandoned a cat on our corner. Probably due to her being a talker. She was an excellent house cat, as she refused to get on the furniture. Couple years in, and suddenly the neighborhood is inundated with mice coming from the cattle ranch across the street. Bizarre to drive the street at night and see mice running across the street, and every small block had a cat sitting in the gutter waiting for a meal or toy to arrive.
So, the house is jumping with mice. I would catch them on sticky traps, peel them off and toss into an empty aquarium/holding tank for the roommate's snake. One morning I found a couple in traps in the kitchen, and after my shower, both traps were again occupied. I'm thinking, we have a cat! What the heck is wrong with her?
That evening, with the cat wandering around the rear patio, I put on some heavy leather gloves, grabbed a mouse by the tail, and tossed it to her (don't do this with bare hands! ouch!). The mouse ran, she chased it. As soon as she and the mouse got tired, I grabbed it away from her, smashed it flat with a gloved fist and tossed it in the trash. I then gave her a fresh mouse, and the cycle repeated. That evening she chased well over a dozen mice (and lost a couple that got away and ran under the fence), and suddenly she was a mouser.
It dawned on me that the mother cat trains kittens to chase/hunt mice and other small self-propelled targets. I expect that they are hardwired to chase, but they don't appear to be self-priming in this regard, especially if they aren't starving to start with. Lots of web videos of house cats living with mice, rats, and other small mammals as house pets. Even birds, especially parrots, for some unknown reason.
Pet cats often bring home living mice, and it's not just to give YOU a present, but partly it's that they are hardwired to add to the food supply of the females that are dealing with litters of kittens in a pride?/group, and to give them a teaching aid.
So, it would appear that YOU must train your pet cat to hunt mice, or find a farmer with some excess barn cats that have already been trained.
After her training session, my cat LIVED to hunt, and mice in the house became a rare occurrence. As a consequence, she spent a lot more time outside. If you don't have a rodent problem, think twice about initiating this hunting program.
Roast your coffee. Unroasted/green coffee beans has a long shelf life.
ReplyDeleteRegarding whole wheat:
ReplyDeleteAvoid this, if at all possible. Humans learned thousands of years ago to separate the part that is unhealthy for you. Unfortunately, the hucksters decided to not do this maybe a hundred years ago, claiming it is "healthier". Bull. If the ancients thought is was good, they wouldn't have been going to the trouble and expense to throw away part of the grain they grew. It chews up your intestinal walls. They didn't know exactly what the problem was, but they eventually figured out that too many people had bad health reactions to it.
INSTANT coffee!!?? 😧 For the Love of all things Holy......get thyself some non-roasted coffee beans and seal them up! You can roast as needed in your cast iron skillet, and with a hand grinder have some mighty fine coffee. (Yep-fresh water needed too.) When we are battling the gibsmedat a good fresh cup of coffee will be a God send!
ReplyDeleteI feel sometimes I am a survivor of the 20's collapse by mentality as I am more than a bit of a hoarder. My normal pantry, fridge and freezer without stocking up is enough for my family for 3 to 4 months.
ReplyDeleteBack 10 to 14 years ago I got caught up in a friends prepper craziness and agreed to order and package 2 years of food for 10 people for his family. It took almost 6 months to do, purchasing bulk foods at good prices and then repackaging for long term storage. 5 gal buckets with real heavy duty mylar bags and oxygen absorbers. Had one delivery that game on an 18 wheeler. Had to take pickup to end of drive and cross load it from 18 wheeler. driver was un-amused that we had to move a couple tons of food case by case. He paid my for by giving my a percentage of the incoming food. It still amuses me the number to truckloads of 5 gallon buckets it ended up being that he had to come and get. trip after trip and then move to his cabin in the mountains that I have never visited. At the end he shook my hand and and thanked me with great warmth and then said... "um.. how do you cook most of this stuff. I'm not sure what you can make with it?" Wheat, rice, beans, corn, salt, sugar, powdered milk and a hundred other things, many of them in the 2000 lb range. There were a lot of canned goods none of which probably taste good at this point. Lots of spices that are probably good as they are in an nitrogen environment. Even candies like mm's Everything carefully packed in mylar and oxygen absorbers. Over the years we have gone through a lot of what he gave us. Some ended up dog food. Still have a bit of sugar and salt and wheat and corn.. never ate much of it as I have a hand crank grinder and no one prepared me for just what a pain in the ass it is to grind a usable amount of wheat or corn by hand. Nowadays I'm not even physically capable of grinding it. It's like looking at a different life from back then to now. Somehow I became old over the 10 to 15 years since then.
I very much have a lot of the same concerns as back then but less health or resources to address those concerns. As I get older and more realistic about mortality in general, I am reminded that no matter what I do it is only helpful for mostly rule of law situations or against petty criminals even in a collapsed society. If a powerful armed force wanted to take what we have or the government etc.. there really is nothing you can do. Really it doesn't even matter if your one of those wealthy enough to have your own prepper bunker and all armed up with your friends beside you. You have no chance of defending yourself from someone with armored vehicles, tanks and anti Armour weapons, much less armed air support. maybe being able to run and hide and that even is a short term solution. Safety only comes from the bonds of a mutual social contract that protects the weak from the strong and hope that it mostly works for everyone and not just the powerful anyways.
Sigh.. feel real bleak after writing this given what I see happening world wide.
Rubbermaid 18 gal totes, though now pricey, are our goto food storage containers. Quite a few 5 gallon buckets, sealed, for long long term storage.
ReplyDeleteBut mostly totes. We eat what we store, so it is a constant fifo thing.
Good bit of various canned meats, lots and lots of rice, dry beans, seasonings of every type, lots of salt LOTS, flour, sugar etc etc etc
Only thing we have lost is the walnuts went rancid after a couple years.