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Posts Tagged ‘food storage’

The Right Stuff – Be Prepared!

A good bunch of information, provided via NASA’s new emergency preparedness push.  Now if only every federal, state and local municipality made it a similar priority, we’d be getting somewhere!  Though, of course, it always comes down to each of us, as individuals and family members, doing what we know is right in order to be able to protect our own and attempting to not be a burden on the system should a disaster occur.

18

06 2011

Living From the Pantry, Take 3

I saw this post referenced at The Simple Dollar and it brought back fond memories.  The first time our wife and I went without grocery shopping last year, we went a little over 7 weeks without buying anything.  At that time, we were actually using powdered milk for drinking, so didn’t even need anything as far as perishables were concerned.  We did it again late last year and lasted about a month, though there was a little more cheating involved as my wife was diagnosed with a gluten allergy and requires more fresh foods.

Due to some upcoming concerns about our budget, we have decided to give it another shot.  Our pantry is packed full, we have a freezer that has a hundred pounds of meat and chicken in it, and a cooler stocked with water and Gatorade.  The only thing I usually find myself wanting and running out of is chocolate.  However, I think the wife has some cake mix and I stashed a box of Chips Deluxe last week after a buy-one-get-one event at Publix, so I hope I’ll be ok for sweets.  I mentioned that we had so much, we could probably go more than a month, but she’s drawing the line right now, so we’ll see!

For a more thorough example of one families adventure in non-shopping, see this series of posts!  Wish us luck!

24

02 2011

3-6 Month Food Storage Plan

The Advice and Beans Food Storage Plan 3-6 Months

You might also find it odd that I sell long-term storage products (oxygen absorbers and Mylar bags), and yet I’m not going to push the ‘buckets and beans’ approach to food storage, at least for a food storage plan intended to last less than 6 months.

That’s because while I think rice and beans have their place in a looooong-term storage plan, such as if you decide to store 6 months to 2 years of food or more, for any plan 6-months or less, you can probably store your everyday eats (assuming you have the space) and be just fine. That doesn’t mean you should store just your regular diet, but it will most likely make up the bulk of your storage.

So what’s the plan?

1) Plan first, store later.

If you read my post from Monday, you know that I made some horrid early food storage mistakes. These stemmed mainly from a lack of planning. As you read through the whole plan, think about what your most common meals are. For me, breakfast is the same 5 days a week, a bowl of Special K and some Apple Juice. Dinner is pasta, chicken, or meat and potatoes at least 5 times a week as well. Thus, when we shop, we pay special attention to finding good deals on those foods.

Next, thing about how you are going to organize your food. If you buy in bulk like I did, you can rapidly fill up some shelves! (We’re at 4 and counting)

2)  Have something available to eat…right now.

It is incredibly important to have a certain amount of ‘portable and painless’ food in your plan. Emergencies and disasters can be exhausting, and having to think about cooking right at the beginning is just one more unnecessary burden.

My wife and I meet this in a couple of ways.  First, have a couple of cases of MRE’s. These are not the C-Rations your dad or grandad told you about that they ate in the military. While they are not gourmet, I rather enjoy most MRE’s. If someone is picky about hot food, make sure you get the one’s with heaters, as they are only a tad more expensive.

I also now store food I can readily cook with my Jetboil Camping Stove. Things such as Progresso soup, cocoa and coffee.

Finally, we always have on hand, sealed in plastic totes, various snack packs, Oreo’s, ritz crackers, and peanut butter. Again, nothing is gourmet and we wouldn’t want to live on it long-term, but we have a variety of filling, family-friendly food.

These types of foods provide plenty of nutrition and calories for a short-term emergency up to perhaps a 7-day power outage. The MRE’s are also convenient if you have to send someone out for some reason, as they are self-contained and have a high calories count. (Typically 1500-2000 for civilian MRE’s)

Some other foods that you could store for this purpose, but that we don’t (in quantity at least) are Slim Jim’s Mean and Cheese packs (an easy 200 calories that doesn’t taste horrible and is not just meat), power bars (these need to be rotated faster than you might think though), and dry soups such as Cup-a-Noodle (assuming you also store a method to boil water if the power is out)

2) Don’t switch your diet if you don’t want to.

While my wife and I now rather enjoy cooking with our ‘beans (and wheat, and oats) and rice’, after doing an examination of expiration dates, I’ve come to the conclusion we didn’t have to.

By checking expiration dates, you will know how much of a given food you could store without worrying about any of it going bad.  For example, if you eat 6 cans of green beans and canned corn per week, and the average expiration date is 2 years away, you could store 600 cans of green beans and canned corn and never worry about it going bad! Next, take a look at your peanut butter. I eat the Smucker’s Natural Peanut Butter and it has a relatively short shelf life, around 6 months. I eat about 1 can per month. In my basement, I have 6 cans stored. However, my wife eats regular Jif, which has almost a 2 year shelf life, so we store more of hers than mine.

If you do this for every food that is in your pantry, you will find that you can keep larger stocks of 70-80% of your regularly groceries and avoid some of the hassles associated with ultra-long term food storage. Obviously the one challenge is perishables. For me, that means I also store dry milk, a grain grinder so we can make flour if we need to (whole wheat is much better for you anyway!) to bake bread, and sufficient water to cook with.

3) Make sure you rotate.

Our food storage set-up makes it very easy to rotate our foods. When I need peanut butter, I just go downstairs and get it. When I come in from the grocery store, it is right next to our food storage racks. I simply drop off all my food storage food and take the rest of the perishables upstairs. Usually it sits on the floor til the weekend when my wife or I go down to properly organize it.

Some folks might not have such an easy set-up, but in order to not waste food, some method should be established where you are always eating the oldest.

4) Buy some of each.

Don’t do what I did, and make sure if you decide on a 6-month food storage plan, you don’t buy just 6 months of green beans on one grocery run, 6 months of peanut butter the next, etc. That is a surefire way to make sure you only have half-a-pantry when something bad does happen.

5) Buy in bulk and on sale.

While this might sound like it contradicts point #4, it doesn’t really.  This rule really took effect for us after we had a good base of food storage.  Once we were in a position where we didn’t go to the grocery store every week, when we do go to the store, we are now much more able to focus on items that are on sale.

However, even earlier on if you see a great deal on one particular item and you have the cash to purchase it, don’t hesitate.  For example, I was in Walmart last week and I saw Apple Juice 96oz containers on sale for $1.50 (regularly $2.06).  While many people might walk out with 1 and save themselves $.56, I know I will drink it and thus bought 10 and saved $5.60.  Sure, it takes up some space, but we’re set up to do it and I’d rather not go back 2 weeks later and find that the price is now $2.25!  Also, at $15 it is definitely a good portion of my allotted food storage money, but not enough that I didn’t also pick up some extra canned peaches (also on sale).

At your regular grocery stores, find out where and when the deals are.  For example, I religiously check Publix’s buy-one-get-one page.  If you have access to a Costco or Sam’s Club, take advantage of both buying in volume and at lower prices.  Aldi’s, Dollar General, and Sav-a-Lot are also local venues where we find great prices.

6)  Include something sweet.

This is a must!  Chocolate chip cookies, Thin Mints, or some M&M’s all store well enough in cool environments to last a minimum 3-6 months.  Both adults and kids need some normalcy during an emergency, and something sweet definitely fits the bill.  For something that lasts a little longer, consider jello (if you know you’ll be able to make it) or hot cocoa.

Other Resources

A special note, for those without a lot of space, start with their great article on small spaces food organizing.

27

05 2010

Food Storage 101 – Our Early Mistakes

As we had a number of water-related posts during the flooding in Nashville, this week we will be doing a full run of food-storage related posts.  As we’ve stated on this blog before, all supply storage is simply a bridge to help us to get from the beginning of an emergency to the end.  It doesn’t replace developing a mindset (fortitude) that allows us to be a rock for our family when they need us most, nor the skills that might be able to provide for us long term (gardening, cooking, splitting firewood, fishing, hunting, etc).

Let’s talk food storage

Whether you have relatively little room in your home to store extra food and toiletries or enough space to put away several years worth of vittles and toothpaste, there are a number of reasons to store food.  In today’s economic climate, the potential for losing one’s job would be at the top of my list of reasons to start a program.  Imagine knowing that if you lost your job, you wouldn’t have to buy, or would only have to buy a limited amount of, food for a month, 6 months or a year.  A good food storage program provides peace of mind.

However, it’s not going to happen by magic, and there are quite a few potential pitfalls.  My families ‘road to food storage’ included more than a few mistakes that I will share in the hope that yours will be more fruitful, and quicker than ours was.  Before I move on to the Advice and Beans Food Storage Plan in Wednesday’s post, I’ll list some of the things we did wrong.

My biggest Oopses

Error 1)  I first stored one thing, rice, in large quantities.  Don’t!  While I was at least doing something, I hadn’t really developed a plan.  Rice requires a lot of water to cook, and in an emergency situation, water might be hard to come by.  By extension, boiling water requires a lot of energy…and fuel might be just as challenging to come by if the power is out, as I don’t have a generator or wood stove.  Finally, while I like rice, I don’t like just rice…appetite fatigue would strike on a diet of just one item within a matter of a week or two.  Plus, while rice would provide the calories my family needs to survive, it wouldn’t contain many of the essential vitamins and minerals as well.

Error 2)  I can be a bit thick-headed at times, so I doubled up on the rice-buying error by then buying 100 pounds of white wheat (But it was a steal at around $10 for high-quality wheat!).  When I bought it, I had no idea what to actually do with it.  I didn’t have a way to grind it into flour to make bread or cookies with it.  I didn’t know how I was going to store it.  Heck, I didn’t even know if I liked it.  Since then I have come to appreciate our supplies of wheat. However when first starting out, do not buy things you are not sure you will, or can, use!

3rd error)  Not eating from our food storage.  I eventually thought I had things squared away…I stored more water for our rice.  I had a fuel plan.  I had stored a larger variety of food…red wheat, white wheat, oats, flour, beans, sugar, salt.  Notice a pattern yet?  I didn’t have anything to actually eat without effort.  Everything would need to be prepared, but because I didn’t eat from my food storage I didn’t realize it.  One of the main components of any good food storage plan is:  Make sure you have something you can eat right now!

So now you know our dirty little secrets, and they were some big ones!  No one just wakes up one day knowing how to store food in the perfect manner for their family.  However, what is one of the tenets here at Advice and Beans?  Persistence.  I had a goal, and I was going to move toward that goal until I got there.

Through a number of resources, such as an LDS friend at work who also stores food, as well as reading some James Wesley, Rawles, I eventually came to the obvious solution, and one that I had read about a long time prior, but had not internalized:  Store what you eat, eat what you store.

Yes, I had a ‘well, duh’ moment. 

At that point, for the first time, I actually developed a plan.  So don’t do what I did and follow this advice:  Plan first, buy later.  Know what you are trying to accomplish, and only purchase items that meet those objectives.  If your house’s power goes out every time a gentle breeze blows, buy more food that you can eat without cooking it.  If water is going to be a potential challenge, pasta and rice should not make up a huge portion of your food storage.  No one’s food storage plan is going to be exactly the same as everyone else’s.  Your plan needs to be adaptable, flexible, and maintainable.

Wednesday I will lay out a simple, comprehensive framework for a food storage program that you can then adapt to your needs, whether you decide to keep a 2-week or 2-year supply on hand.

24

05 2010

Foundational Element 3 – Supplies

When it comes to preparing, supplies are the first thing people think of.  Many folks imagine wild-eyed survivalists in camo with a stash of MRE’s and canned goods surrounded by a pile of ammunition.  In general, it is also one of the first things a new prepper focuses on.  While I absolutely believe a prepper should spend as much or more time on learning new skills and developing their fortitude as they do buying and storing supplies, supplies definitely have their place.

So what is that place?

While there are a million things you can acquire, all supplies have one thing in common:  they buy you time for life to return to normal.  They allow you to take care of yourself and your family for a period of time when you might not be able to get to the store due to a hurricane or ice storm.  Jumper cables allow you to get your car running until you can replace your alternator or battery.  Flashlights and candles allow you to wait out the power outage in relative comfort.

To examine the concept in another way, I think about one of my mentors, a 20-year Army Special Forces veteran (Green Beret).  While he might have supplies stored, he needs fewer, because he has skills that allow him to gather the things he needs to survive on his own.  For example, while I may store 50 gallons of water, he stores only 5, because he knows 10 ways to readily access clean drinking water.  Having more gallons on hand gives me a time cushion for the situation to return to normal or to allow me to find more.

So what should I store?

As supplies are essentially there to buy time, I recommend preparing your supplies in time increments.  For example, your first goal should be to have 3 days worth of supplies for you and your family.  Then you can shoot for 7 days, then 30 days, until you have what you feel comfortable with.  Don’t fall into the trap some do, which is focusing on getting a year’s worth of one supply, but none of another! 

For example, let’s take a look at one of my earlier failures.  One of my first supply purchases was 6 months worth of rice.  While that might sound ok, I now realize how foolish I was in that purchase.  First, I never once thought about how I would cook my rice if I ever needed it.  Second, I never thought about where I would acquire the water I needed to cook my rice.  Third, I never thought about the fact that 6 months of eating nothing but rice would likely lead to rice poisoning.  Just kidding!  But it would lead to appetite fatigue, and I would likely never want to eat rice for the rest of my life.  Fourth, while nothing but rice might supply my caloric needs, it wouldn’t supply the complete array of vitamins and minerals the human body needs to function at its best.

Seeing my failure, it is obvious it is better to store what one needs incrementally (meaning, store 3 days worth of each of the 6 categories, then 7 days, then 30 days, etc).  In order of importance, this is how I recommend you gather your supplies:

  1. Water – Water is essential, for drinking, sanitation, cooking, and survival.  A bare minimum would be to store 1 gallon per person, per day.  So if you have 4 in your family, and you wanted to prepare for a 3-day event, you would need 12 gallons of water.  As water is bulky, and can go bad, we’ll explore strategies for the higher quantities needed for longer events (2 weeks or more) in future posts
  2. Food – Food is also essential.  Although the human body can survive far longer without food than water, it’s not fun being hungry, and people are not as effective.  There are a number of ways to determine the appropriate quantity.  For example, I use a base of 2500 calories per person, per day.  While not exact, that could also equate to 2-3 pounds of food per person per day.  If you are really organized, you could also plan meals just like you normally would, such as 3 meals and 2 snacks per person per day.  We’ll spend quite a bit of time discussing storing food in future posts, as a good food storage program can save you quite a bit of money as well as being great in a time of need.  I also include a good multi-vitamin under food.
  3. Light – I’m sure some hard-core preppers or survivalists would take exception to me breaking light out   separately and putting it ahead of some other things.  However, I believe light is essential in maintaining a positive attitude, especially if you have children.  I also place it high because for a minimal expenditure you can supply your light needs for at least 30 days.
  4. Shelter/Warmth – Losing a home is one of the worst imaginable experiences.  Making plans for an emergency involving both staying at home and leaving your home (or being away from home) is vitally important.  I also include the ability to start a fire here, as well as making sure you have sufficient ways to keep warm, such as emergency or regular blankets, sleeping bags, and tarps or tents.
  5. First Aid – Every home should have a solid first aid kit and as long of your standard prescriptions as you can manage.  Optional but great to have items also include SAM Splint and Celox or other clotting agent..
  6. Toiletries/Sanitation – These items can be easy to forget.  Don’t!  Hand sanitizer, toilet paper, toothbrushes and toothpaste, feminine hygeine items, soap and shampoo are all toiletries and sanitation items you should have on hand.  Like having sufficient light, being clean provides a morale boost in a bad situation, especially among teenagers.  (Mom, what do you mean I can’t wash my hair?)
  7. Entertainment/Other – Have a deck of cards, a checker board or Monopoly game, and some books available.  Keep some toys handy for small children.  Some emergencies specialize in boredom (the calm before the storm, waiting for someone to plow the roads and the like), so be prepared to combat it!

Remember, supplies are time.  And the more supplies you have, the more time you will be able to go before an emergency turns into a crisis.

12

05 2010