The Food Storage Blog

I’m always thrilled to come home and see Mylar Bags on our freezer!  My wife stored some cat and dog food this weekend.  We buy our pet food in bulk, usually from Petsmart where my wife gets a huge discount twice a year. (Although we will gladly pick it up anywhere we find a deal, sometimes at Walmart, and occasionally in other pet stores we go in.)

Cat and Dog Food

The main thing to remember about pet foods is that most contain oils that can go rancid over time.  (Sometimes the food will still be edible and provide calories, but will taste bad and can sometimes cause illness).  While I recommend rotating pet foods yearly to avoid this, we’ve had good results when testing foods we’ve stored up to 2 years old.

Because our dogs are small (smaller than our Cat-Puma), my wife stores food in gallon bags.  If your dogs are larger, 2 or 5 gallon bags might be more appropriate.  We’ve taken to storing food that we will use within 12 months in totes, for both visibility of what we have, and because they stack nicely and fit on our racking more conveniently than buckets.  For us, that means about 200-300lbs of various pet foods.  If you have the space and are attached to your pets, I would store the same amount of days of food for them as you do for yourselves.

Arnold guarding the baby

Hey everyone, I need your help!  A lot of folks have found our cheap little food storage booklet very helpful.  Because of that, I thought a booklet of food storage recipes would be great for folks who want to store a little something with their food so they know what they can do with it if they need.  My goal is to have another center-fold 8-page guide.  I am thinking a title page, then 7 pages of recipes, 2 per page, for a total of 14.

If y’all are interested, please send me your favorite food storage recipes.  I will cook them up in our house, and the best ones will make the recipe guide.  Any recipe we use will be credited to you, and we will send you a free .PDF version of the booklet as well (or if you place an order at the store, I’ll put a hardcopy when I ship your order for free).  One thing I think would provide more options is to have a ‘base recipe’, and then each would have one or more ‘upgrades’ one could toss in.  For example, a standard potato casserole might be pretty easy to do out of food storage items; however, a blurb at the end of the recipe that says ‘if available, tossing in some cut sausage adds texture and flavor’ would be good to round out the recipe.

Finally, my goal is to use all of the basic ingredients I recommend for a base food storage system (ie. Wheat, rice, corn, pasta, flour, dried milk, sugar, salt etc).  While I love Quinoa, for example, it won’t find its way into the recipe as its not a common food storage item (though I’m so glad we have a couple of buckets worth!).

Thanks, I appreciate any help ya’ll!

Something folks have been requesting for a while (well, almost since we started the business!), especially those trying to get others on board with prepping/basic food storage.  I am proud to introduce our new Comprehensive Long Term Food Storage Kit.  It includes everything someone needs to put up around 140-150lbs of food.  We start with smaller bag sizes front and center as they are much easier to use and less imposing than a ginormous 5 gallon bag.

The new kit includes:

(20) 5 Mil ShieldPro 1-Gallon Mylar Bags and (20) 300cc Oxygen Absorbers
(20) 5 Mil ShieldPro 1-Quart Zip Seal Mylar Bags and (20) 300cc Oxygen Absorbers
(40) 2 Gram Desiccant Packs
8 Page Essential Guide to Long Term Food Storage
Oxygen Absorber Bag Clip – To keep absorbers fresh while you work
One-Page Basic Kit Storage Recommendation – What can you store with your new kit? (Pending finalization)
Mylar Buddy Sealing Helper – To help you seal your bags

It retails for $49.99, which is around 10% less than the cost of the components separately.  If we can mass produce a bunch quickly enough, we may be able to knock off another couple of bucks.  Please forward on to anyone you think might be interested!=)

Thanks!

For a long time, I’ve wondered about getting into long-term storage foods at our online store.  However, if you know me, you know I don’t want to sell anything in my store that I don’t use myself.  I’m pleased to announce that we’ll be starting to carry some long term storage foods this year.  Better yet, you’ll know that the ones we carry are good!  I’m a very picky eater, and the first 3 foods we are carrying are 3 I eat regularly.

The first, Red Feather Butter, is THE standout long term storage food, and EVERYONE should have a can or a case in their long term storage food.  Not only does it have an enormous shelf life, it is BETTER than regular grocery store butter (and I love butter in general).  My wife and I first tried it at a recent survival show, and ended up buying a whole case because of how good it is.  It is so yummy I eat it on saltines as a replacement for peanut butter on many occasions.  You can also use it for cooking, and it spreads easily.

The second, Bega Canned Cheese, is a very reasonably priced storage food that is good for snacking on crackers, using for cooking, and it works well as a grate-able cheese for pastas and the like.  If you lack dairy in your storage foods, you should definitely pick some up (and hurry up and go get your powdered milk as well!).

Finally, Yoders Canned Bacon is just that…bacon!  Yummy!  I realize it’s a little expensive (though we’re cheaper than Amazon!), but at 50 slices a can, even one can be a great addition to your survival pantry.

To celebrate Discount Mylar Bag’s ‘First Foods’, I’ve created several coupon codes to help you sample them for free.  They are:

FreeCan1 – Spend $100 and get a free can of Bega Canned Cheese.

FreeCan2 – Spend $150 and get a free can of Red Feather (OMG it’s good!) Butter.

FreeCan3 – Spend $200 and get a free can of Yoder’s Bacon.  Everything is better with bacon!

FreeCan4 – Spend $300 and get a free can each of Bega Canned Cheese, Red Feather Butter, and Yoder’s Bacon!

These all run through February 28; come and get it!  Mmmmmm!

Thanks y’all!

Our 2nd attempt at an informational video. The camera is a little shakier without my wife to help; I’ll have to draft her from now on. We’ll keep getting better at the technical aspects I am sure. My wife said she needed a new photo camera; maybe we can find something that takes some better video/sound as well. Suggestions of videos folks would like to see are welcome!

Thanks!