The Food Storage Blog

Hey everyone, I wanted to update everyone on what’s been going on here at Advice and Beans.  We’ve been absolutely swamped with orders since before Christmas, which is good in that the word is getting out about food storage and preparedness!   There’s a lot of great stuff going on behind the scenes here and we’re going to try to do a lot for the community and our customers in the coming year.  Here are some of the improvements you may or may not have noticed over at the store:

• We have moved to a Free Shipping pricing model.  All items at the store, unless otherwise marked, ship free!  However, please notice that even so, our prices have decreased over 10% as we continue to increase our buying power and pass that savings on to our customers.
• We are offering Oxygen Indicator Tablets, which folks can use to measure the oxygen levels in their food storage, test Oxygen Absorber packs, and any other experiments they might want to do.  They turn blue in the presence of oxygen, and red when there is no oxygen present.
• We are offering Humidity Indicator Cards, which do the same thing as the Oxygen Indicators, except for moisture content/humidity.
• My wife has insisted we add some more Zip Seal Mylar Bags to our assortment.  She loves them and uses them in our kitchen all the time.  We are currently offering an 8.5″x8.75″ Zip Seal; if they are successful we’ll look at some more sizes!
• We are offering our 100cc and 300cc oxygen absorbers in bulk!  Buy a case and save a ton!

We plan on many other improvements to our assortment this spring as well.  We are proud to announce that we are now a distributor of Gamma Seal Lids; we should be receiving our first shipment toward the end of the month, so you’ll see them on our site by the first of March.  Additionally, we sourced some 5-gallon and 1-gallon FDA approved buckets, as we have had a number of people request we stock those.  I expect those to be in-stock next week!  This is especially exciting as both the Gamma Seal Lids and Buckets are from right here in Tennessee, Advice and Bean’s home state!

We are also now a proud Rothco distributor, and plan to carry a small assortment of the very best Rothco merchandise.  If anyone has any favorites, let me know and I’ll try to include them in our first set of orders!

Finally, longer term we also have some more great stuff in store for the remainder of the year:

• We are still working on a food storage handbook, combining the best advice available from many sources.
• We are going to do a site redesign to make it easier for folks to find immediate info about food storage, the products we sell, and how to use them successfully.  I’m hoping those changes will occur by the end of March.
• My wife is going to do the occasional guest blog on how we are using food storage in our own home, recipes, and some other topics.
• I plan on doing a 70-80 mile chunk of the Appalachian trail later this year, and I am going to do a blog series about my preparations, gear, and hopefully do some posts from the trail if I can find a signal.  It’s not directly related to food storage or preparedness, but I expect the experience will teach me alot, let me learn alot from y’all who might have already done something similar, and maybe even be a little entertaining!
• We’re going to do some contests here at the blog and offer some great products and gift certificates as prizes.  We’ll be requesting articles from the community about food storage, preparedness, and your stories about how they have positively effected your life.  We’ll do an official kickoff of this by the first of May, but if anyone wants to submit anything early, feel free!  Articles should be 300-700 words, if you like you can include pictures as well.

There’s some other great things planned, including a more active blog and social media presence, as I expect to have some more time to devote to it starting around the end of April.  It’s an exciting time, and I hope you’ll drop in now and again to check us out!

Some recession-proofing thoughts for your food budget. (H/T Instapundit)

This post is dedicated to Mrs. Linda, you have my apologies for not having this information front and center!  For the Mylar Bags we sell at Advice and Beans (Discount Mylar Bags), there are a number of ways to seal them, including with a straightening iron, some vacuum sealers, and a hot jaw sealer.  As most everyone probably has a clothes iron around, here are instructions for using one to seal Mylar.

1. Place the bag on a flat surface. The two sides of the open end of the bag must be flat and without wrinkles.

2. Set the iron to “wool.” The wool setting will be warm enough to seal most Mylar bags. Thicker bags may require a higher setting.  You do not need to place a cloth or anything in between the iron and the surface of the bag. IMPORTANT: The material of our bags has been designed with a heat resistant outer layer. We accept no responsibility in attempting to do this with other packaging materials.  Please note you can melt even the outer layer if your iron is set too high or you keep the heat on the bag for too long.

3. Seal the bag closed with the iron. Go over the bag several times in a three to four inch wide band creating a wide seal area. Watch closely for even small wrinkles. A small wrinkle in the seal can remove 95+% of the barrier proprieties of the bag.

For more info please see the following YouTube video.  (This is #1 in a 3 part series; you can link to the other parts from YouTube)

Just to update what we’re doing at the store.

Initially, I set up a shipping profile that I thought would meet the needs of the average customer.  However, in doing so, I opened a can of worms I was unprepared for.  For example, while the shipping costs were very close for the average user within 1000 miles of Nashville, a challenge arose for those users on the West Coast specifically.  They were getting the same rates as someone from Indiana or Mississippi.  Meaning that we were losing our shirts whenever we had to ship to the left coast of the US.  Oops!

In order to ensure accuracy in our shipping policies, I have disabled the custom shipping setup I was using, and have now implemented Actual Shipping Rates for both the US Postal Service and UPS (there is a small handling fee for handling/packaging added to postage).  For most of the store’s repeat customers, you won’t notice much if any difference in your total costs unless you are on the west coast.  Adding UPS shipping means that for heavier shipments, you should now have a cheaper alternative to USPS Priority Mail.  In general, lighter shipments will still go USPS Priority Mail.

If anyone has any particular questions or notices anything funky with our shipping rates, please let us know and we’ll check on any issues ASAP!

One more update; we’ve added a desiccant to the items we are stocking.  A desiccant is similar to an Oxygen Absorber, except that instead of removing oxygen, it removes moisture from an environment.  We are offering 10-Gram Desiccant.  One of these will be the perfect size for your average ammo can, and 2 will protect up to 1 cubic foot from the damage moisture can cause.  They are great for using in your camera bag (if you won’t be using it for a while), with your ammo, to protect leather goods, as well as keeping crispy foods fresh, such as chips or crackers.

As always, if anyone has any questions or would like to see something in particular stocked, let me know and we’ll take a look!

One more thought on why we store food.  Earlier this year, the price of wheat doubled after Russia announced a grain ban due to drought.   Having a good supply on hand protects from much of the volatility in today’s food prices.