The Food Storage Blog

I am at the limit for the number of items I can have in our current store. So, pending upgrade (next week I hope), and because I’m interested in testing Paypal buttons anyway for some other products, I officially offer here at Advice and Beans the ‘Awesome Bucket Combo’:

Awesome Bucket

It includes 9 Awesome 1-Gallon buckets, 10 – 1-Gallon Mylar Bags to put in the buckets, and 20 – 300cc Oxygen Absorbers to go in the bags.

When I got a look at the buckets for the first time last week, I was very impressed, and not just because I am selling them. At our house, my wife has already said we will use them for any number of things, including storing tools or knick-knacks as well as for smaller quantities of flour or sugar. They are solid, have read plastic and metal handles, and come with gasket seal lids.

You may purchase the combo for $51.99 by clicking the Paypal Button immediatley below ! Let me know if you have any questions at public@adviceandbeans.com.

The AdviceWife is right, this meal was excellent. Considering she tells me that I will starve at the end of the world for lack of Pop-Tarts and Grilled Cheese, that’s saying something. I’m definitely the pickiest person in the house, but I do love pasta and chicken, so the Chicken Tetrazzini was a good first choice food storage meal.

Specifically, the pasta was a touch too al dente for me, but that is more likely my wife’s taste than any fault of the dish. I warmed up 2 servings of leftover’s on Saturday and Sunday, added a touch of olive oil and chedder cheese, and it softened up to exactly the consistency I like. I wouldn’t have known it was rice pasta unless it was mentioned in the original post. Any time we can eat a great meal and avoid my wife’s gluten allergy, that’s a signficant bonus.

The meal tasted excellent, and did include two servings of vegetables from our food storage as well (green beans and corn, both $.35/can at HG Hills!) and one not-quite-home-made item in a perfect serving of garlic bread.

Chef T rates this 4 stars!

I made our first completely food storage meal tonight:  Chicken Tetrazzini.  I was a little unsure about making a meal from only dry and canned goods.  Including meat!  Overall it was pretty good.  My parents and my father-in-law all tried our first experiment. Everyone at the table had at least two helpings, which must say something!  I had never made Chicken Tetrazzini before, so I really didn’t know what to expect.

It has a yummy creamy sauce with chicken and mushrooms over pasta.  I mostly followed the recipe but I did alter it for my gluten allergy.  I used rice noodles and gluten free all-purpose flour.  Gluten free or regular, it was a great and easy meal.  Once upon a time I might have thought my husband a little kooky, but it is SOOO unbelievably nice to walk in to our food storage and have everything for a meal without having to go to the store.

Chicken Tetrazzini from It’s in the Bag by Michelle and Brent Snow

6 cups water

8 Tbsp. canned butter

½ cup flour

1tsp salt

½ tsp. garlic powder

½ tsp. black pepper

2 chicken bouillon cubes

1 (12oz) can evaporated milk (I made my own with powdered milk)

½ cup Parmesan Cheese

1 (4oz) canned mushrooms, drained

2 (13oz) cans Chicken meat, drained

Bring 4 cups water to a boil. Add pasta to boiling water and stir gently. Boil for 6-7 minutes or according to desired tenderness. Remove from heat and drain.

In a medium sauce pan over medium heat, melt butter and add spices, milk remaining water and parmesan cheese.  Cook, stirring frequently, until sauce thickens. Stir in mushrooms and chicken meat. To serve, place pasta on plate and top with Tetrazzini sauce.

Try it even the picky people in my house ate it!

Credit To:

The AdviceWife made our first ‘food storage book recipe’ tonight!  Pics, recipe and a little review to come this weekend.

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!