Food storage - whats in the can?

Working in layers or tiers we need to build up our stockpiles. Why? Because most of us can afford to only spend a small amount on planning each month. Once we have put some staples in the house we need to think about adding some canned goods to what we have on hand.

Can goods can last a very long time, if you properly inspect them before purchase and if you store them properly. Once you start looking at canned goods you might be surprised to see what comes in a can now days.

The first thing to do with any can is check if the can is dented, deformed, rusted or any other issue which does not make it the perfect can. These are all signs of the food in side of the can not being edible. Bulging cans are absolutely not something you want to buy. We need cans with nothing which might compromise the seal of the can. The next thing to check is the date. The date is when the food inside of the can starts to lose nutritional value. From that date forward the company is saying the food is degrading. This does not mean the food is not edible, it does mean the food is not the same as the day it was put in the can.

When selecting cans try to replicate what you eat on a regular basis. You can easily find precooked meals in cans which are a plus during a bad day. Toss a couple cans of chili in a pot and feed everyone quickly. You can also find ingredients inside cans to make different meals with. Of course having the meal already made in the can cuts down on the number of cans you have to buy.

Buy things which are good for you. During an emergency, be it a lost job or natural disaster you want to keep everyone's health as high as possible. With the proper nutrition your body can fight off dieses and infection. You can perform more physical labor if need be and believe it or not, eating good food keeps you mentally clear and in better spirits. If you are in a truly bad situation eating good for you food can help your body last longer than filling yourself with chips and soda all day.

Vegetables should be one of the first things you look for in canned goods. There are a host of options in this category and you should look for items your family already eats. This will help with keeping things as close to normal as you can, get it…. CAN!!! A good suggestion is to focus on buying mixed vegetables to start, especially if you are on a tight budget. This gives you the most variety. If you have a picky eater they can take out what vegetable they do not like. Once you have a couple cans of mixed vegetables focus on getting a variety. We do not want to have to eat the same thing every day.

Fruit can also be found in cans. Almost any fruit you can think of is found in a can. Start with a couple cans of fruit salad for the same reason we have mixed vegetables. Most cans of fruit are also filled with syrup and water all of which can be used to increase the amount of calories your family is taking in. During an emergency you should never count calories in a negative light. Be happy you have the ability to put those calories into your families’ stomach! Syrup from a can of peaches can be poured over rice to give the rice some flavor other than “rice flavor” and increase the odds of people eating the rice for yet another meal!!! By a variety of fruit and focus on what your group will eat. I have someone who likes strawberries; a few extra cans were bought just for this person.

Protein is essential and cans are the easiest way to store meat. Start with some basic protein, SPAM is a good example. A couple of cans of SPAM can be put away and then added to all sorts of meals to ensure your family is getting protein. Ham, turkey, fish and all kinds of other protein can be found in cans. Be careful of the price!!!! Meat in a can of any type can get expensive!!! Store meat this way is especially easy if you have no idea how to smoke meat or know any other way of preserving meat.

If you have some staples in the house another category of canned goods to look for are items to enhance your staples. Spaghetti noodles can be eaten alone yet are so much more appetizing if you cover them with sauce. A good suggestion is to buy several types of sauce to give you variety in what you are feeding the family. Tomato sauce and other ingredients can be found to add to staples.

Look for items on sale and pick up what is on sale. There always seems to be sales on soups and other items when I go to the store. Plan on spending a extra two to five dollars when you shop every week. If you pick up a can a week only you will be working toward being able to feed your family one more meal and this might make all the difference. One can of chili, macaroni and cheese might be all you need to get through until the situation changes for the better.

Spending some time at the dollar store is good idea when you start to look for canned goods. You will be surprised when you can find the same item there for a dollar which you seen at the grocery store for two or three dollars! Buy some cans, mark the date on them you bought them and find a box or bin to hold them in. After a month or two of just buying one or two cans each trip to the store you will be surprised how many cans you have put away.

As Always,
Stay Safe

Food storage – start with staples

When we are planning for a bad day we need to set a good foundation which allows us to be flexible and adapt to changing situations. Food storage is no different. Now some of these items I will be suggesting a few of us might not consider ‘staples’. Maybe you do not eat this type of food on a regular basis. That is fine; we are not suggesting you alter your way of eating on a daily basis. What we are suggesting is you have the tools on hand to feed your family for ‘one more meal’ or even maybe have these items on hand to barter with if the situation calls for this.

The two items you should look at purchasing first are flour and rice. These are the bases for a vast majority of the world’s diet. With flour you can make several types of meals and the rice goes with just about anything. The idea here is to have items you can build up from and fill your belly. At most stores there are five pound packages of both rice and flour available. In some case you can find one pound packages for around one dollar. These can be bought, put up in the cabinet and forgot about for a while. Yes they need to be stored in a cool, dry place which is free of pest. Stored properly they can be left for extended periods of time.

Next items to look at buying are an assortment of beans. These again come in pound or larger packaging and can be picked up for around a dollar also. Along with the rice and flour you can store these in a cool, dry place the ants or rodents do not make a habit of visiting. Purchase a variety of beans to give you different tastes to work with. Any type of bean can be served with the rice and now you are really filling the belly when you need to. Add in a few bread items from the flour and now you have a decent meal. While you are picking up some beans odds are there are lentils somewhere near. Pick some of these up to make soups with. Pea soup is great on a cold evening!

Dry milk and sugar can be bought in small quantities and added to our storage. This allows us to make more items with the flour and now we can do some baking. How about some sugar cookies? Purely for morale!!! Add some oats and now you have the ability to make more items and increase your menu.

A valuable item most people do not think about is spices! With a foundation of rice and flour you can add different spices to change the flavor of your meals. Food apathy can be a real problem and spices can assist with keeping this at bay.

What is food apathy? It is when you are tired of eating the same thing over and over and over and over again. You can only eat plain white rice every day for so long before you do not want to eat another piece of rice. Changing the taste of the rice makes you want to eat more of it. If you begin to suffer from food apathy you will not eat, which leads to less energy to do things, sluggish thinking and is a spiral downward you do not want to take. Pick up a few shakers full of pepper, salt, BBQ flavoring and any other type of spice which catches your eye.

Honey is another often over looked item for food storage. You can pick up a container of honey, store it properly and just forget about it. They have found honey in ancient Egyptian burials thousands of years old and the honey is still good!!! Honey on a biscuit is a treat! The number of uses for honey is great and honey can also be used for medical purposes if you have to!!!
All of these items can also be stored long term. How to do this is the subject of a different post. For now, pick up a pound or two of staple items the next time you are at the grocery store. Remember we want to be able to feed our family for ‘just one more meal’!!!!

As always,

Stay Safe.

Food Storage, what's your reason?

Food, one of the things we can go a little while without, but only a little while. Sure you can go much longer than you think or what your stomach will tell you. Only problem is the lack of food will start to bring down your abilities in all areas and soon you are in a downward spiral which could prove fatal. The first thing you have to ask yourself when planning your food storage is "what is the best use of my limited resources?"

The best way is to first ask 'What are you planning for?' Is it a blizzard, earthquake, tornado or maybe the loss of a job? All these things are equally important to plan for. Are you planning on the food being mobile or are you planning on being at home?

While we plan we should plan to cover as many situations as we can by having tools or options which can cover multiple situations. Options which give us flexibility and the ability to adapt to anything we face. Some of these things we can easily do with food but some situations or specifically your situation might need specialized answers to what you face.

“One more meal.” We need to focus on feeding ourselves and loved ones one meal at a time; this will bring what could be an overwhelming task down to a manageable level. Where to start? The simplest way to start is to buy more of what your family already eats. Buy two of what your family already eats.

Take cereal for the kids, they eat one box a week? If you have the money buy two boxes instead of the one. Now your kids have cereal for two weeks. The next week you buy two again, now your kids have cereal for a month!!!! This is an easy way to start and I would strongly suggest everyone start with this method. What if we do not have the money? We need to still be able to supply our family with just “One more meal.” Let’s look at some options.

We can buy cases of MREs, dehydrated food or maybe bulk cases of food? Each has a benefit and a limitation. The first for all of these is cost. It can cost a lot to buy enough of any of these items to feed your family and I would suggest we start on the cheap!

Serving size is also a major issue when you start discussing food for a bad day. Now some folks need more and some need less. Let’s be honest, some people need a lot less but when a bad day comes is not the time to suddenly ‘get healthy’! You will have enough to worry about and adding a sudden drop to your calorie intake is not a good idea. In fact you might find yourself needing to burn more calories during an incident then what you are used to!!! You might have to shovel snow, cut up a downed tree or a host of other demanding tasks.

Top Ramen can be bought by the pack of six at the dollar store. That is six meals you can provide your family for a dollar!!!! it is cheap and easy to make. As some of you already know you can live on Top Ramen if you have to!! The trick here is to realize one package of Top Ramen is enough to feed one person for one meal. If stored properly Top Ramen will last a very long time.

Another item which will last a long time if stored properly is canned soups, chili and other canned items. These will last well beyond their best by date. Now depending on your family make up and needs a simple can of chili can count as a meal for one person or one meal for two people. You can also buy an assortment of items stored in cans. Everything from soups, meat and vegetables can be bought canned. An entire meal can be had out of what you can buy canned.

You can also purchase MREs and Dehydrated foods to fit the bill for your emergency needs. These are more expensive than what you can get at the grocery store when buying dry goods or canned goods. An obvious benefit with these two options is they are easier to carry around if you have to go and in this case the meals are already prepared. Usually water is the only item you need to add.

One MRE can have enough calories to carry you through a day. That is if you are not doing much physical activity during the day. Sure you might be hungry but if you spread out the time between eating each item in the MREs you can live off one a day. They also have the benefits of being highly mobile, an assortment of dishes and a large amount of items packed into one package. The downside, the are expensive, might not cover any special needs and give people a false sense of having found the answer to the problem. Like all the other options here the MRE does not cover every situation you might face and simply stuffing your closet full of them is not the best answer. (little side note; I can tell you from experience even with the assortment of meal types MREs get tiresome day after day!)

Dehydrated meals are another option people use for the answer to their planning needs. Most of these types of meals are made for hikers or camping, they are portable and need little else besides water to prepare. A major issue with these is there serving size. In most cases the serving size is listed as ‘one cup’.

For most of us one cup might not be enough to satisfy our hunger. Sure you can do the math and say this item has the recommended amount of calories but have you seen how much food really comes in a cup? This becomes a major issue if you have growing kids to feed! I have yet to meet a healthy teenage boy who does not try to eat everything in the fridge and now you are going to try and feed him one cup of something? Odds are you will be adding to your problems if you try to do this!!! What if you have a pregnant wife to feed? Are you really going to sit her down in front of a cup size serving? Good luck with that!

I would suggest tackling the food needs of your family from multiple directions. The first direction being, buy more of what you already eat. Fill up your pantry or cup boards with what your family eats every week. This way should something happen your family has extra food for a day, week or month and they will still have a sense of normalcy during a trying time.

Next angle would be to buy dry goods you can use to make meals of any size you need. Buy some pasta, dry milk, beans and dry bakery mixes to give your family some options. While you are at the store pick up some canned goods. Get whatever is on sell to start, than focus on buying canned items to give you a varied selection and once you start looking you might be surprised at what you can find in a can.

After you have a few weeks of food on hand from these categories go to the nearest camping store and see what kind of dehydrated food they have on sale. Remember to shop around and again you might be surprised at what you can find that is dehydrated! A little time spent on the internet will also allow you to add MREs to what you have on hand by watching for a sale.

Next thing you know you will have enough on hand to last your family a week or more, give you enough to make serving sizes you need and give you the portability you might also need! Mixing an item from your cupboard with something from your can goods, tossing in something from your dry goods and heating up something from your dehydrated items might just be the thing you need to serve your family a healthy and filling meal just when they need one!!!!

As always;

Stay Safe!!!

$20 and the Dollar Store

Driving home today I realized traffic was being kind to me and I was going to be home about a half hour early. On a whim I decided to try something. I gave myself about twenty minutes and twenty dollars to see what I could pick up at the dollar store. I went in with the mindset of having nothing and I was just starting to prepare.

I purposely did not bring my wallet so I would not be tempted to spend more but I did bring an extra twenty just in case. Grabbing a cart I went down each isle only once and did not go back. This gave me just one chance to find stuff. Here is what I came home with.

I did not take a list with me and went off the top of my head. As I went along I tried to grab one or more item from several groupings. These groupings would be water, fire/light, first aid, hygiene and food. This is not a list of stuff you have to go buy just what I grabbed as I went along.

Water

I picked up two six packs of water and a container of bleach. The bottles are obvious and with the bleach more water can be disinfected for drinking, cooking or bathing. The bottles can be used again and keeping the lids when you open them will allow you to carry water with you if need be.

Treating water with household bleach containing 5.25-8.25 percent chlorine

Volume of Water to be Treated Bleach Solution to Add
1 quart/1 liter 5 drops
1/2 gallon/2 quarts/2 liters 10 drops
1 gallon 1/4 teaspoon
5 gallons 1 teaspoon
10 gallons 2 teaspoons

Fire/light

At first I found tea lamp candles, a pack of eight, as I went along I found these emergency candles. According to the burn time on the box and the obvious size difference I put the tea lamps down and took these. Doing some quick math the total number of matches bought in the smaller boxes was higher then if I bought one big box. By twenty matches. Might not sound like much yet twenty matches could be the deciding factor between being warm, having light and even a hot meal. The glow sticks are rated to last several hours and could just be the trick to keep the kids happy!

First Aid and Hygiene

Looking through what was in the aisle I bought the box of band aids which had the largest variety and amount. The Hydrogen Peroxide is a good multipurpose item. The wipes are good for hygiene and first aid when dealing with minor cuts. Also looking through the medication I found the largest number of doses for pain killer I could find. You would be surprised, there are the exact same type in two different boxes. One can have six doses and the one right next to it can have three times that amount. You have to read the containers and get the most you can. The last item, toilet paper. If you have ever run out you will understand the importance of this item!!!!

Food

These might not be the first items you would pick but their is a limited amount of choices. I picked with the idea of one days worth of food in mind. The pancake mix can be breakfast and the batter can be used to also make biscuits or other items. The batter is basically flour and you can use it in the same way to make things. When picking cans, look for the ones with the furthest best by dates, check for dents and if they are dented DO NOT BUY THE CAN! The same thing if you find rust on the can. I grabbed one container of garlic salt to add some flavor. The candy is for the kids or dessert! The Top Ramen has six packets and can easily last longer then one day for one person. Yes that is instant coffee, no it is not a necessity to survive. Well for you coffee might not be, for me it is!!!!!

All together this took about fifteen minutes to gather. Total price was $21.07. Good thing I brought the extra twenty! I did not add in taxes or the CRV fees for the bottled water when I figured I could buy twenty items for twenty dollars. One item I would have added is a flashlight but I did not see one. Odds are I walked right by them.

Although getting started might seem a daunting task, you can see it really is not. A couple of dollars spent on the right items can go along way in making sure your family and you are able to take care of yourself if something bad happens!!!!

Stay Safe!