Question for Preppers - Food Storage

Deer Jerky


You can dehydrate salmon, albacore tuna and fruit. Dehydrated meat can last up to a year with a vacuum sealer.

I use my vacuum sealer for everything, even short term storage! Well worth the investment.

Thanks Bioreaper!! Can't believe I scored the unit that cheap ether! I'll start searching around Google and see what I can find. I really like the pepper powder. I had taken a sample of my mariachi pepper and WOW, that's hot! So, I think in powder form, that's my best bet for using the peppers I grew.

After I got the dehydrator, I was thinking that a vacuum (the the mason jar lid adapter), would make a great compliment to the system. I may spring for one this week. :-)

I'm wanting some input on food storage. When tshtf, do you plan on one meal a day, two meals a day, or just how you eat now with no change. Do you count calories, or just buy stuff randomly? Or do you actually have a meal plan that you set up and buy ingredients for? I've been buying a little here and there and I'm finding it difficult to plan out meals 6 months to a year ahead. Any ideas?

Do it! it is definitely worth the money

You may not be ambitious enough to do a full meal plan, but you absolutely *MUST* be doing a caloric budget. If you don't know how many calories per day you're going to need for your family, and how many you have stored up, then you really have no idea how long your preps should last...

In addition to your calories, make sure you have plenty of
Salt
Sugar
Vinegar
Baking Soda
Dry yeast
Vitamin supplements

Bioreaper and everybody else on this thread....

if you haven't already you should go through Tinygreen's old thread! A LOT of great tips and recipes and etc. on canning and dehydrating.

Thread: >>>>Sustainable Living PLUS Canning and Dehydrating Food<<<<

I learned something about seeds you may want to know. When you clean them out of ...say a cantaloupe...dump them in a small bucket of cold wter and mash um and break up the clinging fruit threads with your hands. Stir them up and have good amount of water in the bucket.

Let them sit a bit. Then any seeds that float...discard them...they are useless.

Now dry the seeds on the cooler blow so they do not cook in the food dryer. Then pack away.

I dry all the squash seeds, tomato seeds, pepper seeds, peas, beans etc. I can get. You can eat them if you have to.
Last year I spent $2.20 for a lousy 10 seeds of one item!

Any flour I buy goes into the freezer for a couple of weeks before I do anything else with it.

I divide my efforts into two categories. I have a long term storage "core". This is stuff that lasts a decade or more.

The other part is what I call my working stock. It is mostly regular food that I keep in otherwise unneeded quantities. I don't put too much thought into this. It's size fluxuates. I've at times completely used up this part of my stockpile when we had an economic emergency in my home (doom doesn't have to be on a grand scale).

The core includes things like whole wheat berries sealed up with O2 absorbers, lots of beans, rice, etc.

The working stock includes things like canned food including a lot of canned meats, powdered milk, potato flakes, pasta, canned cheese, canned butter, etc.

As far as how many meals I'll eat that will depend on my assessment of the situation. Is the doom permanent? How much food do I happen to have at the time?

As a general rule I try to keep enough food on hand to live perfectly normal for 3 months. That's 3 meals a day and some treats, too. At two smallish meals meant to sustain life I could go 6 months at least.

In a bug in situation I wouldn't do one meal a day. Two is way better, even if it means just dividing the one meal up into two and maybe throwing in an extra side like green beans or corn.

I also use the tiny fruit jars to vacuum dried seeds that I have saved. I also put a strip of good duct tape around these little jars to keep then from cracking together and maybe breaking.

Seeds are going to be so needed...maybe.

I also use the tiny fruit jars to vacuum dried seeds that I have saved. I also put a strip of good duct tape around these little jars to keep then from cracking together and maybe breaking.

Seeds are going to be so needed...maybe.

^^^^THIS^^^^

A good hard freeze will neutralize *most* bugs, including their eggs/larvae.

Then, while still frozen, transfer to good 3 or 5 gallon pails and either 1. add the correct size oxygen absorber, or 2. displace the oxygen with carbon dioxide before sealing the bucket. I prefer CO2 - great thing about CO2 is that it is also kills damn near every insect known to infest food stores. Period

Gamma-Seal lids are essential for the buckets which will hold your "working stock" in the kitchen, but I wouldn't necessarily spend the extra money to put them on all your long-term storage buckets. (but have some spareGammas laid in in case one of your working set gets damaged, you under-estimated your needs, and/or for barter)

I'm a big proponant of bread. Wheat lasts a long time, is cheap and is almost nutritionally complete. For a very long time bread represented half the diet or more of most people.

One big issue is the energy required to bake it. It probably isn't best for some people. Although you can also sprout wheat and eat it as a cereal.

You can also fry bread if you got a little oil. It takes less energy to fry bread than to bake it.

Bioreaper and everybody else on this thread....

if you haven't already you should go through Tinygreen's old thread! A LOT of great tips and recipes and etc. on canning and dehydrating.

Thread: >>>>Sustainable Living PLUS Canning and Dehydrating Food<<<<

:bbuds:

My mom used to make biscuits in her cast iron skillet. They were delicious.

Yep. I still remember my great grandmother's skillet bread. Salt, flour and water!

I store a lot of Pilot Bread. I vac-pac it with the absorbers. Each one is 100 calories. You can use your nut butters, canned cheeses and they are a great companion to hot soups.

Now I'm hungry.

You might be better off getting hard wheat. It will last 30 years. Flour will only last 10 years.

I am not sure if this is the most updated list, but it gives you an idea of prices and how long items can be stored. If you can find a cannery locally, it is way cheaper to go in and can the items yourself.

[link to providentliving.org]

I heard a while back that some canneries closed their doors to the public, but I think you can still order much of it online.

[link to store.lds.org]

Those are just the basics. There are calculators that help figure how much and what items you need to store for a years worth of food for your family. They've been doing it for a long time. Adjust totals for more years.

No I am not Mormon. lolol



Also, you can do your own dehydrating.

[link to dehydrate2store.com]

She has a ton of videos.



[link to www.youtube.com]

Yes but after the die offs, won't the animal population come back rather quickly?

I live in the country and I have buildings I can use for smoking, curing etc. I'm leery of canning though. Too much risk of getting sick from eating turned food. And in a shtf scenario, going to the doc is gonna be out of the question.

I live in the country and I have buildings I can use for smoking, curing etc. I'm leery of canning though. Too much risk of getting sick from eating turned food. And in a shtf scenario, going to the doc is gonna be out of the question.