A well-stocked, well-organized pantry avoids last -minute dashes to the store, which means you save time and gasoline. It also makes eating out less tempting, so it can help you save money and lose weight.
Saving money is also known as frugality, a word that seems to have picked up bad connotations in the consumer-obsessed United States. So let"s use the word spartaneity, a back-to-basics, less-is- more approach to living in bleak economic times, and that"s reflected in my food storage choices. I didn"t invent the word, but it pretty much sums up what should be a winning approach for any suburban, couch-potato survivalist.
Frugality or spartaneity is about creating a comfortable standard of living, which provides for you and yours while allowing you to save as much money as possible. What"s more, you can potentially make back the cost of the book in the first week by improving your shopping habits.
Spartaneity begins in the pantry, for the reasons I"ve outlined above, namely that having a well-stocked, well-organized cupboard will save you time and money.
There are three different ways to store large amounts of food, and I"m in favor of two of them. I like bulk storage, or buying food in large lots and storing it at home. I also like the idea of beefing up your pantry through smart shopping, which we"ll explore more in Chapter 8.
You can also buy the Meal, Ready-to- Eat (MRE)-a form of food that comes in a lightweight pouch, lasts for a very long time, and can sometimes even cook itself (if it has a self-heating feature). MREs tend to be expensive, though. If you have more money than time, you might want to consider MREs. If you have some time, you can build up your pantry and bulk storage without spending too much money.
Make sure your food storage can survive a loss of power. Food in your refrigerator or freezer can"t be considered long-term food storage unless you have a backup generator and the fuel to run it. Even then, it will only last as long as your fuel.
How to Begin
On average, a person needs about 2,400 food calories per day. Most people prefer to consume between four and five pounds of food per day. Obtaining a proper balance of proteins, vitamins, and nutrients requires a variety of food sources. Some typical survival food comes dry and is prepared in water to make it edible, such as rice and beans, while other foods are usually eaten fresh and full of water weight, such as vegetables and fruits.
Here"s an important thing to consider: All the survival rations in the world won"t do you any good if you won "t or can"t eat them. Will you eat Spam? Or canned lima beans? You have to eat the food you store, and store food you will eat. It is useless to buy a lot of survival foods just because they are inexpensive if you or your family doesn"t like them. The best advice is to store the food you eat, and to get in the habit of eating the food you store.
A severe emergency, when you no longer have heat, electricity, running water, and may be running for your life, is not the time to strain your body by changing your diet. If you try to suddenly go from grazing on fast foods and frozen pizza to living on MREs, it"s pretty much guaranteed that your digestive system is going to revolt, and the results will not be pretty. And if you "re living on a diet of Pop-Tarts, Cheetos, and Hot Pockets-well, you"re a miracle of science. That said, you should go ahead and include some of those foods that you like in your long-term storage.
So what should you store? Start keeping track of what you eat. Do this for two weeks, and you can use that to plan your food storage.
If you want to take a more scientific approach, you can use Table 7.1 to start estimating your needs.
Begin with the basics, the lowest-cost essentials that are simple to acquire and will help keep you going in the tough times. Whole grains, rice, and beans are the bulk of many long -term food storage larders. Whole grains and brown rice are superior because they are packed with nutrients, unlike their counterparts.
Next, add dried and/or canned vegetables. Get some oils in there like olive, vegetable or peanut oil, because you"ll need something to use when frying your food. Do you eat meat? Add canned, dried or freeze-dried meat, fish, and chicken to your stockpile. You"ll also want to include dried fruit, peanut b.u.t.ter, and other snacks, especially energy-boosting foods. This includes chocolate. Even if you don"t eat chocolate, put some in storage because you can always use it for barter.
Table 7.1 Average Food Consumption per Person Also include coffee or tea. It"s easy enough to boil water even if you lose power.
You can find an Internet calculator that will help you figure out how much food you should store. One place to visit is Internet Grocer: Internet Grocer also sells canned, dehydrated, and freeze-dried foods.
So you"ve started stacking up lots of boxes in the pantry. This will be good for six months or a year, tops. Now, it "s time to take the next step and get some real survival containers, such as food-grade plastic pails with air-tight lids. These will preserve the foods, protect them from bug infestation, and can survive many disasters that might befall you.
Bulk Storage
Storage life of food will depend on the type of foods stored, their condition and age at the time of storage, how you choose to store them, and the temperature at which you store them. Even dry foods can deteriorate and spoil, with the major causes being incursion of moisture, oxygen, high temperatures, light, and animal infestation.
Storage containers need to be food grade, meaning they won"t deteriorate and contaminate food, and they will be able to seal completely. A common and inexpensive container is the plastic bucket (HDPE, type 2) with a rubber gasket lid manufactured specifically for holding food. While this type of plastic is a relatively poor barrier to oxygen, these buckets have good resistance to impact, acids, fats, oil, and moisture.
Used buckets may be contaminated with non-food items, so be careful. Bucket lids may need a prying wrench to open, or a more expensive option is to buy screw-top lids. You may want a scooper to remove grain from five-gallon buckets and into kitchen containers. Alternatives to the plastic bucket include one- or half-gallon gla.s.s jars and metal cans, but these are not as widely available.
Optimum food storage temperature (unless you"re talking frozen food) is 40 degrees. Most of us don"t have access to 40-degree root cellars. The storage lengths I"ll give you below are for northern room-temperature storage, or an average 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Every 10 degrees above that halves storage life. So, storing your food in an un-air-conditioned garage in Florida or Arizona is just asking for trouble.
If you store foods without using oxygen absorbers or some other kind of vacuum sealer, you can expect storage lengths along the following lines:* White flour-six to 12 months * Wheat flour-three months or longer if kept in the fridge (Note: I don"t like the taste of wheat flour kept in the fridge.) * Popcorn-two years * Baking soda-up to 18 months, but go by the expiration date when possible * Ground spices-one year * Whole herbs and spices-two years If you store mainly what you normally eat, and keep rotating your stock, then your food is unlikely to spoil. The best strategy to keep your food stores fresh is one of lifestyle and habits-for example, a diet primarily based on whole grains and beans, seasonally available foods, and drawing from bulk household supplies of sweeteners, oils, and preserved out-of-season produce will naturally foster a smart storage plan. Primarily local sources of meat, egg, and dairy products might be healthy additions, too. If you store several months of food or more, clearly label the containers by date and content and always eat from the older stores and refresh periodically to maintain your buffer.
As you can see in Table 7.2, this is going to be okay if all you "re going to do is keep a year"s worth of food and you rotate your stock. If you have more ambitious ideas, that takes more planning.
Table 7.2 Food Potential Storage Life If you want to keep more than a year"s worth of food on hand, I highly recommend you store at least some of your food in five-gallon plastic food-grade buckets.
If you"re storing food in a bucket, make sure the bucket is lined with a food-grade plastic liner, available from companies that carry these kinds of supplies.
These buckets should have an air-tight lid with an oxygen absorber placed inside. Oxygen absorbers require a little explanation before use. They are purchased in air-tight containers. Once exposed to the air, they absorb oxygen for three days to two weeks, depending on the brand. Then they quit. If this occurs in a sealed bucket, it will create a vacuum.
Place the oxygen absorber on top of the food inside an open zip-lock bag. Seal the lid, then tape the label of whatever you store to either the top of the lid or the front of the bucket, depending on your storage system, and write the expiration date on it. Bulk foods stored in this way can be stored, generally speaking, for seven years, but some foods can last much longer.
Vitamin and nutrient content will deteriorate over time, faster than the food goes bad. Most canned foods will lose over half of their nutrient content after the first three to five years in storage. The food will still be perfectly fine to eat but will contain less nutritional value when consumed.
Of course, you"re smart enough to rotate your stock. Whatever you store, even in your long-term storage, you are going to open it up in the next five years and eat it, right? Because otherwise, it "s a d.a.m.ned waste of time.
Make sure your food storage can survive a loss of power. Food in your refrigerator or freezer is not long-term food storage unless you have a backup generator and the fuel to run it. Even then, it will only last as long as your fuel.
One More Bucket Idea
If you are putting together bug-out bags for your car (see Chapter 14), you also may want to put together a bug-out food storage bucket. Put a red stripe on the bucket (or some other marker) to indicate this is the bucket you are going to grab when you are evacuating your house. You might want to put some comfort foods in there-you"re going to be stressed out as it is. And yes, chocolate is a survival food. The foods in your bug-out bucket should be ones that can be eaten without cooking or that require no more than 10 minutes of cooking in boiling water or over a flame.
You might want to consider storing more food than you need. If TSHTF, then cans of food might be used as a currency, at least for a short while.
Buckets aren"t the only storage solution. Another plastic solution is the soda, juice, and water bottles, which you probably use a lot in your house. These are commonly made from PET plastic. Properly cleaned and with screw-top lids, PET plastic containers will keep nearly any kind of food, provided the containers are stored in a dark location. PET plastics are nearly always transparent to light, and light will cut down on the length of time you can store food.
Mylar bags are also very good, and nearly impervious to oxygen. Many survivalists store food inside heat-sealed Mylar bags, which are then placed inside five-gallon plastic buckets; obviously, that"s only for long-term storage.
Dry-Bulk Foods-Pros * Very inexpensive-the cheapest of the options here.
Dry-Bulk Foods-Cons * Storage time is limited; you have to actively rotate your stock.
* If not stored properly, these can spoil and/or attract vermin.
* Require the most preparation time of the options here.
Money-Saving Tip A gamma seal lid has heavy-duty construction that allows it to be reusable. Over 150 million five-gallon pails are manufactured each year. Millions are discarded. If you can find empty, discarded pails, clean them properly to make them food-safe and dry them; then you only have to buy the lids, which you can find from numerous online vendors.
Gamma seal lids come in different colors. Consider color-coordinating your food storage for easier use.
Canned Goods
Most canned goods sold in U.S. supermarkets are guaranteed for 10 years. However, Del Monte and other corporations have done research that shows canned foods sealed forty years or longer are just fine to eat.
In reality, canned goods can be fit to eat unless the can bulges or rusts all the way through. Canned goods also have the advantage of being good after being dusted with radioactive fallout (eek!), chemical agents (ack!), or biological contaminants (argh!). Just wash the can thoroughly before opening, maybe in that distilled water you stored because you read Chapter 6.
However, while cans may last a long time, they won"t if improperly stored. Steel cans must not be put in long-term storage on concrete, or in cardboard boxes, or in a damp area, because this can cause the cans to rust. If the rust goes all the way through the skin of the can, the food within them will become worthless or downright poisonous.
The Canned Cheeseburger Conundrum One of the problems that people face when doing food storage is that it"s very hard to store their favorite meals. Some you can do with ingenuity. When my sister was in the Peace Corps in Mali (not the Hawaiian island-that"s Maui; Mali is a pestilent h.e.l.lhole in Africa), I mailed her a pizza. In a box, I placed a prepackaged pizza pie sealed in plastic, a can of pizza sauce, a bag of shredded cheese, a can of parmesan cheese, and a package of sliced pepperoni. I labeled the whole thing Bibles, and a month later, she got it. My sister was very appreciative.
But how do you put a hamburger in long-term storage? Well, you can get an MRE that"s hamburger-ish. Or you can use ingenuity. Would you believe in such a thing as a canned cheeseburger?
* Lightly fry small hamburger patties.
* Stack them into wide-mouth jars (the cooked patty should be just small enough to fit through the mouth of the jar).
* Layer the patties with finely chopped onion or garlic if you like.
* When ready to use, refry them, adding cheese if desired.
They aren"t the same as the regular hamburgers your family is used to, but they"re still good. And it"s the cheapest choice for putting hamburgers into long-term food storage.
Also, if you"re preparing for WTSHTF, remember to stash more than one nonelectric can opener.
Home Canning
Home canning is a great way to preserve foods from your garden to eat all year round, and a great way to add to your home stockpiles. It"s relatively easy to do; the only equipment you "ll probably have to buy is jars and lids. You can download a whole tutorial on it at Foods-Pros * Last a long time-up to 10 years.
* Can be an inexpensive option, depending on how you do it.
Canned Foods-Cons * Need more storage room than most other options.
Dehydrated Foods
Dehydrated foods, along with pickling and home canning, are what our ancestors used before some smart guys figured out how to freeze, vacuum-pack, and freeze-dry food. Dehydration works fine; dehydrated foods sealed in an airtight container can easily last a year, and it"s something you can do on the cheap.
First, invest in an electric food dehydrator. Then, cut the food in thin slices and dry it where insects can"t get to it. Once well dried, you can store dehydrated food in airtight jars or sealed gallon or five-gallon containers.
But what if you"re really cheap? Spartaneity is in, dude! Well, the great thing is you can dehydrate foods real cheap by simply airdrying them, if your climate permits. Some examples:* Sun-drying: This is ideal for fruits such as apricots, peaches, grapes, and figs. Sun-drying requires a number of hot (85 degrees or higher) days with relatively low humidity. Spread thin pieces of fruit evenly across a shallow pan and cover with a cheesecloth to keep the food safe from bugs and birds. Sunny porches, balconies, and even flat roofs are all natural places to dry food. Alternately, you can put boxes in the backseat of a car and lay the tray on top, with full exposure to the sun through the back windshield.
* Oven-drying: This involves drying food at temperatures between 130 and 150 degrees. (Some older ovens may not have temperature settings this low.) As in sun-drying, distribute pieces of food in a shallow pan or dish. You may want to check the food periodically for adequate dehydration.
* Solar dehydrator: You can build a solar dehydrator for food preservation instead of using an electric one. Here"s a nifty one: the tem
perature is too low or the humidity too high when sun- or oven-drying, the food may dry too slowly or even spoil. When the temperature is too high, it could cook the food and make it hard on the outside, while leaving the inside moist and vulnerable to molding or other forms of spoilage from microorganisms.
To prepare dehydrated food, just add water. The food should reconst.i.tute itself by soaking in water for approximately 15 to 20 minutes. Then, cook and serve. Many reconst.i.tuted dehydrated foods are a little darker in color, more fragrant, and sweeter in taste. Do not expect food dried at home to look or taste like commercially dried food. It"s better than that, but naturally, it won"t taste the same as fresh food.
Dehydrated foods will last from one season to the next. If you dry enough garden tomatoes this year, you can eat them until next year when fresh ones are again dropping from the vines.
Dehydrated Foods-Pros * Inexpensive-especially when you can grow many foods from seeds.
* Cheap-one of the cheapest alternatives you have here.