Posted on 10/06/2014 9:32:55 PM PDT by Kartographer
Another vital aspect of an effective rotation system is knowing the shelf life of the foods you are storing. A few items, when stored properly, have such a long shelf life that they may be considered relatively exempt from the best practice of rotation (although it’s still a good idea), or at least their shelf life is measured in decades rather than years; among them, you will find such things as water (depending on the container), honey, salt, wheat berries, rice, sugar, maple syrup, corn starch, distilled white vinegar, pure vanilla extract, liquor, and wine. Here’s a list of eight of these items and another list of nine items with long shelf life and tips on their storage.
As for most everything else not explicitly mentioned in the paragraph above, consuming any purchased item that is used past the printed “use by” or expiration date is ill-advised. It’s an exercise in mediocre nutrition and often in mediocre enjoyment as well, since the flavor usually declines along with the nutritional value, at best; it’s a game of culinary Russian roulette, at worst
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Preppers’ PING!!
If money wasn’t an issue, all my survival food would be freeze dried.
Storing and rotating canned foods mean that you have to eat canned foods, wealthy people should just buy it pre-done, and put it away out of sight.
I have the canned goods, months and months worth, with the usual rice and beans and such in the pantry, sometimes I may be up with 50 or 60 pounds of rice, 30 or 40 pounds of grits, and 50 or 60 pounds of pintos but the diet is boring.
My deep preparations are what I think of as my Stalingrad food stores, that is the number 10 cans of dried wheat and pintos, peas and such, they would be a lot of trouble to deal with since they take a lot of water, lots of fuel, lots of attention while having to can big batches of them (they cook in the jars) so that I could spend a day cooking, once a week, and eat the canned ones the rest of the week, and the coarse bread products from ground wheat (and a lazy baker).
Last year I caught a big sale and free shipping and ordered 6 weeks worth of freeze dried foods, the beauty of that is that it is easy to keep those put away for a rainy day of when my canned foods are gone, and if I am sick or injured and can’t handle the labor intensive dried beans and wheat, I have those freeze dried foods to use.
People should always remember that they could be out of service for a week or two or three, and may need some easy water and food until they get back on their feet.
There isn’t much along those lines that I’m not familiar with, for instance I have cooked my wheat berries in a thermos, and sprouted them, and wheatgrass juiced them.
For the beans though, especially old beans, I prefer the large batch of cooking while canning, by cooking them in the canning jars during the process, so that many meals are cooked at once and preserved for future consumption at the same time.
FIFO.
Which brand of canned do you prefer?
Use any canned goods that ARE NOT easy open tops
as they seem to leak air into the canned goods.
Most often times the 'store brand' (non-advertized) in a solid can is most stable for long term storage.
Check out your canned goods and see what is a solid, rigid can (ie: Progresso canned soups, good taste , but too high in sodium for my taste) for long term storage.
~Use any canned goods that ARE NOT easy open tops~
True, being stored in a cold dry place they can last literally forever.
I personally ate a 1981 canned buckwheat&beef stew in earlier 2000s.
It was actually better in quality than contemporary MREs (quality natural beef and no soybean).
~sometimes I may be up with 50 or 60 pounds of rice~
I don’t know why you are so fond in rice there. It probably has the worst nutrition value of all grains.
Bump!
We live off our food storage. We replenish as we use. We home can the vegetables we grow. I just had some grape juice from 1999 and it was fine. If you open a can and vacuum is gone, then don't eat it. If you want the nutrients from canned products then don't throw away the water in the can, use it for cooking. Use that water again for your gravy or anyway you can, don't throw it down the drain. Properly canned canned goods will last several years, perhaps more than a decade in a cool dry basement.
Cereal grains commercially packaged like breakfast foods will typically last many times the posted shelf life on the box. Those shelf life listings are for food stored in a warm room, worst case scenario. Hopefully your storage will not be worst case.
Emergency food storage does not have to be expensive. Mostly just buy what you normally buy but buy more than you need every time you buy. Soon you will have a year or more supply in your basement and never feel you have to go shopping at a particular time, you just go to your storage and get what you need.
Sorry, that should have been which brand of canner do you prefer?
I hate rice too.
Why would anyone skip rice?
Rice is a wonderful food for preppers, it is filling and stores well and absorbs flavors well, beans and rice are eaten daily by millions and rice is a staple for 2/3rds of the world.
In America it is a common side dish from Mexican food to Louisiana food and it competes with the potato.
Beans and rice meals and a vitamin pill go a long ways to keeping people fed and healthy and even an apartment living family can buy beans and rice in huge amounts.
I buy most things for price so I don’t have a preference in a canner, the only one that I ever bought new was a large one from Walmart.
I think people that don’t worry about price skip the Presto or National Presto and go straight to All-American, which I don’t own.
Pressure cookers of all sizes are also useful to preppers because they cook quicker with less fuel, and can be brought to a boil and kept wrapped up in towels, to cook like a thermos does.
~Pressure cookers of all sizes are also useful to preppers~
True, they are particularly useful to cook dried beans.
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