Posted on 10/24/2009 6:59:56 PM PDT by Bean Counter
We have had a number of open discussions here at FR for quite some time about the importance of personal emergency preparedness. Many of us have taken an interest in this subject for a long time, and have been working steadfastly toward being prepared for a real emergency, and this evening I thought I would share my progress on one phase of our plan, food.
Anyone who knows anything about preparedness will tell you that the first thing you should do is make a plan that fits your personal needs. A bachelor has much different survival needs than a family of seven. Our personal plan is to prepare to support 4 adults in place for a year. We don't have kids in the family right now, so we have not set aside any children's needs, but your plan may well have a considerable bit.
To date we have spent about $3000 over the course of the past year in stocking our emergency pantry. Much of that money went toward purchase of proper storage containers. Essentially, we ended up with three sizes of food grade white plastic food containers:
6 1/2 Gallons (fits 50 pounds of flour if you pack it)
4 Gallon (fits a 25 pound bag of beans perfectly)
5 Gallon Buckets(a late addition, but good for many things).
We also can a lot of our own vegetables and fruit. I have a whole cupboard of homemade jam, jelly and flavored mustards that don't appear on this list but would last us for years...
All bulk dry goods are stored in these plastic containers, along with a couple of commercial grade oxygen absorber packets. These are widely available and are very inexpensive. I bought 100 for $20. When you put them in a bucket that has beans in it (for example) then seal the top (all of our buckets have "O" ring seals) the absorber draws in all of the oxygen in that contained atmosphere, which leaves mainly nitrogen inside. Nothing we know of can live in a Nitrogen atmosphere, so even if you have a live insect in there someplace, it will not last for long.
Again, this list just covers our food preparations. We have also made arrangements for our medical needs, sanitation, water supply, personal protection, etc.
We have made many improvements to our home over the last 12 years including upgrading and replacing all of the windows and doors, upgrading the insulation in the attic, replacing and upgrading the insulation under the house, new duct work and a modern zoned forced air heating and air conditioning system. As you can see, this is an ongoing effort that has been years in the making.
We also installed a modern 78% efficient woodstove that allows us to heat the house with the heat pump turned off at the breaker. We use the forced air system to circulate the woodstove's heat and keep the house warm all winter for a fraction of the cost of using the heat pump. If we lost power, we would stay nice and warm, and we can cook on the stove to boot.
What follows is my inventory for our "extended pantry". We have our normal household inventory as well that does not appear on this list. The process continues, and there are other additions to come that are not listed here, and I have a perpetual list of things to add that I put up as cash becomes available.
Have a look and let's talk...
You’re welcome. For some of us it may be critical.
Thank you! I’ve never heard of a fresnel lens, although I have read that making your own solar oven using an insulated box and tin foil is a very INFERIOR product in comparison to those you can order on the Internet - I think that the URL is http://www.solaroven.org/ — or something very close to that.
I think it’s really important to learn how to use such items, NOW, in non-emergency conditions — which is part of the reason that every week we try to cook up a batch of bean soup using only dried beans and ingredients from the food storage supplies — although adding a fresh carrot, a diced potato, half a stalk of celery and minced onion is permissable.
The important thing is to get entirely accustomed to throwing together a GOOD TASTING nutritious soup using beans for the protein part.
My favorite dish from canned good is to boil up a serving of noodles, and then top them off with half a can of the generic store brand, “chili beans” — they are a red bean canned in a thin chili sauce, and they really taste good with noodles — something I happened to discover one day when “playing” with ramen noodles, which are NOT necessary, you can use any kind of pasta from spaghetti to bow ties to elbow.
I am curious to learn what the 300 pounds of salt is for, and what kind you purchased - is it the iodized, for instance? I thought I read somewhere not to store iodized salt for years, as there’s something about the iodine....
Have you ever actually cooked up a batch of the beans which you have kept frozen for five days?
At this time of the year, I try to plan what dry goods — i.e., oatmeal, cornmeal, pasta, instant potatoes, etc. that I’m going to purchase and intentionally let “FREEZE” in the rafters of the garage for a week when it gets extremely cold in January.
I don’t recall ever reading about anybody freezing their legumes before.
Have you actually ever used any of them ???
Thanks.
I remember that when troops in Iraq were drinking water shipped in, in trucks, that many said that it tasted vile, and there were lots of requests to please send koolaid, tang, powdered gatorade -- ANYTHING to make the water palatable.
What happens to tea after several years storage? Anything? Should there even be any expiration date for black tea??
I'm thinking there must be millions of Americans who have tins of VERY old tea somewhere in the cupboards, as they normally drink coffee - but I have NO idea how long AFTER the "Exp.Date" that either black tea or the herbal varieties are still good.
Which beans were most successful for you? How many beans does one plant yeild? (A cup? 2 cups? OR...?)
I read an autobiography by a woman who was a child in southern Missouri during the Great Depression of the 1930s and she said that Lima Beans were one of the only successful crops during that massive drought, that they could take the intense sun and lack of water very well -- but that after harvest they were very very very difficult to dry out. So they ate LOTS of lima beans, almost every day, but could not dry them out to last through the winter months.
Tell me more about what you are doing with your beans - also, have you tried cooking any up??
Thanks.
We have a well, but it's run by an electric pump. The water is great, though, and we used the well full time until municipal water was available out here.
I want to find a hand pump, just in case we lose power.
other use for basement ping
I agree with you.
ALL of my emergency provisions are of the canned or dried variety.
Indeed, I won’t even purchase any frozen foods unless they are on sale, and unless I can seriously say to myself that if it thawed out and had to be tossed away, that it would not upset me.
So of course I don’t own a freezer.
And in the small freezer that is part of the refrigerator, I have at least half of it filled with large frozen blocks of ice — I slowly freeze small quantities of water in used wax cartons, of the kind which Florida Orange Juice is sold in.
I never worry on the occasions when the power goes out, because I’ve never even had the tiny ice cubes melt, so whatever food I have in there, admittedly little, can’t possibly go bad, as it stayed VERY cold the entire time with all those “giant” blocks of ice.
I’ve read so many disaster stories online where people find all their freezer goods thawed out. Unfortunately many of these online accounts include how they simply re-froze everything, and that it was all still “good.”
Those kind of stories scare me enough that I don’t like to eat food from people who own large storage freezers, there are simply too many stories about RE-freezing all that food which experts claim should be destroyed.
LOL!!!
After the 2nd of 4 hurricanes went through a few years ago we were without power. We decided to go drive around and see if we could find something open.
The only place we found was a chinese restuarant. Tables were a couple feet high with dirty dishes and they were busy as ever. They could cook but they were without electricity. A lot of people were eating shrimp.
After a couple seconds of nearly losing my cookies we walked out. Went home and turned on our grill.
bookmark and thanks for the post
driftdiver ~ Pay cash, gets expensive though.
Worth a trip across the border. Massive quantities of antibiotics are dirt cheap in Tijuana...
Palmetto bugs. There are no cockroaches in Florida.
Interesting thought, are they of a decent quality?
Less toxic...
Careful though. IT’s as illegal as carrying pot across the border.
They are often made in the exact same plants from the exact same starting materials as the stuff on this side of the border.
Mostly “No Deeference”
I thought you could carry a small quantity?? Doesn’t matter, I’m in Florida.
You can carry whatever your prescription is for. Any more than that and you are trafficking. If your prescription is for 20 pills, and you are carrying 200, you are busted.
If your prescription is for codeine and you are carrying oxycodone, you are busted.
Since I live in Florida it would cost more to go there than to buy my modest needs here
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