Posted on 02/27/2014 5:43:09 PM PST by Kartographer
There are certain factors you should consider when living through an extended emergency. It is common for your physical, mental and emotional state to be affected following a disaster. On top of that, you are hungry due to rationing food portions and still have to continue daily activities, physical labor, parenting, etc. If you haven’t put thought into the right types of food and the amounts needed to see you through the ordeal, then you could be setting yourself up for deficiencies in your diet.
Repeatedly, I have told readers interested in leading a self reliant lifestyle to simulate a disaster at home so that your family can practice living through it using the supplies you have. This creates a safe environment to prepare and train family members for what they might expect and help you learn what you may need for the future. Using the contents of your emergency pantry is no different. In fact, you should be using your pantries regularly to ensure the food you store is as fresh as possible. In my cookbook, The Prepper’s Cookbook, I list 25 must have foods for your pantries and also touched on what to expect in an emergency situation when you are rationing your supplies.
(Excerpt) Read more at shtfplan.com ...
I grind popcorn all the time to make cornbread and corn cakes. Good stuff!
“I know that there is a guy in LA county that gives classes about what weeds and other wild-grown edibles that are safe to eat. His whole diet is pretty much free. Yummy acorns”
Seems like I saw an episode of Huell Howser (Kaifornia PBS show, California’s Gold) where he was with this same guy you mentioned going from field to field munching down weeds.
Okay, I am truly sick and need help. I simply can NOT read the word “pantries” and not see “panties.” I guess that’s good in a way.
It is filling. It also gives you something to do. It can be popped over a wood fire. The wire baskets for it are available on eBay.
While there is obviously a lot of work to a SHTF lifestyle, there are times in the evening when people will appreciate being able to make an easy snack and spend more than a few minutes eating it. Think about camping experiences.
I used to know some folks who seasoned theirs with a mixture of kelp and Brewer’s yeast. That way, the kids would eat the supplements. It was actually quite tasty. They kept the mixture in a large vintage metal shaker.
It is my husband’s go-to snack. He has been steadily getting his weight down and popcorn, plus walking, has been one of his methods.
No Spam?
Potatoes are full of Vit. C and fiber. Boiled, mixed with some powdered milk made at 2x the usual thickness, some spices or whatever flavorings you have, and a few slices of Spam makes a filling soup. Store some ghee or canned butter to add to that or use the fat for sauteeing. A raw potato can be covered with wood ash in the margins of a low fire and baked that way.
Home-raised chickens can be full of fat. That fat can either be rendered or can be skimmed from a soup and then used for sauteeing or flavoring something bland, like potatoes. If you roast a chicken,even if skewered over a fire, place a foil container under it to catch the drippings, then use those to flavor greens, potatoes or other veggies. Most poor rural cultures value a fat chicken highly. Rendered (or skimmed) chicken fat will keep for awhile w/o refrigeration.
In times of food shortages, no one is going to worry about being fat. They are going to worry about not losing weight, having energy, being able to sleep without hunger pangs and having enough vitamins to keep their teeth.
There is something comforting about a meal of warm, cooked potatoes and they are quite versatile. There are stories from Ireland of people hanging a slab of bacon and just wiping the hot potatoes over the cured meat to flavor it. Made the bacon last longer.
Some of the Vietnamese cooking blogs have wonderful stories from the past that illustrate all the ways poor people managed wonderful healthy food with very few resources. Getting every last calorie and nutrient available was important. Similar stories and recipes from Eastern Europe abound.
“Just received another month of freeze dried food today.”
Mountain House had their one year supply on sale last week for close to 200.00 off. Missed it and kicking self. Debating buying anyway, 200.00 bucks won’t seem a big deal if the SHTF.
Emergency Essentials has Mountain House on sale but today is the last day.
I don't know how their prices compare but the sales prices are supposedly 25% to 45% off various items.
here are some examples of a one year supply:
Premium 1600 One Year Food Supply @ 2,688.47 $1,849.95
Premium 2000 One Year Food Supply @ $3,867.69 $2,689.95
http://beprepared.com
http://beprepared.com/food-storage/mountain-house.html?container_type=33&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=National&utm_campaign=emer0228%20-%20INEM2158&utm_content=A&sc=EMAIL&oc=INEM2158a
Possibly.
Did some research on calories per acre. Turns out there are all sorts of confounding factors that make it difficult to make comparisons.
For instance, potatoes are listed at 18M calories per acre, rice at 8M. But then in some places you can get three crops of rice per year, making the land produce 24M calories per acre per year.
Also I discovered that the calories per acre reported for crops varies wildly from one source to another.
I got these through Nitro-Pak, I bought them ala carte so its a mix of Mountain House and Backpacker Country foods. They taste ok and the calorie/serving counts were ok. Nitro has sales all the time for 20-40% off stuff they are trying to move.
For prepping it has always seemed to me that in general canned foods make considerably more sense than alternatives.
Many of the things on your list require water or fuel to prepare, or both.
Canned foods can be eaten, if need be, without either.
They are of course much heavier than some alternatives, but that doesn’t seem like much of a problem unless you’re planning to be mobile. They may also be a little bulkier in some cases.
Our philosophy as well.
We are invested about 60% in canned goods and jarred supermarket foods that we like and regulary use, about 20% in home canned foods, and about 20% in prepared long term storage foods like Mountain House.
About 1/2 of our canned foods are in cases or containers so they could be loaded quickly for a bug out.
On the want list are some MRE type ready-to-go foods in case we do have to bug out quickly or are caught away from home. But the prices are so high we keep putting it off.
I do have one concern about canned foods.
Many now come with the pop top lids and I am curious if these lids will stand up over time as well as old style lids.
Time will tell.
One potential problem for canned foods in really cold climates would be freezing, which would likely damage the cans.
Depends on the MRE. Menu ‘C’ MREs are fantastic.
For clarification, that's not my list, but Tess Pennington's, who authored the article on 25 Foods. Yes, I agree with you on canned foods. I've had MRE's, and also some reconstituted foods that tasted like crap.
After that, experience, I want food to be easily accesible, and also "comforting". Pass the Sweet Sue Chicken n Dumplings from a can, please..
Thanks...I wondered if some other reason...not a favorite thing for me. Lots of campfires and other foods eaten there over the years.
Sorry, didn’t mean to imply you were personally responsible. :)
But I’ve read articles of this type for years, and very often the list of survival foods is dominated by things like nitrogen-packed wheat, that requires water, fuel, and often considerable prep time and effort before you can eat it.
This has just never made any sense to me. You’ve got other things to deal with, why add cooking as a life-complicating factor?
I’ve spent a lot of time backpacking, which is sort of a voluntary SHTF situation. :)
While the lightweight dehydrated foods with complex prep may be necessary in that case, I find it very odd that people would voluntarily invest in foods of this type when better options are available.
For instance, if people want to store wheat, I would highly recommend bulgur, which is parboiled cracked wheat. I assume that when properly stored it would keep for a long time.
The neat thing about bulgur is that if you don’t have fuel, you can just soak it in water overnight and it’s edible cold by morning. We used to do that a lot when backpacking to conserve fuel. It tastes a lot like rice.
I've had to break into my small preps and thank goodness they were there to get us through an unexpected budget bump. I've been to the grocery store once in four months and that was at the beginning of Feb for things like milk, lettuce, butter, and eggs. It's something when the oblivious family notices bare shelves in the pantry and freezer.
Adding that I agree and am very nervous if I can get the food preps back up in time. On a very tight budget (and getting tighter by the day with his min wage bs), but the need to hustle quickly, my target is June which sadly lines up with your date. I started a lot of seeds to get a jump on the garden but with the a/c heater system deciding to go into death throes, they haven’t done well in this cold house so much will have to be restarted outside later. Those who bought into the idea of throwing out a packet of prepper seeds expecting to feed the entire neighborhood the next week will have a very rude awakening.
I fully expect hussein to pull something at any moment so a good day is any day he hasn’t. Our GOP isn’t going to bat an eye when it happens as they’ve plotted and planned right along with him.
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