Food Insurance - any experiences or thoughts?

Book of possible interest

Find a copy of "Just in Case" by Barbara Salsbury
Her new book -Just Add Water How to Use Dehydrated Food and TVP can be found on Amazon.

The LDs seem t have written the book on food storage, having been at it for so long
Home Storage

Is a website that covers the subject.

Read

Study (and taste)

Plan

and then buy.


BTW, Mountain House sells foil packs of their canned goods if you want to taste the product. Most are OK to good, several are rather cland - so it pays to try a bit first.
And good lick on finding #10 cans right now...

 

All of the LDS food storage items are good for 10 years (Milk Powder and other dairy) to a maximum of 30 years (most everything else).
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With Mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, and HD food grade plastic buckets, you should be able to store your own bulk foods with similiar results.
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I feel very strongly that you should be ROTATING YOUR FOOD STORAGE, AND BE ACTUALLY EATING WHAT YOU STORE. I will let it go at that and say no more.

 

Great idea in theory Cat...but some problems in practice, at least for me.

First of all, 2 of us live here...but the food storage is for 12. Secondly, our storage does not include the many fresh items that we eat now that we cannot count on being there post SHTF...so we must replace nutrients (and bulk) in the storage with other things.

We rotate what we eat, but cannot always store what we eat since it just doesn't have the shelf life...unless we want to give up those things now that we might have to give up post SHTF. Now and then we make some pretty healthy donations to the local food bank.

 

The trick, g...especially in an area such as this one where the number of food banks is severely limited is remaining as anonymous as I like to be. I'm a bit secretive about my preps because I don't want extra faces should the time come. We make the donations, but it takes some doing.

Of the extra 10, 3 are our kids, 1 a spouse, 2 grandkids and 1 spouse...there's also a great-granddaughter, but she doesn't really count yet. Everyone has their own preps, but we handle the basic LTS food for all. Two of the other 3 have been doing a lot of the labor here for over 20 years and the other (their kid) for about 6. Only one of our kids is not involved, but we cover her in case we can get her here.

 

for rotating canned goods in your stockpile
theres a simple shelf you can make at home
its just bits of plywood set up so you drop new
cans in the top and pull the oldest out from the bottom
your food is constantly rotated this way and it
doesnt take much space
it also helps keeps cans with the same filling together
and you can label the front of it instead of trying to read the cans

 

I also agree with, "buying what you eat and eating what you buy". That said it's just my wife and I. So it takes us a while to rotate. I do have some long term stuffs. Such as cheese, butter, bacon, wheat berries, etc. But these are for the bottom falling out thing.

Has anyone heard of food. guy on another site like it. It's also the freeze dried foo stuff. Just a FYI

 

Thank you all for the posts, I am sucking up this info like a sponge.

A local place near me in Ranch Cucamonga sells long term food from small packs including Mountain House all the way up to 100lb bags of grain, rice and freeze dried potato slices. Honeyville farms dot com

I purchased several sample packs of food, fruits and actual meat (Ham, Beef and Breakfast sausage) The sample packs allowed me to filter the Good, Bad and the Ugly.

 

What about coffee? Nobody in this thread has said a word about it, yet. Even if one doesn't drink it, it would be a highly prized barter item after a coupla-three weeks...I buy green coffee beans and roast my own. They store easier that way, and nothing beats a fresh-roasted cuppa joe on a cold and dreary morning. I roast the night before to let the beans' flavor develop overnight, then grind and brew.
I do have a fluid-bed roaster that I use, but it can be done in a skillet as well.

 

Yep, coffee, sweetener and creamer are in my food preps. Gotta have my morning java! But my Doc has me on the 'unleaded', so theoretically I no longer have the addiction - no caffeine! But after forty years of coffee drinking, it's simply a pleasure I won't give up without a fight. I do not smoke or drink alkyhol, so I gotta have my one vice...... ;-)