Long Term Food Storage

[worm761]

Does anyone here do long term food storage? I would like to start long term food storage system but I honestly have no idea where to start. I am looking for any advice, websites, books, anything really. I know that I will have to rotate and make sure everything is dated correctly. I am not even sure what foods can be held long term.

 

[MrsPete]

Does anyone here do long term food storage? I would like to start long term food storage system but I honestly have no idea where to start. I am looking for any advice, websites, books, anything really. I know that I will have to rotate and make sure everything is dated correctly. I am not even sure what foods can be held long term.

First, what are your goals? Are you looking to batch-cook frozen meals so you can have quick weeknight dinners without much work, or are you looking to put away a year's worth of food like the LDS church folks do? What kind of storage do you have available? For example, can you convert a coat closet into a second pantry? And are you looking to buy foods ready to store, or do you want to grow your own tomatoes and learn home canning? Give us a picture of your goals, and you'll get better advice.

Here's a website I like: http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/ I don't have a goal to store a year's worth of food, but they have some good advice, and they offer good recipes that can be made from shelf-stable foods.

 

[laurafergie]

This website/blog is very user friendly. http://thesurvivalmom.com

 

[worm761]

First, what are your goals? Are you looking to batch-cook frozen meals so you can have quick weeknight dinners without much work, or are you looking to put away a year's worth of food like the LDS church folks do? What kind of storage do you have available? For example, can you convert a coat closet into a second pantry? And are you looking to buy foods ready to store, or do you want to grow your own tomatoes and learn home canning? Give us a picture of your goals, and you'll get better advice.

Here's a website I like: http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/ I don't have a goal to store a year's worth of food, but they have some good advice, and they offer good recipes that can be made from shelf-stable foods.

I would like to put away food like the LDS folks do. Though I am not sure about a whole year but 3-6 months seems like a good idea. I would like to be prepared for either a natural disaster (which I am since I live in hurricane country) or a job loss or like last year, the government shuts down again. DH is a federal employee.
I have a room I can use a large portion of to store the food in. We don't eat a lot of ready to eat/make foods. I cook mostly from scratch. So I would like to store ingredients for meals. I do know some basic canning. I make my own jams and can them.

Thank you both for the websites!

 

[yoopermom]

I like the ones already mentioned plus the forums on homesteadingtoday:

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/#country-homemaking

It basically comes down to buy what you will eat, rotate properly, and have some kind of an organizational system.

I started out small, by buying an extra flat of "whatever" every time I went to Aldis, writing the date bought on it, adding it to a spreadsheet, and sliding it under someone's bed . I would love to have a garage bay dedicated to this like the Duggars have!

Terri

 

[pjlla]

If you are on Pinterest, there are a BUCKET LOAD of ideas/links, etc on there! I have learned SO MUCH (now to put it into action!). Like you, we eat at home and mostly healthy/natural/organic, low carb and from scratch.... so coming up with foods to store is hard. But I always figure in an emergency we would be HAPPY to have canned black beans and brown rice every day if necessary! Sure, some variety would be nice, but keeping reasonably healthy food in our bellies is my number one priority!

There are lots of things that people "in the know" bring up that I never would have thought of..... like the brown rice does me no good if I don't have clean water to cook it in.... and if we are short on water, I probably shouldn't use it up cooking rice. And salt.... bodies need salt to function, so salt should be a part of your food storage.

Best of luck getting your food stocks loaded up!..................P

 

[barkley]

if you're looking with an eye to a natural disaster, keep in mind what my bff lds friend reports that the church has been cautioning members for years-no amount of food that is not consumption ready/prepared for consumption will do you any good (this is largely due to the realization that allot of members were stockpiling grains to turn into flour, but few had the equipment to do this, or when challenged to do so at group gatherings were able to).

with that in mind-if you lost power to your home, would you have a means of keeping stockpiled frozen/refrigerated items safe? would you have a means to cook food if you were without power to stove/oven/microwave? unless you're going to bite the financial bullet and invest in a generator (we did, best money we ever spent), do you have a bbq or camp stove AND a safe place to use it in inclement weather? If not, first figure out how to keep the food safe (perishables), and how you will cook it. also make sure you've got stuff to cook on/with-allot of what we use on our stovetops/in our ovens will shatter or melt if used on a bbq or camp stove, so some good old cast iron or all metal pots and pans work well, and if you are a coffee addict like us-an old school campers coffee pot is a life saver-with ground coffee (we had a week long power outage and record snow a few years back-our neighbor was going nuts b/c while he had the coffee pot his electric bean grinder was out of commission, luckily we had an old hand grinder we were able to loan him).

once you've done start identifying space for storage-under beds works, spare space in closets, those pesky upper cabinets in the kitchen that you don't normally store stuff in cuz you'd have to get a ladder out to access them. we use our garage (it's insulated so I don't have to worry about extreme heat and cold fluctuations). I take advantage of a couple of our grocery store's yearly case sales-I keep a variety of canned beans on hand (most have sodium in them so it helps with the salt issue),tomato products, some canned fruit, soups, and corn beef hash. I can also-so we always have applesauce at the very least, and usually some tomato products. I use it as my regular pantry so rotation isn't a huge issue-I'm using stuff and restocking on a regular basis.

we also keep several flats of water on hand, and I'm pretty dogged about making sure that we always have at least 2 weeks worth of every prescription and otc med we regularly use/might need.

 

[pat fan]

If you are looking at 3-6 months storage (smart planning, btw), here are my suggestions.

MANUAL can openers.
Canned veggies & fruits.
Canned rice & beans.
Tuna & chicken (canned).
Ravioli etc...
Peanut butter.
Crackers. Whatever your family will eat, but Goya sells soda crackers in a big tin.
Freeze dried fruit.
Water, water, water.
Some sort of water purification, even if it's cheese cloth and purification tabs. In a natural disaster, your water source can get mucked up.

Walmart & grocery stores usually will have can sales that you can stock up on. A lot of the time you can get a flat of veggies cheaper than buying individual cans. I'm big on cans for this type of planning because cans hold up to most situations. These are all things you would normally eat and can rotate easily and in a dire situation, eat cold with no added water. If you have a way to get water, boil water & heat food, I would expand the list. A good place to shop would be either http://beprepared.com/#default , http://www.dailybread.com/ or http://www.mypatriotsupply.com/

Rice.
Dry beans.
Dehydrated/freeze dried foods.

Don't forget the batteries, matches, meds, birth control and feminine products (if that's a consideration). Nothing says ''not prepared'' like a baby 9 months after the disaster!

 

[worm761]

if you're looking with an eye to a natural disaster, keep in mind what my bff lds friend reports that the church has been cautioning members for years-no amount of food that is not consumption ready/prepared for consumption will do you any good (this is largely due to the realization that allot of members were stockpiling grains to turn into flour, but few had the equipment to do this, or when challenged to do so at group gatherings were able to).

with that in mind-if you lost power to your home, would you have a means of keeping stockpiled frozen/refrigerated items safe? would you have a means to cook food if you were without power to stove/oven/microwave? unless you're going to bite the financial bullet and invest in a generator (we did, best money we ever spent), do you have a bbq or camp stove AND a safe place to use it in inclement weather? If not, first figure out how to keep the food safe (perishables), and how you will cook it. also make sure you've got stuff to cook on/with-allot of what we use on our stovetops/in our ovens will shatter or melt if used on a bbq or camp stove, so some good old cast iron or all metal pots and pans work well, and if you are a coffee addict like us-an old school campers coffee pot is a life saver-with ground coffee (we had a week long power outage and record snow a few years back-our neighbor was going nuts b/c while he had the coffee pot his electric bean grinder was out of commission, luckily we had an old hand grinder we were able to loan him).

once you've done start identifying space for storage-under beds works, spare space in closets, those pesky upper cabinets in the kitchen that you don't normally store stuff in cuz you'd have to get a ladder out to access them. we use our garage (it's insulated so I don't have to worry about extreme heat and cold fluctuations). I take advantage of a couple of our grocery store's yearly case sales-I keep a variety of canned beans on hand (most have sodium in them so it helps with the salt issue),tomato products, some canned fruit, soups, and corn beef hash. I can also-so we always have applesauce at the very least, and usually some tomato products. I use it as my regular pantry so rotation isn't a huge issue-I'm using stuff and restocking on a regular basis.

we also keep several flats of water on hand, and I'm pretty dogged about making sure that we always have at least 2 weeks worth of every prescription and otc med we regularly use/might need.

During Hurricane Ivan we had no power for 21 days and no water for 6. I have a generator that can run my upright freezer, one of my refrigerators, an appliance or two, and my AC. I live in Florida. The AC is a must! Our grill has both gas and charcoal, a side burner, and a smoke box. We also have two camp stoves. Multiple lanterns, radios, and waterproof flashlights that don't need batteries. The radios can also charge the cell phones.

As for water, when a storm is coming, I stock up in food grade containers and filter it in my Brita.

Normally when a storm comes we go stock up of a few foods. I tend to keep the house pretty well stocked though. Just not on a long term basis.

I am wanting to learn to grind my own wheat but that is more fun for me than survival. We have a meat grinder and grind and make our own ground meat, sausages, etc. DH is still trying to get the whole stuffing sausages thing down.

 

[barkley]

During Hurricane Ivan we had no power for 21 days and no water for 6. I have a generator that can run my upright freezer, one of my refrigerators, an appliance or two, and my AC. I live in Florida. The AC is a must! Our grill has both gas and charcoal, a side burner, and a smoke box. We also have two camp stoves. Multiple lanterns, radios, and waterproof flashlights that don't need batteries. The radios can also charge the cell phones.

As for water, when a storm is coming, I stock up in food grade containers and filter it in my Brita.

Normally when a storm comes we go stock up of a few foods. I tend to keep the house pretty well stocked though. Just not on a long term basis.

I am wanting to learn to grind my own wheat but that is more fun for me than survival. We have a meat grinder and grind and make our own ground meat, sausages, etc. DH is still trying to get the whole stuffing sausages thing down.

we make our own sausage too-much less expensive to get bulk pork, grind it and then season it to the types we like. I've never tried grinding wheat, but we inherited a vitamix that's capable of doing it (and dh remembers his dad making peanut butter in it).

if you've got freezers that run on the generator consider getting (if you don't already have one) a food sealer-I am amazed at how much less space the items we custom seal take up in the freezer (and how much longer they last/the better quality they defrost to).

 

[worm761]

we make our own sausage too-much less expensive to get bulk pork, grind it and then season it to the types we like. I've never tried grinding wheat, but we inherited a vitamix that's capable of doing it (and dh remembers his dad making peanut butter in it).

if you've got freezers that run on the generator consider getting (if you don't already have one) a food sealer-I am amazed at how much less space the items we custom seal take up in the freezer (and how much longer they last/the better quality they defrost to).

I do have a sealer. I have a lot of kitchen toys! I love to cook and bake.