This is a kind of a tricky area for me to lay out there for you. It would be easy to just say “I recommend X” and go on. But this is a really important part of your food storage. It is also a very expensive part of food storage. This is the part of food storage that will stave off “food fatigue.”

Food fatigue is where you are eating a lot of the same food day after day and it is bland and boring. Like eating oat meal everyday without anything to jazz up the taste. Rice, bean, oats, and wheat will keep you alive and healthy but it is horribly bland and you will get tired of eating it. Well, that is till you get hungry again and then it will taste great!

So first, how much do I recommend of long-term everyday food items? I suggest a minimum of 45 days of #10 cans full of freeze dried food, the 30-year shelf life stuff.

Why 45 days?  Seems to be the outside time-frame of most emergencies and disasters.  For situations such as food chain disruptions or social problems it gives you a transition period that you can use to stabilize your specific situation. For a “grid-down” event where the food chain is permanently disrupted 45-days isn’t near long enough. However, you can use this food to “spice-up” your long-term staple food. I will talk about that food storage category in the next article.

Should you store more than the 45-day minimum recommendation?  Absolutely!!  More for TEOTWAWKI (grid-down) situations or maybe just for when you retire.  I have more, significantly more.

I thought through different scenarios and a really good way to deal with them – an ultimate solution if you will.  Some of the scenarios I considered:

1.    Extended winter storms with grid-down
2.    Hurricanes without any infrastructure left
3.    Flooding with complete grid-down
4.    And longer-term food disruptions or societal/economic issues

I was looking for a category of food that would provide:

•    Tasty meals to avoid boredom and/or gastronomical revolt
•    Nutritional to maintain high energy levels
•    Very easy to fix with minimal preparation
•    Redundant ways to prepare meals (cold or hot, water or no water)
•    Easily stored, transported and concealed

So the most obvious answer to me was cases of #10 cans of freeze dried meals.  They come in astounding variety, Sweet & Sour Pork, Chicken Tetrazzini, Ham & Eggs, Granola and milk. They also have standard fruit, grains, meat, vegetables, etc.

What is needed to prepare and serve this kind of food? Best case scenario, a cup or small pot, hot water and done.  Worst case scenario, just open the pouch or can and eat it.

You can heat the water up any way you wish, I like the small multi-fuel MSR WhisperLite stoves but your electric range at home is fine too (provided there is still power).

There are lot of brands of freeze dried food out there that make incredibly good entrees. Some of my personal favorites are Mountain House, Thrive, Saratoga Farms, and Augason Farms.

I won’t make specific recommendations on what food to purchase. What I will do is suggest you purchase the food you like that can be put over rice or beans. Using rice and beans as “extenders” will easily extend your good tasting food by 2 – 5 times. And that is important to fighting off food fatigue.

The next thing I would like to suggest is consider are fruits. Fruits will contain valuable and required vitamins to your diet. They are also great to add to oat meal to pick up otherwise bland tasting oat meal. Dehydrated apple slices from the LDS store are a great snack and extremely affordable. That is six #10 cans of apple slices with a 30-year shelf life for under $54.00!!

I think later I will go over an extensive list of foods that would be good to purchase for a great diet that has flavor and nutrition. But for now, I think you have enough of an idea to get started. Visit the folks at The Ready Store to get some great food for your 45-day supply. Here is one suggestion on what to put in those cases:

Case #1 –

1 Beef Teriyaki with Rice
2 Granola with Milk & Blueberries
3 White Rice

Case #2 –

2 Beef Stroganoff
2 Scramble Eggs with Bacon
2 Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Case #3 –

2 Chilli Mac
2 Garden Peas
2 Sugar Sweet Corn

Case #4 –

1 Hearty Beef Stew
1 Noodles and Chicken
2 Cinnamon Apple Slices
2 Peach Slices

All of the food mentioned above is Mountain House brand. I think Mountain House has the best quality and flavor of all the freeze dried food brands.

So here is a one of those “best kept secrets” that will make your food storage life a whole lots easier…LDS Home Storage Centers. Yup, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe so much in food storage that they make is very easy and very affordable to purchase properly canned (#10 cans) long-term food storage. There are two options;, 1) on-line store with a more limited list of available foods, or 2) a great variety of foods you can purchase. Either way the time and money you save will be amazing.

Note: Sorry, for those of you living outside the USA neither option is available to you.

Here is what available on-line:

Nonfat Dry Milk
Hard Red Wheat
Hard White Wheat
Regular Oats
Quick Oats
Sugar
White Flour
Spaghetti Bites
Macaroni
White Rice
Potato Flakes
Apple Slices
Pinto Beans

To purchase these items you go to the website and order just lie you would any other on-line store. The shipping is unreal low so the price doesn’t go way up to ship the food to you. Normally it is $3.00

Now, if you are near one of the LDS Home Storage Centers that are scattered around the country it gets even better. At these locations the pre-canned food available it amazing! The order form provides you the shelf-life, and the weight per can, plus obviously the price. So you know exactly what you are getting. I have bought from them before and I am telling you that the quality of the food is outstanding! I really really like the apple slices as a snack. They rock!!

You can find an LDS Home Storage Center by visiting the website locator page: We use to do a”group order” for interested folks. We would gather orders from folks and just send a couple people in a pick-up truck the 110 mile round trip to buy the cases of food. Everyone who didn’t go would chip in gas money. Then the food would be delivered to one location, someone’s garage, where everyone would pick up their order. A BBQ of hamburgers and hotdogs would always be a nice social event to top it all off.

In my perfect & ideal world I would buy these items in this order. I would buy a single case of each first. Then once I got that done, I would start over and keep buying until I felt I had a year’s supply of food in the house for the entire family. In priority order:

•   Apple Slices
•   Onions, Dry
•   Wheat, Hard Winter
•   Rice, White
•   Carrots
•   Sugar, Granulated
•   Beans, Pinto
•   Oats, Quick
•   Macaroni
•   Milk, Nonfat Dry
•   Potato Flakes
•   Four, White
•   Beans, Refried
•   Beans, Black
•   Spaghetti

Yeah, it’s going to take some money to do this. However, in my way of thinking I would rather have all this food storage and not need it, than need all of this food and not have it. And remember, you can always eat the food! Even if you wait until your retirement years, you can still eat the food! The way I looked at it – this is part of my IRS, 401K, pension or whatever you want to call it. It will help reduce the food bills when I am retired if I don’t need the food before then.

Couple comments:

1. The apple slices are incredibly good!!!!  I can eat them right out of the can as a snack. I also put them on my cereal. You can bake them in a “bread” like banana bread.
2. The refried beans are some of the best I have ever tasted. They are dried, and you reconstitute them with water. And man-o-man they are good!
3. The dried onions are very flavorful. They can add a lot of flavor to otherwise drab meals.
4. Carrots are not real flavorful but they add some color and nutrients to otherwise drab meals.

 

 

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