Priority Five: Food

Providing food can be as easy or complicated as you want. The easiest thing to do is simply buy more of any food you normally buy that stores well. By store well, I mean does not spoil. Foods like fresh milk, meat and bread do not store well. Other foods like rice, dried beans and pasta all store well and are cheap. They eventually lose some of their nutrition but this is gradual and will not make you sick from eating “expired” food if you forget to rotate. I do not list exact rotation schedules because every source is different. Some sources say grains only last one year but most sources say 10 plus years and other credible sources say hundreds or thousands of years. It all depends upon how it is packed and where it is stored which is discussed below (vacuum packed, cool and dry are best) Canned meats, fruits and vegetables store OK and are more expensive.

How much food you want to have on hand depends on what type of situation you expect and how much you want to spend. Buying a month’ worth of rice, beans, salt, and pasta will not cost much (and is a good start). You will be a lot happier if you add:

canned or dried meat (Costco and BJs have multipaks of spam, ham, tuna and chicken for under $10)
canned or dried fruits and nuts
canned or dried vegetables
dried potatoes
canned or dried sauces (for pasta, chili, etc.)
soup mixes (bean soups are cheap) and bullion
dried onions
parmesan cheese
cooking oil
ramen noodles
peanut butter
mayo
vinegar
sugar and honey
powdered milk
bread crumbs, stuffing, oatmeal, cereal
flour, pancake mix, biscuit mix
baking soda
cocoa, instant coffee, tea, drink mixes, juice mixes (cranberry)
lemon juice
dry yeast
spices

Some of these can be eaten without cooking or water if you have to. Costco is great for the rice, canned goods, bullion, yeast (2 pound box), cooking oil and spices. Don’t forget a can opener and other utensils. Of course you can do the drying (wood or solar) and canning yourself for better quality and lower cost. The oil, flour, baking soda and yeast (refrigerate the yeast if possible) do not store well and have to be rotated more frequently than the rice, beans and pasta. You will be healthier if you add some multivitamins. There are also luxury items like powerbars, powdered eggs, powdered cheese, powdered butter, food tabs, and meals ready to eat (MREs).

To decide how much you need, you can simply scale up recipes and meals (print some simple recipes that use your stored food). How much rice and beans would you eat at a meal or in a day if that was all you ate? A lot probably (make a meal as a trial). Now multiply that by the number of people and the number of days and you have a ball park of how much to store. The problem is that you could end up feeding more people than your immediate family. Who else would you not turn away? Start with the cheap stuff (rice, beans, pasta, salt) and then slowly keeping adding and rotating the other food until you have at least one months worth. Do an inventory at least twice a year.

Store everything in airtight/waterproof containers inside a tough container in a cool, dry, dark place. Some things come packed pretty well and can just go in a plastic bucket or crate (cans can be dipped in wax). Other items should be vacuum packed in small bags or large mylar bags with oxygen absorbers and then put in the plastic bucket with a lid or crate (with a solid latching lid). If you don’t have shelves, you can make shelves out of the buckets or crates and 1”x12” lumber. Put 2”x4”’s under the bottom shelf to keep it off the floor.

For years worth of food instead of months worth of food we need to move to grain and grain grinders. The Church of Latter Day Saints are the experts here. They also have storehouses that will sell to the public if you are polite. Of course you can buy online but the shipping will be as much or more than the food. I went cheap and was able to get about six months worth of food for one person for $100. I stuck to grains (400 lbs/year), beans (40 lbs/year), soup mix (20 lbs/year), and milk (16 lbs/year) (I already had sugar (60 pounds/year), salt (10 lbs/year), oil (5 gallons/year), baking soda and yeast). I borrowed some of their equipment to pack some of the food, the rest I packed at home in the mylar bags and buckets described above. The milk is a sticky powder and very messy (think of spilling flour and multiply by 100), repack it outside if possible. I also bought a hand operated grain grinder to make flour from the wheat. Then I can make bread (scale this recipe up to one loaf per day for a year as a cross check for a year’s supply). This would be a pretty miserable diet but I think it would keep me alive and healthy if I had enough vitamins. Because of the sack size I have more of some things than others so towards the end I may be eating paste. I hope to upgrade later. For infants you need more milk, oil, sugar, and vitamins from which you can make an emergency formula (breast feeding is better, then you give the extra food to the mother).

For even longer food solutions you need to farm. Supplementing your food with a garden or sprouting would also make things last longer and provide some healthy variety. Its best to have some non-hybrid seeds on hand or save seeds from your garden. Serious (expensive) seed packages are here. Have some fertilizer and pesticides on hand but in the long run organic is the way to go.
For cooking you can use a wood burning stove, barbeque, or camp stove in the short run (have some extra fuel on hand). The petromax lantern is pricey but well made and also has a stove attachment. If you don’t have one of these or run out of fuel you can build one: a coffee can stove, a bucket stove (avoid galvanized metal), a alcohol stove, a collapsible stove, a tin can stove (simple version), solar oven (portable version), or a clay stove (print directions for making at least one of these). This is also a good commercial stove for those with cash to burn. These are much more efficient than an open fire. You need a good pot or dutch oven for boiling water and cooking. For more portable food you can go with MREs, make your own or stock what ever you would normally backpack with.