Guide to Food Storage – 9 Effective Tips

[hawgrider]

Descent article-


This guide to food storage concepts will help those new to prepping with some ideas to get your own food storage plan started or to realize mistakes that can be corrected now - See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/guide-to-food-storage-9-effective-tips_012015#sthash.2oJyh1td.dpuf

[Montana Rancher]

A pretty basic article, I'm surprised he didn't mention having some mouse/rat traps, seems pretty basic for a food storage area.

Since he/she hit on what to store I would add:
Yeast
Vinegar
Bullion
Recipe books
Lard
cooking oils
coffee
dishwashing soap
condensed milk
lots of water
pet food

[justlooking]

http://theprepperproject.com/5-week-can-feed-year/
I have been using this guide to get me started in prepping

[Montana Rancher]

http://theprepperproject.com/5-week-can-feed-year/
I have been using this guide to get me started in prepping

I like the list, and it makes a lot of sense except I would suggest the following.

Vary the list and make it more of a quarterly (3 month plan for you in Rio Linda) plan. For instance on week 2 buying Cream of Chicken Soup (good prep) if you can't find a sale it will cost you $1.75 per can even at Wall Mart. But if you shop around it can be had for about .80 cents on a sale. My point is look for sales and you can probably get what is on the list for $5, if not you will be disappointed.

2. Some of the items on the list are not going to be purchased with $5

Week 5: 10 pounds of flour for $5, not where I live
Week 8: 8 cans of Tuna, yea right
week 13: 10 lbs of powdered milk.. in what country?
Week 26: 5 lbs of local honey... in your dreams
Week 29: 5 lbs of peanut butter, never gonna happen

A good plan but totally unaware of the actual price of buying things locally. It could be this was taken from an article in the 90's which would make sense.

P.s. Week 33, buy asprin, I would suggest ibprohen instead.

[justlooking]

I like the list, and it makes a lot of sense except I would suggest the following.

Vary the list and make it more of a quarterly (3 month plan for you in Rio Linda) plan. For instance on week 2 buying Cream of Chicken Soup (good prep) if you can't find a sale it will cost you $1.75 per can even at Wall Mart. But if you shop around it can be had for about .80 cents on a sale. My point is look for sales and you can probably get what is on the list for $5, if not you will be disappointed.

2. Some of the items on the list are not going to be purchased with $5

Week 5: 10 pounds of flour for $5, not where I live
Week 8: 8 cans of Tuna, yea right
week 13: 10 lbs of powdered milk.. in what country?
Week 26: 5 lbs of local honey... in your dreams
Week 29: 5 lbs of peanut butter, never gonna happen

A good plan but totally unaware of the actual price of buying things locally. It could be this was taken from an article in the 90's which would make sense.

P.s. Week 33, buy asprin, I would suggest ibprohen instead.

True about some of the prices. I am putting my $5 a week into a fund and am gonna hit a larger town that has an Aldi's store. The cream soup is always .75 at this store. Flour and sugar are also way cheaper. Most of the items are. I figure as I save on some of the items I will just roll that savings over to pricier items.

[Montana Rancher]

A better skill is to learn to use these items and cook from "scratch"

There are about a billion uses for cream of mushroom (chicken) soup, but unless you know the recepies, it will only go bad.

[Inor]

A better skill is to learn to use these items and cook from "scratch"

There are about a billion uses for cream of mushroom (chicken) soup, but unless you know the recepies, it will only go bad.

Even a better idea is to learn to make your own cream of mushroom soup.

Mrs Inor had a good post earlier this week what she has done to dehydrate a bunch of canned tomato products to make them last even longer.

[Baglady]

Even a better idea is to learn to make your own cream of mushroom soup.

Mrs Inor had a good post earlier this week what she has done to dehydrate a bunch of canned tomato products to make them last even longer.I read she was dehydrating tomato paste? That's interesting. I guess it will cut down on weight and storage. How is she storing it?

[Inor]

I read she was dehydrating tomato paste? That's interesting. I guess it will cut down on weight and storage. How is she storing it?

She dehydrated a bunch of canned stuff that was nearing the end of its useful life in cans. Off the top of my head, she did tomato paste, diced tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, and tomato soup. There may have been others, but that is what I recall from memory. She just poured them onto plastic trays and put them in dehydrator for a couple hours. It did not take that long. She was careful to measure and mark down how much dehydrated solid came from each can. Once it was dehydrated, she just ran it through the food processor or blender for a few seconds to break it into smaller pieces then stored it in mason jars.

[justlooking]

Ok hold on. How did you not have a hllacious mess in the dehydrator

[Inor]

Ok hold on. How did you not have a hllacious mess in the dehydrator

http://www.amazon.com/Nesco-LSS-2-6-FD-28JX-FD-61WHC-FD-75PR/dp/B00004W4V9/ref=sr_1_8?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1425744363&sr=1-8&keywords=dehydrator

There is a small lip around the edge so the liquid does not run off.

[justlooking]

Ok. Now that makes sense

[Montana Rancher]

Even a better idea is to learn to make your own cream of mushroom soup.

Mrs Inor had a good post earlier this week what she has done to dehydrate a bunch of canned tomato products to make them last even longer.

A great point, but unless you give the recipe, let us assume that anyone out there can get a can of soup and back stock it.

For those that don't cook at all...

Take a can of cream of ???... soup and put it over a Antelope roast, a grouse, a elk roast, a pheasant, a hind quarter of a dog/cat

Bake for an hour at 350 degrees for an hour, and you have a meal, and a really good one at that.

[Inor]

A great point, but unless you give the recipe, let us assume that anyone out there can get a can of soup and back stock it.

For those that don't cook at all...

Take a can of cream of ???... soup and put it over a Antelope roast, a grouse, a elk roast, a pheasant, a hind quarter of a dog/cat

Bake for an hour at 350 degrees for an hour, and you have a meal, and a really good one at that.

You are absolutely correct! Cream of XXX soup makes anything better.

If you look back over all of Mrs Inor or my food posts for the last couple months you will notice a common theme. We have been on a real burn with our food preps lately to start making more and more, completely from scratch. It is mostly in the interest of space (which we have almost completely run out of.) For instance, instead of storing pasta, we are now only storing flour and making the pasta. Or, we buy canned or frozen vegetables and soups when they are on sale and immediately dehydrate them.

We have kept a larder of food that was enough (by calories) to feed 2 people at 3500 calories per day, for 15 months. This year we decided to expand that to have enough for 7 people (the folks in our immediate family) at 3500 calories per day for 12 months. Obviously with this effort, space has become our greatest challenge. Thus, canned food has to be repackaged or eliminated because it is just not a good use of space.

It has been kind of a fun exercise. Last weekend we dehydrated and repackaged a whole case of diced tomatoes into a single 1 quart mason jar! We have experienced similar space savings from all of the other stuff we have dehydrated or learned to make from scratch.

[Pauls]

The canned food is good for 5 or more years, how long do you expect your dehydrated canned food to last?

My experience with dehydrated and dried food when I lived in Seattle was that it was only good for about six months. The humidity is higher there than in most places and I didn't vacuum pack any so your mileage may vary.

[Montana Rancher]

You are absolutely correct! Cream of XXX soup makes anything better.

If you look back over all of Mrs Inor or my food posts for the last couple months you will notice a common theme. We have been on a real burn with our food preps lately to start making more and more, completely from scratch. It is mostly in the interest of space (which we have almost completely run out of.) For instance, instead of storing pasta, we are now only storing flour and making the pasta. Or, we buy canned or frozen vegetables and soups when they are on sale and immediately dehydrate them.

We have kept a larder of food that was enough (by calories) to feed 2 people at 3500 calories per day, for 15 months. This year we decided to expand that to have enough for 7 people (the folks in our immediate family) at 3500 calories per day for 12 months. Obviously with this effort, space has become our greatest challenge. Thus, canned food has to be repackaged or eliminated because it is just not a good use of space.

It has been kind of a fun exercise. Last weekend we dehydrated and repackaged a whole case of diced tomatoes into a single 1 quart mason jar! We have experienced similar space savings from all of the other stuff we have dehydrated or learned to make from scratch.

Bravo
You an the Mrs and been a favorite of mine over the years on this post and other forums. Keep up the good work!

[Inor]

The canned food is good for 5 or more years, how long do you expect your dehydrated canned food to last?

My experience with dehydrated and dried food when I lived in Seattle was that it was only good for about six months. The humidity is higher there than in most places and I didn't vacuum pack any so your mileage may vary.

We have been vac sealing it in mylar bags or vac sealing it in mason jars. So far, so good. We ate some a week or so ago that was over a year old and it was fine, even still tasted good. This is very much a "trial and error" effort. (Hopefully we get that error part out of the way and solved before SHTF and we need it.) :biglaugh: