Food Storage

Short Term Food Storage:

THREE-MONTH SUPPLY

Build a small supply of food that is part of your normal, daily diet. One way to do this is to purchase a few extra items each week to build a one-week supply of food. Then you can gradually increase your supply until it is sufficient for three months. These items should be rotated regularly to avoid spoilage.

Here are some of our tips:

1.  Use your Long Term Food Storage as a guide, and simply begin your 1 year supply with the first 3 months. 
2.  Have your own "Grocery Store" in your home.  Let this be what you pull from for your regular pantry needs, and replace the item putting the newly purchased items at the back of your "Grocery Store" shelves.
3.   Use this "Grocery Store" as the first 3 months of your 1 year supply of food.  And look, you're already 1/4 of the way done!
4.  Use our weekly email updates to stock up on the items you still need.
5.  You can freeze milk!  Those indentations on the side of the milk jug are for expansion when the milk is frozen.  It tastes great as long as you thaw it completely.  We leave a gallon on the counter for 24 hours, and it will be almost completely thawed (let it thaw the rest of the way in the fridge) and ready for use the following day.  We store 6 frozen gallons of milk at a time so that we are never without milk.
6.  You can freeze eggs if you break them into baggies.  Although, eggs last a long time anyway.  In most countries, eggs are not stored in the refrigerator.
7. 

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Long Term Food Storage:

There are many ways to look at storing food for the long-term, and we break them down into three categories: have basic supplies on hand (the typical method), ordering pre-made dehydrated meals that are as easy as "just add water", and the Meal-Planning method.  The best part is that you can use all of these methods!  For example, you can have 3 months of short-term food storage on hand (see above), 3 months of ready-made meals, 3 months of planned meals, and 3 months of basic supplies on hand.  This adds variety overall; it lets you relax and cook real meals on days when you have life under control, and yet provides convenience for times when your days are too hectic.

Basic Supplies on Hand (Cherie):

xxxxxxxx (notice I have zero info to add to this!  I couldn't even begin to advise folks.)

Pre-Made Dehydrated Meals (Cherie and Michelle):

This is a great solution for long-term food storage.  This method is more costly, but is quite convenient when you prepare this food, it is lightweight, and is a great solution for the inherent problems in rotation.  Many of these meals last 20 - 30 years if kept at cool temperatures (think basement or crawl space).  We would recommend buying these with the intent to not use it until it nears the expiration years.  In addition to pre-made meals, you can also purchase freeze dried meats, vegetables, fruits, sauces, sour cream, eggs, etc.  These discoveries/inventions vastly improve your ability to have diversity in your meal plan! (see below).  

When comparing the different companies (Costco, Thrive, Mountain House, Seratoga Farms, etc.), try to avoid their marketing hype which focuses on "number of servings".  A serving is usually a half cup!  Instead, focus on calories.  When you focus on calories, it is easier to see the needs of your family and what you're really getting when you buy freeze-dried meals (which is a lot LESS than you think you're getting).  Bear in mind that children actually need nearly as many calories as adults - this was a shocking discovery for us. Plan about 1000-1400 calories for ages 2-3, 1600-2000 calories for children ages 4 and older!  Women need about 2000 calories per day, and 2600-3000 for men.  


***Be careful of falling into the thought "I'll just eat less when the time comes, I can sacrifice and be okay."  There are a few problems with this thinking.  First, you will be much more active and stressed in a true emergency and will require more calories than you eat currently, not less.  Second, a clear mind is needed - and being hungry is mentally distracting at best and disabling at worst. Third, strength is needed, not physical weakness.

Meal Planning (Michelle):

I am not the kind of cook who can look in my pantry and fridge and figure out what to eat for dinner.  I follow recipes, so saying "store 800 lbs of wheat, 300 lbs of beans" was something I could DO, but not something I would ever USE.  Not even encouraging classes on a million and one uses for these items worked for me.  Then I stumbled upon an amazing woman, Wendy DeWitt, who made food storage something I could wrap my mind around, accomplish and actually use.  It's quite a simple plan.  Her method involves a list of approximately 14 days of recipes your family enjoys and would be willing to eat twice a month, noting each and every ingredient (even water), and multiplying it by the number of times you will eat it to complete your 1 year supply of food (or however many months you're starting with).  She writes these on note cards (1 per meal), and has a master binder for total quantity needed, quantity she has, quantity she needs to get, and where it is located.  (The "note card" idea kills me - I prefer to use tools that can auto calculate for me, so I created an excel workbook that allows you to enter in each recipe.  You chose the number of times you want each meal in your food storage and it adds all like items across all recipes together to give you a total amount needed for each item.  It's great, but as with any spreadsheet - it's only uncomplicated to the author.  =)  I'd be happy to share it with you but would need to teach you how it works.  If you're interested, let me know and maybe we could have a class on it.)

But it gets better...she has also revolutionized my pantry storage!  (This is a great method for short-term, and long-term storage.)  Food is preserved when oxygen is absent, right?  You can use your Food Vacuum Sealer attachments for canning jars! It works for anything shelf-stable except fine powders which can gum up the machine.  The process is simple: fill your canning jars, use the typical canning lids, place the attachment over the lid, and have the machine remove all of the air in the jar, leaving it sealed.  You can even reuse the lids when you open the jar.  Wendy has shown chocolate chips that have lasted 20 years without turning white!  I have vacuum sealed everything I can think of: walnuts, almonds, pecans, agave, shelf stable bacon bits, peanut butter, oatmeal packets and syrup.  If it's shelf stable, I can have it in my short-term and long-term food storage!

The last bit of advice is that your meals often include things that are difficult or impossible to store long-term, like eggs and sour cream.  You can now buy these things in #10 cans that last 10 -15 years.  This greatly increases the types of meals you can have in your meal plans!  Wendy also has many tricky substitutes; for example, she uses unflavored gelatin as a replacement for eggs in her baking, which is really cheap and easy to store - this allows you to save your #10 can of the real eggs for things like breakfast omelets where real eggs can't be substituted.)  Just be aware of the nutrition lost using this method.