For anybody who has a budget, Bean-O is a killer. That stuff is a fortune. I switched to BeanZyme and saved a ton of money.
For storage of real food, I pretty much stick to pressure canning. I would love to do a 14 quart batch of soup every week but my wife is getting tired of watching me stack it up. She doesn't like the slightly burned taste of the soup, either. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong as far as the burned taste goes.
I tried cleaning out my canner with oxyclean and that helped, so maybe just keeping my equipment **** and span will do the job.
Lately Winco has had a sale on polish sausage odds and ends, and potatoes have been on sale, I think there's a good recipe in there somewhere.
It's my understanding that 4 oz of meat per serving, three times a day, is enough for a moderately active person. A bodybuilder would need more protein obviously, as would a large man working hard for 8 hours a day. So, a 12oz serving of meat with the balance being high nutrient value vegetables and something for fiber in a one-quart jar pretty much does it for the day plus a can of albacore tuna for a protein snack.
For the wimmenz and chilluns I figure you could take the same quart of soup, add a quart of water and a can of tomato paste, spice it up, and space it out over a day. That could easily be doubled with a cup or two of white rice. I bet people would have killed for a meal like that during the Depression.
Also, I'm looking at doing some guerrilla gardening in my neighborhood. There are lots of places I can plant fruit trees, grapes, raspberries, spices, all kinds of stuff all over the place. I know that planting in the commons means that I don't have exclusive access to the produce, but I don't have to buy the land either. An additional benefit is that anyone who "steals" the produce doesn't have to break into my house to get what I have put up.
Also, I've put some thought into stocking up on multivitamins, fish oil, vitamin d3, all kinds of stuff like that. Right now I have a sufficient stock of nutritional supplements to see me through a couple of months, but what are the challenges and benefits to buying five years' worth of fish oil? Fish oil is very very good for you. I looked at stocking up on kippers packed in oil, but $ for $ the capsules are many times more affordable and don't have the disadvantages of the saturated fat among other things. Apparently Carlson's fish oil is the best stuff out there, but it ain't cheap. $35 for 500mL. According to my research, 10mL/day gives you a great health benefit, so this is a 50 day supply for one person, maybe a month for two people, and two weeks for a fambly of four. $65/mo just for fish oil for a family. That's up around $800/year for a family.
I guess this is just one of those things that you have to figure out for yourself.