[capitalGGeek]

I just threw out some of my Y2K prep purchases - mostly Mainstays emergency stuff. It expired 10 years ago.

I bought it because my preps at that time were mostly guns & gear. Food was lacking, and it was easy just to buy rather than think & plan. I haven't made that mistake again. The shelf they used to occupy will soon be taken up by our normal pantry 'long shelf life' items. The only stuff I have that isn't in regular rotation is rice I've put in mylar with oxygen absorbers. I'm also planning to put pasta in mylar as well.

Now I just need to find a better way to rotate my stock than pulling cans off the shelf to put the new ones in the back.

 

[Uteguy]

One of the reasons I told my family to buy soup.
Progresso, Campbell’s, Dinty Moore - stuff that’s
a meal in itself. No water to add, no muss, no fuss
no bother.
We also bought a couple of Trinity rolling organizers,
5’ high, shelves & baskets 2’X 2’… our every day eats
go on those while the long term stuff lives on racks.

 

[Tardyannie]

I just threw out some of my Y2K prep purchases - mostly Mainstays emergency stuff. It expired 10 years ago.

I bought it because my preps at that time were mostly guns & gear. Food was lacking, and it was easy just to buy rather than think & plan. I haven't made that mistake again. The shelf they used to occupy will soon be taken up by our normal pantry 'long shelf life' items. The only stuff I have that isn't in regular rotation is rice I've put in mylar with oxygen absorbers. I'm also planning to put pasta in mylar as well.

Now I just need to find a better way to rotate my stock than pulling cans off the shelf to put the new ones in the back.

I bought one of these shelves several years back and I absolutely love it. Price has gone up as with everything else but they are extremely nice.

Pantry Organizers

The only large fully adjustable food storage organizer that automatically rotates your cans first in, first out.

www.shelfreliance.com

 

[justanothergunnut]

after you have been at it a bit you will come to the realization that your needs grow beyond just canned goods... Hopefully you dont make the mistake so many aof us have and buy 6 months to a year of canned goods.. Happy prepping

 

[the_keeper]

To each his own. I buy whatever tastes better than dumpster rat or house cat. I buy when it's on sale and I buy in bulk. When my ration bars, MRE's, humanitarian meals, freeze dried foods, or whatever is getting close to expiration I sell or trade them off and replace with new. It's amazing how many people will buy a case of ration bars that have 3 months left on the best by date. It's like gambling but I win either way. If the world falls apart I have the bars to eat and I survive another day. If the world doesn't fall apart I sell the bars for $0.65-$0.70 on the dollar and the world didn't fall apart.

 

[hiwall1]

Many or most people will have to store different things than what they currently eat. Now many people eat mostly perishable items (fresh produce, fresh store-baked goods, and frozen foods). This is fine and it just is what it is.
More accurately would be to say "store what you can and will eat".

 

[sporksradiant]

I store what I eat plus anything free / under $1.

Right now that means I have cases of baby cereal that I have no clue how we'll eat, but it's free so....

 

[duckwalker]

I read an article about how you should prep for your expected environment should a long-term crash come. For instance, if you live in an area where water will be scarce, either because the area is naturally arid/or you rely on electricity to provide water, storing canned goods makes sense due to the large amount of water content per unit of volume. The water in the green beans could keep you hydrated.

 

[Jim from 28DaysLater]

When I started counting the calories in my preps, I started to notice that cans of soup have few calories relative to how much space they take up, how heavy they are, and how much they cost.

I didn't stop keeping soup around, but I just felt a lot differently about it.

Maybe that's a good prompt to make some initial investments in, and learn, canning, even if you're not homesteading, or even gardening much yet.

If you get the Ball manual and equipment, including 1 to 3 packs of jars, you can study everything really carefully, and then start making your household a good annual soup supply. It will be good practice. And at least you'll have gotten around to one of the more sustainable / long-term parts of survivalism, even if you're doing it in a small-scale, beginner kind of way.

Needless to say you have to know how to make soup, and you're going to make it just the way you want, instead of having to put up with whatever Campbell's or Progresso wants to put in a can for $3 or $4.

 

[justanothergunnut]

I read an article about how you should prep for your expected environment should a long-term crash come. For instance, if you live in an area where water will be scarce, either because the area is naturally arid/or you rely on electricity to provide water, storing canned goods makes sense due to the large amount of water content per unit of volume. The water in the green beans could keep you hydrated.

there is truth in that, as long as you dont need to move it

 

[Jim from 28DaysLater]

Cans of Progresso etc. are very useful in normal times prior to the EOW when you're watching TV a lot and browsing the Internet a lot.

It's going to seem more like a garnish during the EOW when you're going out doing interesting, sometimes very necessary things all the time, and carrying your rifle, and perhaps other heavy kit.

Plus it's going to be startling when your shelves empty out quickly.

 

[Old fart]

When I started counting the calories in my preps, I started to notice that cans of soup have few calories relative to how much space they take up, how heavy they are, and how much they cost.

I didn't stop keeping soup around, but I just felt a lot differently about it.

Maybe that's a good prompt to make some initial investments in, and learn, canning, even if you're not homesteading, or even gardening much yet.

If you get the Ball manual and equipment, including 1 to 3 packs of jars, you can study everything really carefully, and then start making your household a good annual soup supply. It will be good practice. And at least you'll have gotten around to one of the more sustainable / long-term parts of survivalism, even if you're doing it in a small-scale, beginner kind of way.

Needless to say you have to know how to make soup, and you're going to make it just the way you want, instead of having to put up with whatever Campbell's or Progresso wants to put in a can for $3 or $4.

Get the Ball Blue Book AND look at the awesome canning stickies and threads on this site. READ.

Ball and Kerr jars and lids, Tattlers, too.

Good quality pressure canner. Without the lid, it can also be used for water bath canning. Discussions and recommendations in the canning stickies and threads.

Avoid the cheap Chinese jars, lids, etc. They fail.

 

[Hilltopper]

I am finding I eat primarily fresh veggies and fruit food besides meat . So while I have storage foods , I am not eating them.

 

[UserNameTaken]

I look at some storage items as expendables. Canned food, pasta, even rice and beans. The "Store What You Eat" plan doesn't work for us. We mostly eat fresh salmon and chicken, fruits and vegetables, rice, brownies , etc., a Mediterranean diet, basically. So we store anyway.

Pantry items like canned cranberry sauce, tuna, or tomato paste/sauce we use. But we store stuff like fruit cocktail and peaches, beans and vegetables, tuna, canned meat all that kind of stuff. We don't generally eat canned food, because of the high salt content, but it'll mostly be good for 5+ years, maybe a lot longer. I rotate cans into "expired" storage that we save in case tshtf or if we need to "donate" some food at gunpoint - they get that first.

Pasta after about 18 months past the "use by" date we toss out. Some of the wheat pasta will go rancid sooner. Stuff like processed Mac n Cheese I think is good for 100 years, plus. Though I'm not sure it's actually food.

 

[NY Min]

Right now that means I have cases of baby cereal that I have no clue how we'll eat, but it's free so....

Probably just plain flaked/ground grain and some vitamins. Use it by adding some to bread, muffins, pancakes..

 

[StigOfTheNorth]

One of my prepping goals at the start, when I decided to persue it seriously was to put by enough for 8 people (and 1 cat) to live well for 7 months. The Cat was sorted first!. Our household is only two people. The other 6 peoples worth are earmarked. Eyes whilst we sleep.

I made a huge list of what that meant at the outset and for any crisis beyond one of 7 months I came up with a list of things I can work on to provide ongoing production (Chickens, Rabbits, Water collection, the garden, Energy-this years mammoth task, etc) the financial position I wanted plus the security of all said.

This was three years ago now and I wanted to do it with as cost neutral consequences as possible (to help with the financial aspect).

I can not recommend a stage of preplanning to new preppers enough, it was a suggestion with tips that I read online at the time, maybe even on this site (I can not remember) and it was dynamite advice, I spent a weekend hunched over a notepad and calculator, whilst chatting to google and boom a compass was made.

It is all what we eat, and nearly all of it bought when the supermarkets we use had offers on. Essentially, Todays tin of beans or tube of toothpaste in our house was super cheap compared to buying them this week (especially thanks to Russian madness).

I avoided the bulk buys of freeze dried stuff for the simple reasons, to my eyes at least. It looks like crap food. And I posess the misers gene. All seems overpriced.

Sure it would have been less work but I am nothing if not a grafter.

 

[Jim from 28DaysLater]

Agree about buying things on sale.

In some ways, prepping food is one of the most exciting parts of prepping, although by now I've heard about how there are some people who don't want to do it.

You're taking money that you would have saved, or maybe used on a hobby, and you're instead trying to use it to for really smart choices about what to buy as a food prep.

It's fun when at times you seem to get a lot done with little money.

One of the preps I did that felt really smart was mylar bagging a few types of breakfast cereal. This was before coronavirus, but I went to a store, and found good prices on a bunch of things, and at the time it seemed like a killer prep.

 

[Jim from 28DaysLater]

OT

It's funny that, despite all the things we talk about here on the forum, there are other useful things that we don't talk about.

Like all the prepping dilemmas. We could do a thread about that.

For instance- what if it just so happens that there's a good guy in your network- He knows how to fight, he's about as experienced and smart as the other guys, he's got special skills.

But only after SHTF you learn that he DID NOT prep food. Everybody else did it, but he did not.

How do you punish that guy?

You can't let that go forever... right?

 

[liebrecht]

My name is Liebrecht and I am a Food Sale Addict. I fell off the wagon when BSS chicken breasts were on sale at pre covid pre bird flu prices 2 weeks ago. Store what you eat...I had used a number of cans of store canned chicken to lure feral cat in so NEEDED more. Burger was also ON SALE so I NEEDED that also. Kid had a bacon burger from that stash last night for dinner. I NEEDED the burger and the really really good sale on cabbage for more stuffed cabbage rolls. Not sure that there is a 12 step program for this addiction tho. I HID the muffin mixes I got yesterday....ON SALE. In my defense.....the kids know how to make them so the only way I can have a stash is only have a certain amount where they can find them. Maybe we need a sponsor program for when we want to pull out the customer loyalty card and save $$$. Now excuse me.....I have a canner to run<smile>.

liebrecht

 

[Iamfarticus]

My household has shrank a bit since 2019. I have food close to expiration that my kids won't take. My one son is struggling, I let him go through my pantry last week, just check off what you take. Every bin has a list on top. Lessons learned I will say.

I like canned soup, it keeps a long time, so do dried beans and barley. I am well stocked on spices and Goya seasonings. Pasta, my supply is dwindling, I have to re-gauge how much I am using at my current rate. I have 2 active kitchen pantries, I went through one recently, I have to do the other to see what I should toss or donate (that I don't really use).