Category: Food Storage & Cooking

How long would you survive if you could never buy groceries again? Now consider how much worse that scenario would be if everyone you know was faced with the same question. It may have more relevance than you think. The food distribution system in industrialized nations has a complexity which baffles the mind. Thousands of suppliers coordinate with thousands of distributors to send food to millions of retailers for billions of consumers. But is there enough redundancy in the system to ensure the continued viability of commercially delivered food to your table? What if that incredibly complex system bottlenecked or …

When young and adventurous, we enjoyed family tent camping. We sneered at the “wimps” who used trailers—even including those who used camping trailers. We were purists. One year, a friend loaned us a few days of relaxation in his 16 foot travel trailer. A revelation! This was living! We learned that deprivation was not nearly as much fun as it was to be camping with all the amenities. It was made even more clear as we watched the folks in the next campsite while they stood around in a drizzle waiting for their Coleman stove to heat up water for …

Hello Mr. Rawles, I was wondering if you could give me and your readers more info on whole kernel corn storage/nutritive value after storage and storage life given packing and conditions (weather)? I was also going to inquire about the different wheat’s and their differences but you have answered that already thanks, I would however like to know which mylar bags to use for better protection against the humid and high temp weather in my area (4 mil versus 8 mil thickness) if it matters at all? I don’t think the plastic bag route mentioned in your excellent “Rawles Gets …

Jim, As you know, I live near Niagara Falls. I grew up on a farm, mostly growing ‘row crops’. Wheat, oats, corn, buckwheat, and soybeans have become a big crop in the area of late. The wheat we grow around here is [soft] ‘white’ wheat, not the hard red [winter] wheat that is grown in the mid-west. I have wondered what the difference really is, and have never really found out. Can someone out there straighten me out on this? It seems most bread is made from the red, from what I hear. Can’t bread be made from the white …

You should plan to be dependent on stored food until your second crop comes in. Wheat is the least expensive and longest-lasting and most nutritious of the basic foods and should be the backbone of your stored foods. Figure on a pound per person per day, thus about 700 pounds per adult-size person over the two-year storage plan. This is about a loaf of bread per day, which will nicely supplement the other stored foods in your larder. You want “thrice-cleaned, Turkey-red Hard Winter Wheat”, with moisture content at less than 10%. Store it in food-grade plastic buckets; treat it …

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My thanks to R.E.M. for his hard-earned experience on rotating food stocks. Perhaps I can ease his frustration a bit about not reading the packing date of USGI MREs – there is indeed a numbered code packing date on every MRE case, the outside of the newer USGI MRE retort packages and best of all, every individual item in each MRE package. You can go to the www.mreinfo.com web site for the whole story, but to condense the code for you, say you have a four-digit or longer number on the outside of the package – take the first number …

DAK hams were mentioned in a recent article as a good canned meat to store. I agree with this 110%….I’ve actually called and talked to the supervisor of DAK hams in the USA. His name is Ole he is very nice and wonderful to talk too I recommend it… Ole has told me repeatedly that DAK hams will store for at least 5 years at normal room temperatures. Ole also told me how to read the date code on the can. its format is XXXX H or generally that way the first 2 digits are the DAY of the year …

Well, I guess it is safe to say that we have successfully dodged the Y2K bullet (still not completely sure though), which means that a lot of us that implemented food storage programs in its anticipation in 1998 and 1999 are now looking at rotating stock. This, coupled with current events, has me refocused on restocking. I have some tips to share that may be of value to readers that find themselves in a similar position. First, when evaluating how to go about restocking food supplies, consult the Excel spreadsheet that you created when you first started to get serious …

Dear James, My wife and I work long hours and hardly ever cook. We would like to store food but don’t want to rely on anything that has to be cooked. Any suggestions? Thank you, – M.P., Fort Lauderdale, Florida JWR Replies: Although their per ounce/per calorie cost is higher, there are a couple of approaches that I can suggest for your situation: retort packaged cooked entrees (including U.S. military”Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) entrees, and freeze dried Mountain House entrees. Neither require cooking. The retort packaged entrees are “heat and eat.”, while the freeze dried entrees are “just add …

Hello Mr. Rawles : I must say I love your blog and writings as they provide an invaluable service for like minded folks on preparedness!This email is in regards to the absence of dry corn or any corn other than popping corn in your excellent “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course, I am wondering if corn is a viable storage food and if not, why? would it be because of short storage life or unsuitable packing methods to retain nutritive value? Or any other reason that I can’t imagine? While looking at the Provident Living site of the LDS they …

Jim: [Regarding A.P.’s letter posted on August 26th] I’m one of those guys who drinks coffee from dawn to dusk, so I was most interested in the thread on coffee storage. I keep 36 large cans of Maxwell House in my cool-storage pantry (60 degrees in the summer, 40 degrees in the winter). I cycle through the supply on a regular basis, taking about a year to go thru entire stock. In a worst-case scenario, I’d cut back to a can a month and would thus have a 3-year stash. Yeah, I know… the Starbucks sippers turn their nose up …

Jim: For years, "Abigail" and I have been canning vegetables from the garden along with beef, fish, venison and bear. Friends or ours were wanting to learn how to can themselves. Last week Kathy and Jeff came over and we processed a bushel of Roma tomatoes into spaghetti sauce. The next evening we canned up the sauce. Since then Kathy on her own has canned up 10 lbs (dry weight) of navy beans and is getting ready to do some hamburger noodle soup. She told me that she had no idea how easy it is to use a pressure cooker …

Mr. Rawles: The way to store coffee long-term is by purchasing green beans and roasting them yourself as you need them. Green beans (whole beans) stay “fresh” for up to a year in a normal container, like a tin or glass jar or foil lined bag. If you completely seal them off from light and oxygen and maybe even nitrogen purge them then they should stay “fresh” indefinitely, well for several years anyway. See the Terroir site below for how they store their green beans. The thing about roasting coffee beans is that they go stale within two weeks after …