Category: Food Storage & Cooking

Jim, Being born and raised in Maine, I was introduced to B&M baked beans at a young age. Beans and brown bread were our standard fare on Saturday nights for many years. Over the years, I have grown increasingly fond of them, although harder to find in the Midwest – they seem to get crowded off many grocery store shelves in favor of lesser rivals. In particular, I love B&M brown bread (with or without raisins) – rich, moist dense bread made with molasses and packaged in a can. It is heated inside the can (hint: slice it cold, before …

Mr. Rawles, My test indictor for properly functioning Oxygen Absorbing Packets while packaging bulk storage in food grade buckets is the downward pull on the lid. If a good seal is formed by the lid (which is imperative for any method of purging the Oxygen) the packets will cause a vacuum to be created in the bucket and the lid will be concave. It may take up to three (3) days for this to happen. I have had one bucket so far not seal properly and it did not display the concave lid. I replaced the lid and absorber packets …

Jim: For anyone in Northeastern Ohio, look into taking advantage of the resources in and around Amish country. Lehman’s Hardware in Kidron, Ohio is an excellent place to find non-electric household and farm equipment. They do sell some bulk grains to be used with their wide variety of grain mills, but I would also suggest looking at Swiss Village Bulk Foods in Sugarcreek, Ohio. They run sales weekly, and there are often coupons and additional discounts offered in local newspapers. There are many other similar resources in the area, but these two stores are the largest, and the ones I …

Good Evening, I recently purchased your book, How to survive the end of the world as we know it. I wanted to say that I have found it to be extremely useful and very helpful. I have been researching everything that I need to do to keep my family safe WTSHTF, but I have not been successful at finding information on how to properly prepare and safely store food for my larder. My second problem is were to find a store that sells bulk oats, wheat, flour etc. I live in northeastern Ohio and have not been very successful at …

Mr. Rawles, I’m writing both a thank you and a warning. First, thank you, thank you, for putting together the “Rawles Gets You Ready” family preparedness course. By getting almost all of our storage food at Sam’s Club and packaging it ourselves in 6-gallon “super pail” food storage buckets, we saved hundreds dollars, versus buying commercially-packed storage food. That alone made the course worthwhile. (Not to mention the ton of other useful information it includes.) I have also loaned our course binder to both my sister and to my sister-in-law, so the course has also gotten triple the mileage! Now …

James, Some time ago mention was made on the site regarding “square buckets” [that are food grade]. I came across this deal which readers may be interested in (I have no relationship with these folks). The company is called Five Star Preparedness, in Utah. God Bless, – Bob B. JWR: I have searched your great site, and the Internet in general for more info on storing grain (such as wheat) inside good used food grade plastic pails. So far I have learned that a mylar food grade bag should be used inside the [sealed HDPE plastic] pail to put the …