1 Year of Stored Food

[Taedareth]

Was just reading about having a 1-year emergency food supply, and pondering what should go in it.

Besides the obvious dried foods (beans, rice, grain etc.) would you include any homemade canned foods? It's been my understanding that the canning process sterilizes the food, thus destroying all beneficial enzymes and damaging the vitamin content. So is there any reason to include them in your food bank? Or would you go with low-temp dehydrated fruits/vegetables intead? (Still no enzymes, but maybe more vitamins?)

[crunchy_mama]

I am working on building up 1 yr of food. I have it down on somethings easily- meat- fats- salt and spices and other misc. I do have some canned foods stored. I would like to put some stuff up in a root cellar I think that is best for the winter and what would traditionally be done. I do some grains(rice, gf oats, corn) usually I don't eat grains but the rest of the family eats some in an emergency I wouldn't be that picky. I have some dried beans stored as well. The idea though is that you must eat what you store and store what you eat or you will be throwing stuff out when it goes bad.

[mamadelbosque]

I don't know that we could go a whole year w/o buying anything, but we could probably get pretty close to. It wouldn't be interesting, but we'd live - we have lots of beans, rice, wheat, lentils, salt, etc stored I do include canned veggies/fruit in my stores, becaues personally, we eat them and they do have lots of vitamins still.

The trick as the above poster noted is to 'eat what you store; store what you eat'. I took the concept to heart a couple yrs ago and as such still have lots of stuff stored. Onc eyou build up a supply, you just shop as normal and add what you recently bought to the back of your storage

So... off the top of my head, what we have stored is basicly:

wheat (~100 pounds, mostly hard red, some hard white & soft white as well)
beans (~50#s pinto, 50# black)
lentils (~25#s red, 25#s brown)
rice (~25#s long grain, ~25#s basmati, both brown)
salt (~50#s sea salt)

Then I also have a couple cases of coconut milk, a case or so of canned salmon, and some tomato paste and canned tomatoes. I'm hoping to can a bunch of tomatoes here in the next month or so (2 yrs ago I canned nearly 100 quarts... last year a couple dozen and bought more over the year...)

I also have several pounds of pasta in the basement, and lots of other random stuff, along w/ a couple freezers full of meat, milk, veggies & fruit... The problem, at least around here w/ dehyrated stuff is its so damn humid that they partially rehydrate and get moldy and stuff. Canning is much safer, IMO for long-term, unless your storing in the freezer or somewhere else thats heavily climate controlled.

[crunchy_mama]

One thing to remember is the storage life of food when you are buying stores. Wheat lasts a long time but brown rice is 6 months(according to sources I have read). So, you of course want to make sure that you will use it before it goes bad(obviously). So, you need to figure out your family's usage before you just go buying.

If you are thinking about food storage of frozen items you have to consider how will you power that freezer in an emergency. Another reason I don't want to rely on frozen food more than I have to and have a generator and fuel for back-up.

[velcromom]

I am not convinced that canning destroys all nutrients, I'm comfortable with canned goods personally. The benefit of having the food available that is not dependent on the power being on is too great to pass up, especially when it comes to meats. Also consider dehydrated foods.

A lot of people have found that many "best by" dates are not "use by this date or it will kill you!!" type things - the food may begin to discolor, or perhaps not taste quite as fresh, but might still be edible for a long time after - there are individuals out there who have deliberately tested this out. Of course it depends on storage conditions, etc. Here's an interesting thread on the topic.

It's pretty easy to get to a year's worth of oils, baking supplies like leaveners, etc., salt, spices... grains and beans take some time to build up to a year but will last a very long time when stored properly. In the western part of the US, one excellent source of organic goods, GF goods & anything else you might need for a TF food storage plan, is www.azurestandard.com. The only thing they don't have is the mylar storage bags & oxygen absorbers for long-term (beyond a couple years or so) storage. Those are easy to find with a little googling though.

[cristeen]

While i dont have a years worth, i absolutely include home canned foods. They may not have the enzymatic action of fresh, but at least we won't need to worry about rickets or scurvy. They also are really good for bartering.

[Taedareth]

Where do you ladies keep all this food? Sounds like you'd need a lot of storage space.

Just thinking - the comment about storing what you actually eat, so that you cycle through it and it stays fresh - that makes good sense. Problem is that what we eat is mostly fresh fruits/vegetables, meat, dairy and eggs. To store a year's supply of those would be extremely cost-prohibitive and take up a lot of space.

So I was thinking just for peace of mind, I might want to keep a year's supply of things that are cheaper and easy to store, like beans/rice/lentils (plus a few cases of tomatoes and coconut cream, salt, etc.) But I would never "cycle through" the beans/rice/lentils because I hate them and they make me fat Really, the hubby and I don't do well on carb-based foods. I have to be careful about baking because even with my fresh-ground spelt flour, I easily gain weight from grains and other complex carbs. But I would be grateful for them in an emergency situation, of course

[mamadelbosque]

We have a big basement and store all the grains/legumes in big 4 gallon glas jars (that I would no longer recommend or buy again - you can't get replacement parts. we obviously found this out the hard way. Go w/ 5 gallon plastic buckets and gama seal lids...).

I really can't imagine having a bunch of food stored that I knew I'd be throwing out in a year or 2 or 3 or whatever, just sounds like a horrible waste. If you don't eat beans/rice/grains, fine, don't store them. Figure out what you do eat that you can store and buy lots of that. But storing food that you'll never eat makes no sense to me. At all.

And finally I know "they" say brown rice only stores for 6 months... but I have about 10 or 15#s of brown basmati thats at least 1.5 yrs old now and is still peachy fine.

[crunchy_mama]

How did you store your brown rice? I would like to store more BUT have been unable to find any but a couple of anecdotal accounts that it would last longer. Right now we are using and storing some white jasmine and basmati.

[CherryBomb]

Originally Posted by cristeen

While i dont have a years worth, i absolutely include home canned foods. They may not have the enzymatic action of fresh, but at least we won't need to worry about rickets or scurvy. They also are really good for bartering.

I agree with this. We don't have a years worth of food, we could probably get by a few months, though.

[crunchy_mama]

Originally Posted by velcromom

I am not convinced that canning destroys all nutrients, I'm comfortable with canned goods personally. The benefit of having the food available that is not dependent on the power being on is too great to pass up, especially when it comes to meats. Also consider dehydrated foods.

A lot of people have found that many "best by" dates are not "use by this date or it will kill you!!" type things - the food may begin to discolor, or perhaps not taste quite as fresh, but might still be edible for a long time after - there are individuals out there who have deliberately tested this out. Of course it depends on storage conditions, etc. Here's an interesting thread on the topic.

It's pretty easy to get to a year's worth of oils, baking supplies like leaveners, etc., salt, spices... grains and beans take some time to build up to a year but will last a very long time when stored properly. In the western part of the US, one excellent source of organic goods, GF goods & anything else you might need for a TF food storage plan, is www.azurestandard.com. The only thing they don't have is the mylar storage bags & oxygen absorbers for long-term (beyond a couple years or so) storage. Those are easy to find with a little googling though.

Thanks for the link- I couldn't view the site without registering so I am now waiting for that to go through. I am always anxious to see information on food storage times. My friend and I were just talking the other day about storing beans. Info says 1 yr for dried beans and I know I have had dry beans that were so old and pretty much impossible to get to cook right. However, I was curious as to how different storage methods affected that. I was also thinking that canning some would be prudent as well as then we would have the making of a good meal ready to go which would be handy in an emergency. We recently got Azure delivery somewhat close so we have been able to do that every few months as well and it is helping with stocking up.

[mamadelbosque]

Our brown rice is stored in the aforementioned 4-gallon glass jars in our basement - it stays fairly cool down there year round.