Happy New Year all
Hope you're all keeping well. Been a while since I posted. Been dehydrating veggies (mainly potatoes) and got the knack of it now (thanks SS). Still able to do Archery outdoors at the moment at least.
I'm thinking of reducing the amount of water I've stored to make space for more food preps, given space is limited. What do others here think, less water for more food?
Also, has anyone come across any good wholesalers (online or physical) selling quality canned meats with long storage dates?
Water does take up a lot of space and you can get several days worth of food in the space for a days worth of water.
However, no point in having a years worth of food and a days worth of water so it, as usual, is a balance.
What I have done is worked out how much water I need per day and how much food I think for the same period for a sedentary lifestyle. Then have have done the same for a foraging lifestyle including setting up filters. Two weeks worth of that. Then fill your stores keeping them balanced as much as feasible. The assumption is preparing to stay in as long as I can until I'm forced out or it is safe to exit.
Thanks for the advice SD, yes it is a balancing act.
Most canned meats from any source are going to have dates two to five years out and be good longer than that. Even smoked and salt cured meats last 1-2 years.
If you space is limited you are not going to have room to store canned meats at the 5-10 year shelf life anyway. A tin a week, or 500 or so cans of sausages, are going to take up some space.
Buy meats you will use regularly and rotate them out. I keep a couple of cases of Spam and use a can a week or so. When one case gets sparse I buy its replacement and rotate the stock. Same with canned soups, stews and such. Hopefully you have better quality of canned meat choices than we have here in the States.
I did come across a can of Spam that had escaped the rotation by falling behind something a while back. 5 years outdated. I opened it and it looked and smelled no worse than any. I had it for breakfast the next day and I have so far survived.
I do remember eating C-rats in the army that were 10-15 years in the can. They were stamped with a canning date, not a "use by" date.
Use by dates are all self imposed artificial limits selected by the producer and not mandated by the government. Swollen or rusty cans are a better indicator than a stamped date.
Though I have known people that would have turned cannibal before eating an out of date Twinkie.
Yes I read a lot of canned food lasts way past the stated date. Corn beef for example usually has a date four to five years ahead, so I'm guessing it can easily still be good in 10 years time. That is if it's kept in the right conditions, not left in the garage or on a cold floor. It's reassuring about the old tin of spam MB.
I think I'll leave my water stores as they are, for now at least. Been clearing space in some hallway cupboards, old crap I never use, but Mrs LAC won't let me chuck it all out. it's amazing how much new food storage space I've created just from one section of a cupboard. The Mrs is fully supportive of what I'm doing though so that's a positive. The way they're printing money now my thoughts are to cash in as much of it as possible now for real wealth before it seriously devalues. I read the Grapes of Wrath at school, never thought it could possibly happen again, or worse!
I'm still looking for some good quality tasty canned or dried meat dishes, as much as that is possible. I saw these online, has anyone tried them, and if so, any good?
https://ukpreppingshop.co.uk/products/fr...ew-25-year
What I notice about that particular brand is that it seems to be full meals and 90% carbs!
That is some expensive mac & cheese too! The long term stuff can be ten times the expense for half the product. 32 pounds for six servings of beef stew? are you loosing it LAC? Go to Tesco and see how many cans of good quality beef stew 32 pounds will buy! And it will keep until the plague is over I'm sure. Probably ten years longer as we were saying.
I do know that 32 pounds would buy me around 20 tins of Walmart brand Spam and 10 kilos of rice, and that would keep me alive for a month.
Pasta and rice are the main bulk in these meals and you can buy that cheaper, and keep it stored just as long at a much cheaper rate. Vacuum sealed pasta, instant potato, or rice is going to last nearly forever, that is why rice, wheat, barley, potatoes and maize were the base of early civilizations, they keep long term with no special attention.
The only 25 year items I have stored are commercially prepared ground beef and powdered eggs.
After opening, the GB is still good in its freeze dried form for a year. Living alone I can reconstitute a couple of spoons full of GB and fill out a carb based meal like the ones you show at much cheaper rate. Two spoons of GB, an hand full of rice or pack of ramen and a tin of greens would keep me alive for another day, not to mention what I could forage out here in the boondocks.
I decided that I would miss my eggs terribly and I use them for a lot of baking, so I want to have some form of egg in a crisis. I could stand powdered for as long as they last.
That's just me and my preferences.
Whatever you decide just make sure you add plenty of salsa, brown sauce, tabasco, salt and pepper to the stores. There is a reason the military puts that in each and every ration pack!
It is long known that use by dates are dates made up to meet goverment legislation. Million year old salt has an expiry date of a few years.
You just have to be sensible. Bulging tins, funny smells are to be avoided but I have eaten lots that are beyond their expiry date.
The best way to control most canned foods is to control the ambient temperature into a band of 50 dogs F to 70 dogs F if you can control within those parameters your canned preps will last and do well.....high temps are to be avoided at all costs.....it’s not easy but it can be done , insulation can help big time to achieve it plus reasonable ventilation ......I learnt the hard way as I have pointed out many times on here along with the wasted money cost.
LAC
What have you done with dried preps ? .....pasta, rice , grains, lentils......etc ....some store these in plastic pop bottles , some in glass bottles, and some in Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers ! Most Americans seem to favour the canning method.....I like this idea .....it’s a bit pricey to start off but makes perfect sense in the long run plus the added advantage of doing it yourself .....and straight from your garden or special offers from the farmers markets or supermarkets ......the savings are massive .
Yes I did notice that it was only 10% meat too. One thing I do also keep are a lot of are condiments, sauces, powdered spices and herbs etc. Canned supermarket stew is actually quite expensive and most are pretty low quality for the price, which is why I was looking for a source for higher quality ones. Most supermarket canned stew is about £1.50 so that's only about 21 cans for £32.
SS, I got a load of rice and pasta. Rice stored in an air tight plastic rice bucket, and pasta is in the original bags which are then stored in a large plastic crate, and powdered potatoes already come in foil sealed bags. But you're right about vacuum sealing, and that's the next thing I'm looking into. I tried dehydrating meat a few times, but it didn't go very well, maybe something I'm doing wrong, hard to get it all the right size and shape, and then bits break off and the middle is still wet lol.
Powdered eggs I've been looking for a good supplier, seems quite difficult to get it here in the UK, and I don't really trust buying it on Ebay.
MB, where did you get your commercially prepared ground beef? not heard of that as a prep. Would you be able to share a link so I can see what you mean?
https://mountainhouse.com/collections/fr...ried-meats
Note that these are large cans with 25-30 servings.
I must say that they have increased in price since I purchased mine. About 4x the price I paid in fact. That is what food shortages, lockdowns and plagues will do to the market!
I chose Mountain House because I have used their meals while back packing on numerous occasions and the flavor and quality has always been good.
To my knowledge Mountain House still supplies the emergency rations to some of the special forces types outside the normal MRE supply system. MRE do not have an extremely long storage life.
BTW I chose the ground beef because it is so versatile as a meat component and just a little will add flavor to many dishes.
I also bought my powdered eggs from MH but I do not see them on the inventory any longer.
As for drying meats, that must be done under steady conditions and slowly. Outside conditions influence it also, damp days, humidity and such.
It is actually so simple a cave man can do it, and did for a couple hundred thousand years. And they just sliced the meat thin (about 5mm) and dried it in the sun.
But probably not in England.
The climate and storage thing is why traditional English foods were so heavy on the root veggies, fermenting, salting, and pickling.