Food Storage Styles

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If we had presentations here like those, I know I would want to go, but around here, not so much. I have witnessed what I would call “Mennonite” types that shop at the grocery store. Haven’t heard where they are really from since we do not see them often.
 
UrbanHunter said:
It takes a lot of time and resources to put together a good presentation and display. The people putting the preparedness fairs together spent months making the arrangements and finding a sufficient number of experts to have a comprehensive program. Imagine, all those people doing all that work for free. Before it was all over I had displays on food storage, 72 hour kits, and general emergency preparedness. Each one was built around a half hour power-point presentation. It was a lot of work.
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And you were probably better prepared after you put those presentations together.
 
Husband and I have done a number of presentations over the years. Ham radio and food preparedness. One was at a community center, one a full gospel church, and one was an LDS church. They were fun to do, but alot of preparedness goes into it.
My favorite cousin's daughter got a tour thru our food storage today when she came to pick up her girls. I've been encouraging her for a number of years to keep at it, and she does have a small stockpile. It's been about 6 months since she's gone thru it, and was interested in the freeze dried foods I've been doing. I've brought alot over for her mom to sample. She's my canning expert go to person, and she spotted 4 cans of apple pie filling that were not sealed. Surprised, since we did them together last fall. Talked about sugar and olive oil...two things she uses alot of, and prices have gone up alot on both.
 
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Wendy DeWitt obviously uses the menu plan style of prepping. As she said in the video, it works for her. If a person had 7 dinner menu items, and planned for that for a year, 52 weeks, that means 52 times the ingredients of the meal. With 14 menu items, 26 times. She talks about spaghetti as a menu item, so 1 pound of spaghetti, one jar of Ragu. Of course there are more or less people to prep for, and she also talks about canning ground beef for whatever needs she has, and one jar could be used in the sauce. Also, Parmesan cheese could be included.

Wendy, like some people, works on a one year plan.
Wendy DeWitt's year long supply.JPG


I have always thought this is a great system for planning food storage. It was my idea when I started the thread about prepping for pizza.
 
It's a good plan for teaching needed volumes which I believe is the biggest weakness in food storage. Just multiplying it all out on paper, the end results are mind blowing.

I have that problem with my DH. He looks at something and his mind tells him that it is alot. I try to get him to do the math, but he still doesn't grasp the difference between what he is looking at and how far it actually stretches.

Example: gingersnap cookies. I make a 5 dozen batch and he mows through them in three days. Why do I refuse to make them more than once a month? Because the amount of molasses, butter, sugar and flour I would have to store for just gingersnaps, would be nuts. Now if you add pies and bread to that level of gluttony its ridiculous. He gets one treat a month.

Hundreds of pounds of wheat and/or flour, do not go very far. Sugar and flour/wheat, beans, rice ect.. need to be stocked by the ton if you have a family and are cooking from scratch. You need thousands of cans for a family of four or more, if you go that route only.

I prefer a combination of all types of food preservation so that no one thing stands out. My pantry is what you will see, never my storage.

Anyone who has managed a full year of storage or more, has made a major accomplishment. Six months is nothing to sneeze at these days. It's a lost lifestyle.
 
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ClemKadiddlehopper said:
Anyone who has managed a full year of storage or more, has made a major accomplishment. Six months is nothing to sneeze at these days. It's a lost lifestyle.
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It is a lost lifestyle. The time was when women were at home and could tend a large garden, preserve the food, and help manage it all. It is so much more difficult if you work outside of the home 40 hours a week. Fairly recently, I met a woman whose mother never cooked. Mother was a registered nurse and worked long hours. All of their food was take out or restaurant food. So grown daughter had to teach herself about cooking and managing food for a family.
 
Amish Heart said:
It happens. I don't remember my mom "cooking" more than a handful of times. I taught myself as an adult.
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I belong to groups for narcissism on Facebook and in Reddit. I see many stories about mothers who rarely or never cooked. Often the cooking in those homes was put on one of the children, usually the family scape goat. I've known a few people who never cook for various reasons. I'm not judging. We're all different and have different needs. Food is what you can buy that is already prepared: cereal, microwaveable, sandwiches, deli foods, to go food, take out, fast food.
Daughter has a friend where the children were never allowed to cook, because "they would mess up the kitchen." As an adult, friend really struggles with cooking, often burning the food.
 
I'm looking through Wendy DeWitt's handout of meals to prepare for. She gives the meal and the needed ingredients to store for those meals. It makes it so easy to prepare for those meals. I don't see pizza on her list, but she does mention that Ragu can be used for pizza sauce! I know she cans, because she mentioned that she has 3 canners and cans all the meats for her meals. Maybe she doesn't make her own spaghetti sauce, or maybe she does and just calls all tomato sauces, Ragu.

I do not see any mention of bean soup, or using canned hams. That is definitely on my list of foods, using canned hams for bean soup and scalloped potatoes.

Wendy's Dinner meals (20 meals):
Beef and Beans
Beef soup
Beef Stew
Chicken alfredo
Chicken creole
Chicken delight
Chicken fricasse
Chicken soup
Chicken and rice casserole
Chili
Chili mac
Goulash
Macaroni and Cheese
Rice-a-roni
Shepherd's pie
Spaghetti
Sweet and sour chicken
Taco soup
Tamale pie
Tomato soup

She has other foods to prepare for, such as breakfast and desserts. Later, in her handout, she lists other meals to plan for. These are just dinners:
Hamburger pie (seems to be shepherds pie)
Parmesan chicken
Salmon and rice
 
Weedygarden said:
It is a lost lifestyle. The time was when women were at home and could tend a large garden, preserve the food, and help manage it all. It is so much more difficult if you work outside of the home 40 hours a week.
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This. I struggle a lot because of this. I spend 53 hours a week either commuting or at work. I want to be better about my food storage and preps but by the time I get home, do whatever needs to be done, make dinner, eat and shower it's almost my bedtime. Then weekends I try to catch up on others chores and still make time for fun things so I don't go crazy. It's frustrating.

I will be watching Wendy's video when I get home, I think that strategy might really work well for me. I just need to figure out where to store it all. 🤔
 
Chaosdawn said:
This. I struggle a lot because of this. I spend 53 hours a week either commuting or at work. I want to be better about my food storage and preps but by the time I get home, do whatever needs to be done, make dinner, eat and shower it's almost my bedtime. Then weekends I try to catch up on others chores and still make time for fun things so I don't go crazy. It's frustrating.

I will be watching Wendy's video when I get home, I think that strategy might really work well for me. I just need to figure out where to store it all. 🤔
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I get it! When I was teaching, I would work 12 to 15 hour days. No time or energy to even think about anything else.
I love Wendy's strategy for prepping and food storage. I've got dry foods: beans, rice, wheat, oatmeal, pasta, sugar, salt, etc., basic survival foods. But Wendy's strategy, IMHO, is really good. I watched it years ago and know that she has it figured out and can help many of us get it. Because you can have 1000's of pounds of beans and rice, whatever you have, but unless you have a plan for how you're going to use them, you've missed a big piece.
 
I have noticed something, we have been prepping as a family for over 30 years, food storage has always been a big part of it and we got fairly proficient at using a First In First Out (FIFO) to keep us at about a year's supply of food on hand. But with COVID, the political environment, and the global disruptions we really ramp-ed up our food storage. We still eat what we store and store what we eat, but as of late I am noticing a problem that I have never encountered before....

I go grocery shopping every week (Early Friday or Saturday morning) and we make a list of things we need in the days leading up to my shopping trip....
As of late, it has become harder and harder to think of anything we need, this weeks list is eggs and sweet pickle relish.... that's it? It makes it hard to justify the shopping trip......

I guess we could double down of the long term (10-20 year) food storage items, but how much of that do you really need? I already have about 3 pallets of that stuff and we are trying hard to use that on a regular basis.

Is anyone else running into this? Where you reach a point where you have everything you need and you are growing most of your perishables?
 
I've got the same problem with FIFO. I keep a good deal of the storage at Dad's (he's next door), but I also keep a good deal of it at my place. The longer term stuff is here mostly. Small abodes have that special problem of no central location for storage. I've utilize a panty cupboard, a cupboard under the microwave, the linen closet. You name it, I use it.
 
Bacpacker said:
I do see that with certain items. But we still find some holes we try and fill. I have a harder time with the FIFO rotation. Due to storage space, we have food in multiple areas and seems we always miss something
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I was fortunate, when we moved in here 20+ years ago we had a half empty basement, I put in 2 rows of floor to ceiling shelves, 2' wide and 60' long so all my storage is in one place. Our food storage takes up half of that storage space, so everything is in 1 place. That helps, I even took a marker and labeled the shelves A-X: 1-4 so when I inventory I can easily identify where that 500 pounds of flour is......
 
I did that yesterday at Aldi...cart was only 3/4 full. It needs to be full. First I get all the sales, and any dry goods to store (like 8 lbs of sugar every time), also anything I just need, like catfood (haven't had any in 3 weeks). Then I just buy extras till I fill up the cart. If I get meat, cart price will be about $300 or so, otherwise its about $225 or so. I did intend to get 5 of the 10lb bags of Tyson chicken quarters that they had advertised for 69 cents a lb, but they didn't get them in. I like to cook those and strip the meat and freeze it.
I usually throw in extra canned food, pasta, flour, sugar, cereal, paper towels, ziplocks, stuff like that if the cart is not full.
 
This came up in an email for me today as another food storage style: A bucket of various foods for a period of time. They are saying one months food supply in a bucket. That would certainly depend upon the size of your family and what you are storing. They are talking about dried foods, which take up less space.
These would be easy to grab and go with if you had to evacuate.
The black bins with the yellow lids would also be great to load with foods of our choice. These would definitely be harder to monitor best buy dates, unless you do a good inventory for each container that includes the dates. It might be easier to replace those items with a good inventory sheet. I think creating the lists of what to include will take a little planning.

Month Food Supply Bucket​

Over the years I have done food storage in many different ways. I love having a year supply of long term grains, legumes, and basics to sustain me through a major food shortage/crisis I also love having a large supply of freeze dried fruits, vegetables, and meats to make normal easy meals that don't require a lot of fuel and help me save time and money in the kitchen in my everyday cooking. But the third type of food storage I'm a fan of is having a supply of just add water meals on hand. They are great for shorter term emergencies, to grab and go if you need to evacuate quickly, and they are very compact for how much food you get. If you have specific dietary concerns or allergies they may not work for you but they are a great staple for many people who don't have time/energy to plan, prepare, and store individual ingredients.
 
Amish Heart said:
Almost sounds like my soup buckets. I have five gallon buckets with just add water soup mixes. But I could add canned meat to them, too.
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More than a decade ago I made a bucket of food to go. I included coffee, tea, juice (won't try to store juice in a kit again). cans of soup, cans of fruit, oatmeal packets and more that I no longer remember. I've been thinking that I should make a list of foods to store in a bucket or bin for a month's supply. A menu would help me.
 
We used to make meal packets for out BOBs/72 hour kits (Backpacks), each packet contained a weeks worth of meals for 1 person. The kids were young then and we even had one made for the baby. Everyone had their own BOB and we had family outings to the park where we practiced making meals from the bags. We did these outings once every 6 months when we rotated the meal packets out. It worked for about 10 years when the kids began leaving home and it became apparent that we would have to dig-in in and emergency. We used a gallon zip lock bag for each day's rations. Each BOB had 1 gallon of water and a water filter system that the kids were allowed to "learn". We had 1 extra filter system that we would practice with on our family outings... From time to time we would catch the kids playing with the "extra" filter while they played their version of emergency!
 
Lately, I have been on a pancake and waffle binge, used up the "old" maple syrup. Went down and got a "fresh" bottle of the stuff. The fresh bottle was from 2008, looks clear, pours well, and taste's fine... So the best by date was 2009.

Here is my dilemma, I have noticed that the best by date on most foods is now less than 2 years, if you follow that line of thinking you would never have any food storage.

Does anyone publish a list of "best by date" times based on actual shelf life of the items? I know we all have our rules of thumb for different things based on our experiences, but has anyone put together a real shelf life list? I think that it is the kind of information that newbie's to food storage would find valuable.

After I started typing I looked a bit and found this web page Food Storage Shelf Life (plus printable chart!)

It has a nice list. I think that the forum would benefit from having a group of threads/links that had orderly pages of information on things like this.
 
UrbanHunter said:
Lately, I have been on a pancake and waffle binge, used up the "old" maple syrup. Went down and got a "fresh" bottle of the stuff. The fresh bottle was from 2008, looks clear, pours well, and taste's fine... So the best by date was 2009.

Here is my dilemma, I have noticed that the best by date on most foods is now less than 2 years, if you follow that line of thinking you would never have any food storage.

Does anyone publish a list of "best by date" times based on actual shelf life of the items? I know we all have our rules of thumb for different things based on our experiences, but has anyone put together a real shelf life list? I think that it is the kind of information that newbie's to food storage would find valuable.

After I started typing I looked a bit and found this web page Food Storage Shelf Life (plus printable chart!)

It has a nice list. I think that the forum would benefit from having a group of threads/links that had orderly pages of information on things like this.
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That's a good list, thanks for the link! I always felt best by dates are put on foods to protect the manufacturer and sellers. That web page brought up storage conditions, I think that is MOST important. Just look at how the pioneers stored food, smoked their meats, etc!! It's very important to know what the real storage life is of foods!!
 
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