Preparing Deseret, one blogger at a time
Several local ladies (each with their own great blogs on different aspects on preparedness) have gotten together and launched a site today that looks to be an excellent resource for preppers. Head on over and check out Fun With Food Storage. Looks like they’ll have some great information on how to get and use your food storage as part of your normal routine, and who wouldn’t want to accept help with that?
Alpine Food Storage
alpinefoodstorage.com
216-4588 or 361-4933
11800 No. 6000 W.
Highland, UT 84003
USA
This will wrap up our series on Mylar Bag Food Storage. You can catch the previous posts here: a How-To Pictorial on Storing Food in Mylar Bags and Alternative Ideas for Mylar Bags.
This post will talk about some of the experiences, techniques and tips that readers and others have provided us.
MaKettle10 provides us with this info:
In a study done with mylar bags and mice, it took the mice about 15 seconds to sense the food was there, and get into the bag to start eating it. Good idea you have to put the mylar bags into the big plastic storage bins. I’d never store them in cardboard boxes for extended, long-term storage.
Continue reading “Mylar Bag Wrapup – Issues with Mylar Bags”
I am aware of at least one individual on Utah Preppers that had doubts about this article ever seeing the light of day. Catching up on honey-do lists (building 2 can rotation systems, etc.) and everyday life was keeping me busier than I would have liked. Besides, seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered in water (well, except for Utah), so what’s the big deal?
The truth of it is, without water, your chances of surviving an extended emergency are greatly diminished.
“Humans can survive 3 days on average without water — less when it is very hot or one is very active (as opposed to weeks without food). A single day without water significantly reduces bodily and mental performance.” – Wikibooks – Outdoor Survival/Water
In a TEOTWAWKI situation very little will be available in the way of treats or delicious flavorings. Have you thought about making some preps to be able to provide a flavorful break from the bland day to day eating of rice, wheat and beans for over a year? More than just being able to provide something yummy to yourself and your family, good sweets will likely be a sought after barter item. The simplest treat to make and sell/barter would be hard tack candy. There are few ingredients to hard tack, we’ll get to those in a second. The most important ingredient in hard tack is flavoring!
Now I want to digress for a minute and talk about Vanilla Flavor. Vanilla extract is a VERY time and labor intensive product to make. In fact, it is the second most expensive spice in the world next to saffron. The majority of the worlds vanilla comes from Madagascar – and it’s being destroyed! 80% of Madagascar’s Vanilla farms are currently being killed off by a deadly fungus! This most likely means that the already expensive flavor is going to skyrocket in price. Vanilla is one of the most common flavorings – it is used in baking all kinds of products and is also commonly added to powdered milk to enhance the flavor.
Continue reading “Food Storage – Flavorings: Have you stocked up?”
Over on “Food Storage… A Necessary Adventure”, there is a recent post called Have you seen a 1/4 cup lately.
It put a few things into perspective for me. Of course you should go read the post, but the basic rundown for me was that the minimum amount of food for longer term survival comes in the form of 1/4 cup of rice, and another 1/4 cup of beans, in dried form. How much is a quarter cup, really? We all have measuring cups that size, go check it out. It is really little.
This should give us all some hope for the possibility of storing enough for ourselves. A 25lb bag each of beans and rice gives just over 300 days of *minimal* sustenance! Not only does that show us how easy it can be to get started, but as the poster notes, that also gives us a great understanding of how we can provide some charity in the worst of situations. I know I plan the food for my family, and in the worst of cases, I would need to focus on keeping those resources for my family. But inside we all want to help others. Even if we’re not giving much, just a quarter-cup of dried beans and rice can keep a person alive. Understanding that from our side makes it easier to share.
Now you need to learn how to make the best use *of* that little amount.
We recently covered the step-by-step process of storing food in Mylar Bags and went over some of the advantages of them, key of which is protection from air and moisture. It’s pretty clear that you can store most any dry food in Mylar Bags, but what else can be stored in them? A Mylar Bag is an easily portable, strong, waterproof bag – there are lots of things you can store in them! Here are a few ideas (we welcome any other ideas!):
Continue reading “Alternative Storage Techniques using Mylar Bags”
For several years I lived in the amazing country of Brasil (yes, that’s how to spell it right :) ).
One of the many things I learned while living there was about a product called the Cesta Básica (Basket of Basics). This product is the lifeblood of many Brasilian families, making up the core of their grocery shopping. What it is, is simple. It is a package containing an assortment of basic food items, designed to meet the basic needs for a given amount of time. Which products it contains, and how much would vary by store, but largely were the same. This was an extremely common item for several reasons. The first of which is the basic brasileiro’s diet, which starts with beans and rice, and almost anything else is extra. Which type of beans was largely a regional choice as the default, but alternative ‘versions’ of the packages could easily be found if you preferred another regions flavor.
There are several options available to us for long term storage of bulk food – 5 gallon buckets, #10 cans and Mylar Bags are some of the most popular. In this post we’ll be going over the advantages and disadvantages of Mylar Bags and how to use a Mylar Bag Sealer. Specifically, we’re going to show how to turn all of this:
Into This:
Continue reading “How To: Adventures in Food Storage with Mylar Bags”
Just a reminder to folks, that the December deadline for orders to the Crossroads co-op is Friday the 5th. What’s the co-op you might ask? Well, in their own words:
IT’S A SIMPLE IDEA, REALLY – provide quality, healthy food at a substantial savings through cooperative purchasing; and build a sense of community by bringing people together and promoting volunteer service.
The Community Food Co-op is for EVERYONE. Whether you are struggling to meet your basic food needs or are just looking for a way to share in community, you can be part of this simple exchange: giving and receiving.
So the Co-op is just individuals, and community groups working together to buy the best quality food, directly, at the best price for the group. Costs are kept as low as possible by buying only a select set of items, at the best negotiated price point, then distributed via donated resources of the co-op members.
I’d like to link today to a great post by a friend of mine, Jordan Gunderson. I’ve known Jordy for a few years now through our local geek community, and was ever so proud when recently he had told me about how his family had been dedicating themselves to getting their three-month, then year’s supply of food in place. He had obviously put in some good thought and research into things, much like any geek will do when dedicating themselves to solving a problem.
In the recent Costco mailer, some friends and I all noticed that a “72-hour” kit that Costco carries had a limited time online discount available. The $60 kit was/is available for a limited time for $40 with shipping (Costco 72 hour kit sale), so I decided to check it out. One more 72 hour kit could be good for my family, and if it was nice, would make a great gift to give to some family members and friends.
The kit is all self-contained in a 2.5 gallon bucket, that has a nice airtight seal (gasket lined-lid), but has the one-time use strip around the edge, so you know if it’s been opened. The bucket of course will still reseal, but
with the thinner lip that’s left after the protective strip is removed. So you don’t need a bucket tool to open this thing, but you will need some kind of knife or tool to release the first seal. I had to cut that part open. The bucket itself contains a listing of contents, as well as basic nutritional information for the food inside, which is nice to have available. However for this review I wanted to actually get my hands on what was inside, to see the quality, etc.