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Category: long-term food storage

Thursday, 6 April 2017

09:42 – It was 46.3F (8C) when I took Colin out around 0730 this morning, drizzling and breezy. That was probably our high temperature for the day, as snow/sleet showers are supposed to move in this afternoon. We’re to get one to three inches (2.5 to 7.5 cm) of accumulation.

Last night we had heavy rains, bright lightning, and loud thunder starting just before midnight and continuing periodically for a couple of hours. Colin was not amused. When he’s terrified, he jumps up on the bed and tries to force his way behind us and on top of us. I hate to yell at him when he’s already terrified, but at one point he was standing on my throat. Given his size, that’s no joke.

Barbara is cleaning house this morning and then building more chemistry kits. She heads down to Winston mid-morning tomorrow, by which time the worst of the snow/ice should be gone, and returns Saturday afternoon at some point.

We just started dinner in the slow cooker. Two cups of rice, five cups of chicken bouillon, a couple cans of cream of * soup, and several large chunks of chicken. I think the recipe says it’s sufficient to feed four to six people, so we’ll get at least two if not three meals out of it.

Barbara has been taking the Winston-Salem paper since she returned to Winston-Salem after grad school in 1978 or 1979.  The WS Journal has the same problems as any other newspaper. Several days ago, they announced significant staff cuts due to declining circulation and advertising revenue. The paper also keeps getting small, both in page count and actual page size. This morning we got the first example of their new layout. Things have changed a lot. The editorial page, for example, used to be a double page spread at the end of the first section, with the back page of that section devoted to weather and similar items. The back page is the same as it was, but the editorial section is down to a single page instead of a two-page spread. No great loss, since the WSJ is a typical liberal/progressive rag. Their editorial staff has never met a government spending or social welfare program it didn’t endorse.

Oh, that science kit that I shipped to Canada on 3/22 and that somehow ended up in Paris, France has now finished its European vacation and is now back in Canada. It cleared Canadian customs (again) and is now in the hands of Canada Post. We’ve had several foreign shipments take odd detours along the way, but this is the first time we’ve had one detour to a different country.

FedEx showed up with a dozen cans of Keystone pork yesterday. Lynn had speculated in the comments about the number of cans that would be damaged. Of the 12 cans, 9 were pristine and 3 showed minor dings. Nothing serious. In fact, at first glance all 3 appeared pristine. It was only as I ran my fingers over them that I detected a slight dent in each. Nothing that would be unusual for cans on the shelves at the supermarket or Costco.

The 10 cans of Keystone beef chunks that I ordered at the same time are en-route and supposed to arrive today. The dozen cans of Keystone ground beef are supposed to arrive tomorrow in three (!) shipments, of 7, 4, and 1 cans.

 

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Monday, 3 April 2017

09:49 – It was 48.1F (9C) when I took Colin out around 0730 this morning, damp and with heavy fog. The forecast for the rest of this week is pretty crappy, with heavy rains/thunderstorms today and rain/snow the rest of the week, with temperatures falling below freezing starting Thursday and into the weekend.

We got some of our plants started yesterday in small pots: five pots each of amaranth, St. John’s Wort, basil, dill, sage, rosemary, oregano, thyme, parsley, and jalapeno peppers; six pots each of broccoli and California Wonder sweet peppers; and eight pots each of Salad Bowl lettuce, ruby red onions, and Black Seeded Simpson lettuce. The two lettuces and jalapeno peppers are Burpee hybrid seeds. The others are all heirloom/open-pollinated. A lot of the other stuff like tomatoes, green beans, squash, turnips, parsnips, garlic, potatoes, etc. will be direct-seeded in the garden over the coming weeks.

We’re going to make up another batch of barbecue sauce today and have pork barbecue sandwiches for dinner. I’d ordered a bunch of stuff from Walmart to make it up, including three 114-ounce jugs of ketchup, two 105-ounce jugs of mustard, and four bottles of Worcestershire sauce. The first time UPS damaged the order, and Walmart re-shipped it. That was to arrive March 27th, but on March 24th I found out that UPS had also destroyed the second shipment. I figured Walmart would re-ship automatically, but as of this morning they hadn’t. So I contact their support via Chat and asked them to do so. I just go the confirming email that they’re reshipping it, so I’m hoping the third time will be a charm.

After initially having reservations, Barbara has decided that she really likes the Keystone Pork. We’ve used it so far for barbecue and in the slow cooker to make pork gloppita. We’ll be using it regularly for normal meals, so I’d better order another couple of cases.

Keystone claims a 5-year shelf life officially, but I’ve spoken to them about shelf life. One woman there told me that while they call it shelf life, in fact it’s a best-by date, and even that is really pessimistic. She said she’d eaten several of their meats that had been packed ten or more years previously and she couldn’t tell any difference between them and stuff they’d just packaged. Like most canned goods, these canned meats have actual shelf lives of decades. Other times, I talked to two different people there, who said pretty much the same thing.

Unfortunately, Walmart will let me order only the pork and beef chunks. I’d like to order more of their chicken and ground beef, but even when Walmart has those allegedly in stock they won’t let me add them to my cart. I just get a message that tells me they’re unavailable and that they can’t ship or deliver them to my nearest store with that combination of options. Oh, well. We like both the beef chunks and the pork, so that’s what I’ll order.

Speaking of which, just for a giggle I decided to check Target on-line yesterday. They do carry Augason products, although not Keystone meats. The problem is the same as it was the last time I checked, a year or two ago. Their prices are much, much higher than Walmart for the same items. They’re usually even higher than Amazon, which is saying something.

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Wednesday, 29 March 2017

09:45 – It was 55.2F (13C) when I took Colin out around 0715 this morning, sunny and clear. Barbara is waiting for a dump truck of mulch to show up so she can get the strips of raw dirt along the driveway mulched. The driveway is about 45 yards long and has dirt along both edges, so she’ll be hauling a lot of wheelbarrow loads of mulch today and probably tomorrow.

We had instant mashed potatoes with the leftover pork gloppita for dinner last night. I used the Walmart Great Value potato flakes. The first time we used them, I used only the dry potato flakes and water to reconstitute. They ended up okay, but kind of blah. Not surprising, considering that the Walmart flakes are 100% potatoes. (The Idahoan dry potatoes that we used to get in 3.25-pound boxes at Costco/Sam’s also include dry milk and lots of other stuff that may shorten their shelf-life.)

Yesterday, I made them up according to the instructions on the box for four servings, but substituting weights for volumes for reproducibility. Rather than fresh milk, I used enough water to provide the total amount of liquid specified and just added a quarter cup of Nestle Nido dry whole milk to the dry potatoes. I did use two tablespoons of real butter, but that could easily be substituted for by a fluid ounce of vegetable oil and a bit of butter powder. The result was pretty much indistinguishable from the Idahoan just-add-water potatoes, which is to say pretty decent. Barbara said they were fine, and she’s the ultimate arbiter.

I’d bought just one 26.7-ounce box of the Walmart potatoes to test. I have four cases (42 pounds) of LDS instant mashed potatoes in our deepest pantry, which I bought when my initial goal was one year’s worth of food for Barbara, Colin, and me. LDS sells them for about $3.36/pound, versus $1.60/pound at Walmart. That’s a big enough difference that it’s worth the minor time and effort to repackage the Walmart product in 2-liter bottles, so I’ll go ahead and order another 42 pounds of the Walmart  potatoes and repackage them. In PET bottles with oxygen absorbers, they’ll be good for at least 20+ years and probably 100.

 

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Thursday, 23 March 2017

09:44 – It was 28.5F (-2C) when I took Colin out around 0715 this morning, with a slight breeze. Barbara got all of her errands run yesterday. She has a haircut appointment at 1030 this morning and will make a Costco run on her way home. She should be back by mid-afternoon.

Email the other day from another newbie prepper. I’ll call her Tiffany, but this time that really is her name. She and her husband are both in their early thirties. Both have decent jobs with reasonable job security. They have no children, and aren’t planning to have any. They live in a rural-ish area about 25 miles from the nearest town, which is about 30,000 population. She’s been reading my blog regularly for the last two or three years. They’ve been kind-of prepping for the last couple of years, but Tiffany calls their efforts hit-or-miss. When they think about it, they pick up an extra dozen cans of this or that at the Super Walmart, but she says they have only maybe a three-week supply of food. She wanted to know if I could send her a list to work from. She’d like to start by getting ready for a 3-month emergency.

They already have a good start on a lot of stuff. They have a woodstove upstairs that they could cook on if need be, as well as a fireplace with a woodburning insert downstairs. Their normal water supply is gravity-fed from a springhouse, with a 12V pump to pressurize their tank. That ordinarily runs from house current, but could easily be changed over to 12V battery power. Even without the pump, the gravity feed produces enough water pressure to provide water at the faucets and toilets. They have a decent first-aid kit. Her husband hunts and both of them shoot clays, so they have two shotguns as well as a bolt-action rifle and have accumulated a reasonable amount of ammunition suitable for self-defense. They have three dogs, which Tiffany says let them know any time anyone approaches the property. They have battery-operated LED lanterns and FLASHLIGHTS as well as several old oil lamps, with a good supply of batteries and lamp oil. The only thing she thinks they’re really short on is food.

So she asked me to assume that I was starting with no food and wanted to buy enough quickly to last two people for three months. What, specifically, would I buy? She says they’ll eventually expand that to six months and probably a year, but for now she just wants to make a serious start. So I replied as follows:

Hi, Tiffany

All of what I write below assumes that you’re feeding only two people for three months. I don’t know how big your dogs are, but I’d also store the same foods for them and in the same quantities you’d store for a person of equal weight. For example, if your three dogs weigh 50 pounds each, that’s the equivalent of one 150-pound adult.

Incidentally, the quantities listed below are going to sound huge, but they’re actually just adequate. Don’t forget, you want this food to hold you without outside resupply. You won’t be able to make your weekly supermarket run, nor will you be eating out, ordering takeout, and so on.

The main consideration is calories. Figure on at least 2,200 to 2,400 calories/day for yourself and 2,800 to 3,000 calories per day for your husband plus whatever you need for your dogs. Carbohydrates provide about 1,700 calories per dry pound, as do proteins (meat, beans, etc.). Oils and fats provide about 3,800 calories per pound. You need an adequate mix of all three for good nutrition. In addition to raw calories, all of the carbohydrates except sugars also contain significant amounts of protein—typically 10% to 15% by weight—but grain proteins are not “complete”. Supplementing grain proteins with meat and/or bean protein makes it complete.

I’d recommend that you start by buying adequate quantities of both bulk staples and canned goods, as well as some supplementary dehydrated items to cover you for three months. Try to get the following categories covered equally:

Carbohydrates – 180 to 210 pounds per adult or dog equivalent

You can mix this up however you like, but I’d recommend the following as a starting point. Adjust as you see fit, as long as the total is 180 to 210 pounds. All of these foods provide about 1,700 calories/pound.

60 to 75 pounds of pasta (macaroni, spaghetti, egg noodles, etc.)
48 to 60 pounds of white flour (for bread, biscuits, pancakes, thickening sauces, etc.)
30 to 50 pounds of rice (white rice stores forever; brown rice for five years or more)
30 to 60 pounds of white sugar (or honey, pancake syrup, etc.)
6 to 10 pounds of oats
6 to 10 pounds of corn meal

Adjust according to your own preferences. If you don’t plan to bake (which is a mistake) or make pancakes/waffles, you can get by with a lot less flour, but make up for it by weight with another carbohydrate. If you hate rice, don’t buy any, but again make up the weight with another carb.

Protein supplement – at least 15 pounds per adult or dog equivalent

Although all of the carbohydrates listed except sugar contain significant amounts of protein, it’s not complete protein because it lacks essential amino acids. You can get these missing amino acids by adding beans, legumes, eggs, meats, etc. to your storage. Beans are the cheapest way to do this, but most people prefer meat, eggs, etc. Note that canned wet beans should be counted as one fifth their weight in dry beans, so while 5 pounds of dry beans suffices for a month, if you’re buying, say, Bush’s Best Baked beans, you’d need 25 one-pound cans of them to equal the five pounds of dry beans.

We keep about 100 pounds of dry beans and lentils in stock for the 4.5 of us, but most of our supplementary protein is in the form of canned meats. Cans of chicken from Costco or Sam’s, Keystone Meats canned ground beef, beef chunks, pork, chicken, turkey, etc. You can order Keystone canned meats from Walmart on-line. A 28-ounce can of most of them costs just over $6. We order them in cases of 12 at a time. They also have 14.5-ounce cans, although they cost more per ounce. They might be better for you if you’re planning to feed only the two of you. Also consider the 12- to 16-ounce cans of meats like chicken, roast beef, ham, tuna, salmon, Spam, and so on. The actual shelf life of canned meats, like other canned foods, is indefinite assuming the can is undamaged. Keystone, for example, rates their canned meats at a 5-year shelf life, but in fact they will remain safe and nutritious for much, much longer.

Although the five pounds per person-month is a minimum, you’ll probably want more. For a three-month supply for the two of you, I’d buy 90 cans of meat, plus extra for your dogs. One can per day to split between/among you. That’s going to be the most expensive part of your LTS food purchases, at maybe $200 to $300 for 90 cans. If that’s more than you want to spend at one time, you can substitute dry beans pound for pound for some or all of the meats, at roughly $1 per pound.

Oils and Fats – at least 3 quarts/liters or 6 pounds per adult or dog equivalent

Oils and fats do gradually become rancid, but stored in their original bottles and kept in a cool, dark place they last for years without noticeably rancidity. Saturated fats (lard, shortening, etc.) store better than than unsaturated fats. Poly-unsaturated fats have the shortest shelf life.

We store a combination of liquid vegetable and olive oils, lard, shortening, etc. We also keep anything up to 40 pounds of butter in our large freezer. In a long term power outage, we’d clarify that by heating it and separating the butter solids from the clear butter, and then can the clear butter to preserve it.

For the two of you for three months, covering this requirement can be as simple as buying two 3-liter bottles of olive oil, lard, shortening, or another oil of your choice, or a mix of those. Plus whatever you need for your dogs, of course.

Dairy – at least 9 pounds dry milk per adult or dog equivalent

This amount is all for cooking/baking. If you want to drink milk, have it on cereal, etc. you’ll need more. You can buy non-fat dry milk already in #10 cans, or buy it in cardboard boxes from Walmart and repack it yourself. (There’s also a full-fat dry milk called Nestle Nido that’s sold in #10 cans and has a real-world shelf-life of at least a couple of years and probably much longer.) For instant non-fat dry milk, the cheapest option is the LDS on-line store, which sells a case of twelve 28-ounce bags (21 pounds total) for $46.50, or just over $2/pound. There’s a $3 flat shipping charge no matter how many cases you order. If I were you, I’d order a couple of cases. Just note that although LDS dry milk is fine for cooking and baking, it really sucks for drinking.

Another alternative is evaporated milk or sweetened condensed milk, although it’s mostly water so you’ll need to buy about five times as much by weight. For drinking or use on cereal, consider a milk substitute like Augason Farms Morning Moos (dumb name, but by all reports it’s the closest thing to real fresh milk). It comes in #10 cans and has a very long shelf life. It’s mostly non-fat dry milk, but with sugar and other ingredients that make the reconstituted stuff taste close to real milk.

Salt – at least 2 pounds per adult or dog equivalent

Buy iodized salt. Sam’s sells 4-pound boxes of Morton’s iodized table salt for about a buck each, so a three-month supply for one person is about $0.50 worth. The shelf life is infinite, so buy a lot. Repackage it in 1- or 2-liter soft drink bottles, canning jars, Mylar bags, or other moisture-proof containers. (You don’t need an oxygen absorber.) After extended storage, the salt may take on a very pale yellow cast. That’s normal. It’s caused by the potassium iodide used to iodize the salt oxidizing to elemental iodine. That’s harmless, does not affect the taste, and still provides the daily requirement of iodine (which the soil around here is very poor in).

Meal Extenders/Cooking Essentials (varies according to your situation)

You can survive on just beans, rice, oil, and salt, but the meals you can make with just those foods will get old after about one day. Even if you’ve stored a lot of canned meat, you should also store other items that add flavor and variety to your stored bulk foods, such as:

Herbs and spices – buy large Costco/Sam’s jars of the half-dozen or dozen herbs/spices (sperbs?) you like best. In sealed glass/plastic jars they maintain full flavor for many years. Your preferences probably differ from ours, but at a minimum I’d suggest: onion and garlic flakes/powder, cinnamon, thyme, parsley, dill, mustard, rosemary, pepper, cumin, etc.

Sauces and condiments – store your favorite sauces/condiments (or the ingredients to make them). We store spaghetti sauce, alfredo sauce, canned soups, ketchup, mustard, pancake syrup, etc. in quantity. Rather than storing barbecue sauce, we store bulk amounts of the ingredients to make it up on the fly. (See http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2017/03/04/saturday-4-march-2017/)

Which brings up another issue. You need to plan your meals and figure out how much of what you’ll need to make them. For example, we intend to have a dinner based on that barbecue sauce once every three weeks, or 17 times a year. The recipe makes up a quart or so of sauce, which with a 28-ounce can of Keystone beef chunks or pork or chicken is enough to feed the 4.5 of us. (The buns are just part of our flour storage.) To know how much we’ll need to store to do that for a year in the absence of outside resupply, we just multiply everything by 17.

17 – 28-ounce cans of Keystone canned beef, pork, or chicken
25.5 cups (11+ pounds) of white sugar
25.5 Tbsp (12.75 fluid ounces) of molasses
25.5 cups (204 fluid ounces) of ketchup
8.5 cups (68 fluid ounces) of prepared mustard
8.5 cups (68 fluid ounces) of vinegar
8.5 cups (68 fluid ounces) of water
17 Tbsp (8.5 fluid ounces) of Worcestershire sauce
17 Tbsp (8.5 fluid ounces) of liquid smoke hickory sauce
34 tsp (77 grams or 2.7 ounces) of paprika
34 tsp (194 grams or 6.8 ounces) of salt
25.5 tsp (59 grams or 2.1 ounces) of black pepper

Cooking/Baking Essentials – varies according to your preferences

You’ll almost certainly want to bake bread, biscuits, etc., so keep at least a couple pounds of instant yeast (we use SAF). On the shelf, it’s good for at least a year. In the freezer, indefinitely. You’ll also want baking soda, baking powder, unsweetened cocoa powder, vinegar, lemon juice, vanilla extract—all of which keep indefinitely in their original sealed containers—and possibly things like chocolate chips, raisins and other dried fruits, jams and jellies, etc.

Multi-vitamin tablets/capsules – one per person/day

Contrary to popular opinion, fruits and vegetables aren’t necessary for a nutritious, balanced diet. Still, most people will want to keep a good supply of them. As usual for canned goods, canned fruits and vegetables last a long, long time. We buy cases of a dozen cans each at Costco or Sam’s of corn, green beans, peas, tomatoes, mixed fruit, pineapples, oranges, etc. (Note that pop-top aluminum cans are problematic. Where a traditional steel can will keep foods good indefinitely, the pop-top cans don’t seem to do as good a job. I recommend you stick to traditional cans, and of course that you have at least two manual can openers.)

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Friday, 17 March 2017

10:28 – When I took Colin out around 0730 it was 24.9F (-4C) with a light breeze.

Herschel from Shaw Brothers showed up about 0900 yesterday to install our new dishwasher. It took him about 90 minutes to install it and test it for leaks. In the afternoon, the FedEx guy sneaked up on Colin, who was outraged. The box had a dozen more 28-ounce cans of Keystone Meats canned pork.

Speaking of which, I think I’m going to start ordering Keystone canned chicken. We’ve been buying the Costco canned chicken, which comes in 12.5-ounce cans “packed in water” that specify the drained weight as 7 ounces. In other words, you get 7 ounces of chicken in 5.5 ounces of water. The Keystone chicken is 28-ounce cans that specify “no water added,” so they contain four times as much chicken at 3.08 times the price.

Several of the LTS food recipes I’d like to try call for sour cream. Obviously, the fresh stuff is out of the question for long-term storage. Even in the refrigerator, its shelf life is about a week. So I started thinking about alternatives that do have long shelf lives.

There are, of course, numerous companies like Thrive Life and Emergency Essentials that produce dehydrated sour cream powder and buttermilk powder that are intended for LTS. (The stuff sold in supermarkets, like Saco sour cream powder, require refrigeration once opened, so they’re not really an alternative.)

Sour cream (and cultured buttermilk, another useful LTS item) are simply cream or milk that’s been intentionally inoculated with bacteria that produce lactic acid, which in turn sours the milk. But that’s not the only way to produce them. Adding any acid, like vinegar or lemon juice, to cream or milk has the same result.

Cream is simply milk with a higher butterfat content–typically 18% or so versus 1% to 3.5%–so one can reconstitute cream from powdered milk simply by increasing the powder to water ratio. That’s assuming, of course, that one uses powdered whole milk like Nestle Nido rather than the more common non-fat dry milks. But even the latter work in terms of flavor, if not in terms of fat content.

I intend to experiment with this, starting by mixing 2/3 cup of Nido dry whole milk with 3/4 cup of warm water and a teaspoon of vinegar and allowing it to sit for anything from a few minutes to a couple hours at room temperature to sour. Just for comparison, I’ll try the same thing with LDS powdered non-fat dry milk. I suspect either one will work fine and taste much like commercial sour cream. We’ll try it the next time we make Beef Stroganoff.

And if that does work, making a buttermilk substitute for pancakes, biscuits, and so on would be just as easy. We’d simply increase the ratio of water to milk powder.

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Saturday, 11 March 2017

10:25 – It was 28.5F (-2C) when when I took Colin out around 0715 this morning. We’re still expecting snow over the next several days, but they’ve reduced the amount forecast. Originally, they were calling for 3″ to 6″ (7.5 to 15 cm) tonight and into tomorrow, which they reduced yesterday to 1″ to 3″, and this morning to a dusting to 1″. They are calling for more snow over the next four days or so, but with only moderate accumulations.

Barbara just left to meet some friends in Galax, VA, where they plan to wander around the craft and antique shops and have lunch and possibly dinner. Galax, like all of the small towns around here, is roughly 30 to 40 miles (48  to 64 km) and 45 minutes to an hour from us. Also like most of them, Galax is three or four times our population, and has a Walmart Supercenter, Lowes Hardware, and other big-box stores that we don’t have here.

I talked to Lori again yesterday morning about food storage, and particularly dehydrated supplemental foods like powdered eggs, cheese, butter, and milk. That got me to thinking that the last time I bought powdered milk was in June 2014 at the LDS Home Storage Center in Greensboro.

Back then, my immediate goal was a one year supply for the two of us and Colin, 2.5 people-equivalents. We hadn’t yet started to store additional LTS food for Frances and Al. So I bought two cases, 42 pounds, of LDS non-fat dry milk, which was marginally adequate for 2.5 people. Since then, we’ve added a couple cases of condensed milk and several pounds of Nestle Nido dry whole milk, but we really don’t have enough dairy for the 4.5 of us. So yesterday I decided to order more.

I first checked Walmart, which has four-pound boxes of their house-brand non-fat dry milk for $14.48, or $3.62/pound. I then checked the LDS Home Storage Center, which has their dry milk at $4.50 per 28-ounce retort pouch, or $2.57/pound. And that’s already packed for LTS, with an estimate shelf life of 20 years. Of course, we’d have to drive down to Greensboro to pick it up, a three to four hour round trip.

So I checked the LDS on-line store, where I found they had cases of twelve 28-ounce pouches for $46.50, or $2.21/pound. There’s a flat $3 shipping charge regardless of how much you order from LDS on-line, but even with that it’s cheaper to have them ship it to us. That gives us a total of 63 pounds of LDS non-fat dry milk, which with the other dairy stuff we stock is adequate for 4.5 of us for one year.

Note that this is all for cooking/baking, not for drinking. By all accounts, LDS dry milk is absolutely horrible for drinking. In fact, seven years ago, Angela Paskett did a comparison taste test among numerous dry milks, and LDS finished not just last, but far distant last. (Speaking of which, if you want a great reference about LTS food storage, order a copy of Angela’s book.)

But it’s fine for cooking/baking and doing stuff like making up pancake mix, and it’s cheap and already packaged for LTS. We like the Krusteaz pancake mix enough that I keep a couple 10-pound bags in stock, but it comes in a paper sack and costs about $0.75/pound, versus less than half that for mix we can make up ourselves from white flour, powdered milk, powdered eggs, and baking powder. Rather than deal with the hassle of repackaging it, it’s both easier and cheaper just to store the components separately.

I often get mail from people who’d like to buy LDS bulk LTS foods, but don’t have an LDS HSC within easy driving distance. (To answer another frequent question, LDS sells to anyone. You don’t have to be a Mormon or even have a Mormon friend go along with you to the HSC.)

LDS prices are generally excellent, although usually a bit more costly than repackaging your own. For example, the last time we bought a 50-pound bag of white flour at Costco, it was $12.50, or $0.25/pound. A #10 can of white flour at the HSC costs $3.00 for four pounds, or $0.75/pound. That’s much cheaper than third-party suppliers like Augason Farms, but it’s still three times as much per pound. Same thing with stuff like oats and beans. But for that higher price, you avoid having to repackage it yourself.

If you compare the LDS HSC price list with the LDS on-line store price list, you’ll find that some stuff is cheaper one place or the other, sometimes significantly. For example, in addition to the dry milk being cheaper from the on-line store, so are the canned onions (at $48.75/case on-line versus $54/case from the HSC). Also, the HSCs carry a wider range of foods than the on-line store, and you can buy individual cans or pouches at the HSC rather than buying in whole cases, which is the only option at the LDS on-line store.

Either way, if you’re building your food storage, keep both the LDS HSC and LDS on-line store in mind. For what they carry, they’re nearly always noticeably less expensive than commercial vendors.

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Thursday, 9 March 2017

09:14 – It was 39F (4C) when when I took Colin out around 0700 this morning, but it’s now warmed up to 57F (14C). Barbara and I are working all day at home on science kit stuff today.

When Lori delivered the mail and picked up a shipment yesterday morning, I asked her what she thought about the new TrumpCare proposal, which basically amounts to “if you like your ObamaCare you can keep your ObamaCare.” She thought I was kidding. When she realized Trump really didn’t intend to get rid of ObamaCare, she said that was the last straw and things were likely to get very bad very quickly. I agreed with her, of course, and asked how she was doing on prepping in general and food storage in particular.

She said she’d repackaged pasta, rice, etc. in Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers, but that she had nowhere near enough stored. Of course, as she said, she also has many tons of beef on the hoof, “if I can hold onto it”. We talked in some detail about what she should do next, and I later sent her the following email to reiterate and expand upon some of what we talked about.

Hi, Lori

I know I ran a lot by you this morning, so I figured I’d summarize it in writing. Here’s what I’d recommend you buy, assuming you intend to feed two adults. This doesn’t include anything for your dogs. I store the same stuff for Colin as for us, figuring him at 70 pounds to be half an adult.

I don’t know what your long-term food storage totals are currently, but if you’re starting without much I’d suggest you target a one-month supply to start. Expand that to three months’ worth, then six, and eventually 12 or more.

Water – At least one gallon per person/day (shoot for 3 gallons/person/day)

You have a well, which is great as long as you have power, and a year-round spring, which is excellent. Still, water is critical, so it makes sense to store at least some water to give you a buffer. I’d recommend you start by storing enough bottled water to keep yourself, Casey, and your dogs for at least one week, at 3 gallons per day. That totals 42 gallons for you and Casey, plus whatever you need for the dogs. We buy Costco bottle water in gallons at $3.60/six-pack, so enough for you and Casey for week would cost about $25. And in a real emergency, you could stretch that to maybe two or three weeks.

Assuming your spring water is not contaminated by agricultural chemicals, you can count that as your second backup supply (assuming you can’t pump well water). Unless you’re completely sure that the spring water is not biologically-contaminated, you’ll need the means to micro-filter it (as with that Sawyer mini filter you have) or chemically treat it. Many sources recommend using unscented chlorine bleach to disinfect your drinking water, and it’s a good idea to keep an unopened gallon on hand for that. However, the problem with liquid chlorine bleach is that it’s inherently unstable. It breaks down even in a new, sealed bottle. After a year it’s noticeably weaker, and before you know it the concentration is down to nothing. A better alternative is to keep a bottle of dry calcium hypochlorite (pool shock or similar) on hand. If you keep it sealed and dry, it lasts indefinitely.

Carbohydrates – 30 pounds/person/month (360 pounds/person/year)

You can mix this up however you like, but I’d recommend the following per person-month as a starting point. Adjust as you see fit, as long as the total is about 30 pounds/person/month. All of these foods provide about 1,700 calories/pound.

10 pounds of pasta (macaroni, spaghetti, egg noodles, etc.)
8 pounds of white flour (for bread, biscuits, pancakes, etc.)
5 pounds of rice (white rice stores better, but brown rice is good for five years or more)
5 pounds of white sugar (or honey, pancake syrup, etc.)
1 pound of oats
1 pound of corn meal

Protein supplement – at least 5 pounds/person/month (60 pounds/person/year)

Although all of the carbohydrates listed except sugar contain significant amounts of protein, it’s not complete protein because it lacks essential amino acids. You can get these missing amino acids by adding beans, legumes, eggs, meats, etc. to your storage. Beans are the cheapest way to do this, but most people prefer meat, eggs, etc. Note that canned wet beans should be counted as one fifth their weight in dry beans, so while 5 pounds of dry beans suffices for a month, if you’re buying, say, Bush’s Best Baked beans, you’d need 25 one-pound cans of them to equal the five pounds of dry beans.

We keep about 100 pounds of dry beans and lentils in stock for the 4.5 of us, but most of our supplementary protein is in the form of canned meats. Cans of chicken from Costco or Sam’s, Keystone Meats canned ground beef, beef chunks, pork, chicken, turkey, etc. You can order Keystone canned meats from Walmart on-line. A 28-ounce can of most of them costs just over $6. We order them in cases of 12 at a time. They also have 14.5-ounce cans, although they cost more per ounce. They might be better for you if you’re planning to feed only the two of you. The actual shelf life of canned meats, like other canned foods, is indefinite assuming the can is undamaged. Keystone, for example, rates their canned meats at a 5-year shelf life, but in fact they will remain safe and nutritious for much, much longer.

Oils and Fats – at least 1 quart/liter or 2 pounds/person/month (12 quarts/liters/person/year)

Oils and fats do gradually become rancid, but stored in their original bottles and kept in a cool, dark place they last for years without noticeably rancidity. Saturated fats (lard, shortening, etc.) store better than than unsaturated fats. Poly-unsaturated fats have the shortest shelf life.

We store a combination of liquid vegetable and olive oils, lard, shortening, etc. We also keep anything up to 40 pounds of butter in our large freezer. In a long term power outage, we’d clarify that by heating it and separating the butter solids from the clear butter, and then can the clear butter to preserve it.

Dairy – at least 1.5 pounds/person/month (18 pounds/person/year) of dry milk or equivalent

This amount is all for cooking/baking. If you want to drink milk, have it on cereal, etc. you’ll need more. You can buy non-fat dry milk already in #10 cans, or buy it in cardboard boxes from Walmart and repack it yourself. (There’s also a full-fat dry milk called Nestle Nido that’s sold in #10 cans and has a real-world shelf-life of at least a couple of years and probably much longer.) Another alternative is evaporated milk or sweetened condensed milk. For drinking or use on cereal, consider a milk substitute like Augason Farms Morning Moos (dumb name, but by all reports it’s the closest thing to real fresh milk). It comes in #10 cans and has a very long shelf life. It’s mostly non-fat dry milk, but with sugar and other ingredients that make the reconstituted stuff taste close to real milk.

Salt – at least 12 ounces/person/month (9 pounds/person/year)

Buy iodized salt. Sam’s sells 4-pound boxes of Morton’s iodized table salt for about a buck each, so a one-person-year supply is about $2 worth. The shelf life is infinite, so buy a lot. Repackage it in 1- or 2-liter soft drink bottles, canning jars, Mylar bags, or other moisture-proof containers. (You don’t need an oxygen absorber.) After extended storage, the salt may take on a very pale yellow cast. That’s normal. It’s caused by the potassium iodide used to iodize the salt oxidizing to elemental iodine. That’s harmless, does not affect the taste, and still provides the daily requirement of iodine (which the soil around here is very poor in).

Meal Extenders/Cooking Essentials (varies according to your situation)

You can survive on just beans, rice, oil, and salt, but the meals you can make with just those foods will get old after about one day. You should also store items that add flavor and variety to your stored bulk foods. (I consider meat a seasoning, but that’s just me…)

Herbs and spices – buy large Costco/Sam’s jars of the half-dozen or dozen herbs/spices (sperbs?) you like best. In sealed glass/plastic jars they maintain full flavor for many years. Your preferences probably differ from ours, but at a minimum I’d suggest: onion and garlic flakes/powder, cinnamon, thyme, parsley, dill, mustard, rosemary, pepper, cumin, etc.

Sauces and condiments – store your favorite sauces/condiments (or the ingredients to make them). We store spaghetti sauce, alfredo sauce, canned soups, ketchup, mustard, pancake syrup, etc. in quantity. Rather than storing barbecue sauce, we store bulk amounts of the ingredients to make it up on the fly. (See http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2017/03/04/saturday-4-march-2017/)

Which brings up another issue. You need to plan your meals and figure out how much of what you’ll need to make them. For example, we intend to have a dinner based on that barbecue sauce once every three weeks, or 17 times a year. The recipe makes up a quart or so of sauce, which with a 28-ounce can of Keystone beef chunks or pork or chicken is enough to feed the 4.5 of us. (The buns are just part of our flour storage.) To know how much we’ll need to store to do that for a year in the absence of outside resupply, we just multiply everything by 17.

17 – 28-ounce cans of Keystone canned beef, pork, or chicken
25.5 cups (11+ pounds) of white sugar
25.5 Tbsp (12.75 fluid ounces) of molasses
25.5 cups (204 fluid ounces) of ketchup
8.5 cups (68 fluid ounces) of prepared mustard
8.5 cups (68 fluid ounces) of vinegar
8.5 cups (68 fluid ounces) of water
17 Tbsp (8.5 fluid ounces) of Worcestershire sauce
17 Tbsp (8.5 fluid ounces) of liquid smoke hickory sauce
34 tsp (77 grams or 2.7 ounces) of paprika
34 tsp (194 grams or 6.8 ounces) of salt
25.5 tsp (59 grams or 2.1 ounces) of black pepper

Cooking/Baking Essentials – varies according to your preferences

You’ll almost certainly want to bake bread, biscuits, etc., so keep at least a couple pounds of instant yeast (we use SAF). On the shelf, it’s good for at least a year. In the freezer, indefinitely. You’ll also want baking soda, baking powder, unsweetened cocoa powder, vinegar, lemon juice, vanilla extract—all of which keep indefinitely in their original sealed containers—and possibly things like chocolate chips, raisins and other dried fruits, jams and jellies, etc.

Multi-vitamin tablets/capsules – one per person/day

Contrary to popular opinion, fruits and vegetables aren’t necessary for a nutritious, balanced diet. Still, most people will want to keep a good supply of them. As usual for canned goods, canned fruits and vegetables last a long, long time. We buy cases of a dozen cans each at Costco or Sam’s of corn, green beans, peas, tomatoes, mixed fruit, pineapples, oranges, etc. (Note that pop-top aluminum cans are problematic. Where a traditional steel can will keep foods good indefinitely, the pop-top cans don’t seem to do as good a job. I recommend you stick to traditional cans, and of course that you have at least two manual can openers.)

Give me a call if you need to talk about any of this.

 

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Tuesday, 14 February 2017

09:39 – It was 33F (0.5C) when I took Colin out this morning, with a light breeze. Barbara is volunteering most of today, and preparing to leave tomorrow morning for Winston. She’ll spend the night with Frances and Al and then drive back up to Sparta Thursday. It’ll be wild women and parties for Colin and me while she’s gone.

Our Wi-Fi router has started acting hinky over the last few days. It locks up and I have to go downstairs to do a power reset. I’m almost certain it’s not a cable problem. Both the Wi-Fi and 100BaseT ports lock up, so the only cable it could be is the one running to the fiber optic TA, which I’ve swapped out more than once.

The problem router is a D-Link DIR-615, which I bought as a spare in May 2015, and swapped out for an older DIR-615 that had started to misbehave several months ago. I also had a DIR-826L router purchased in late 2013 sitting there as a spare. The short story is that neither of the DIR-615’s now works reliably and the DIR-826L is apparently completely dead. It doesn’t even light up when I connect it to power.

D-Link used to be a good brand–one of the Big Three along with LinkSys and NetGear–but given my recent experience I decided to buy something else to replace the D-Links. I ended up ordering a Netgear AC1200, which is to arrive tomorrow.

Just out of curiosity, I opened a #10 can of Nestle Nido dry whole milk powder the other day. It was purchased 1 June 2015 and had a best-by date of 31 March 2016. Since this isn’t non-fat dry milk, I was concerned that the fats in it might cause rancidity. When I opened it, I sniffed it, but I’m not sure how full-fat whole dry milk is supposed to smell. It had a distinct odor, but it didn’t seem to be rancid. I had Barbara sniff it, and she said it didn’t smell like milk, but it didn’t smell rancid either. So I mixed up a quart by adding 120 grams of the powder to a quart of warm tap water. The result just smelled milky to me, but Barbara said it didn’t smell like her fresh 2% milk and she wouldn’t drink it. I tasted it, but I’m not a milk drinker, so I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to taste like. It wasn’t bitter or anything. I used a pint of it last night to make a milkshake, which tasted fine. So the upshot is that I’m not sure whether or not I can consider Nido to be a long-term storage product.

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Thursday, 9 February 2017

10:11 – It was 30.3F (-1C) when I took Colin out this morning, and the temperature has dropped since then. The winds were about 30 MPH (48 KPH) sustained, with gusts to twice that.

When Barbara and I went down to change the particulate filter for the well water the other day, we noticed a drip coming from one of the pipes that leads from the pressure tank up into the house. We called the plumber, and Herschel showed up yesterday to repair it.

While he was here, he changed the particulate filter. I mentioned that the last time we’d changed it was exactly six months ago. We hadn’t noticed any lower flow rate at the faucets, even though the filter is only rated for two months.

Herschel said everything depended on the amount of silt and grit coming out of the well, and that around here people often went a year or eighteen months between filter changes. He said we had a good, clean well. Even after six months, the old filter wasn’t used up yet, and the clear filter housing had almost no grit or sediment in it. I have a reminder in my calendar to change the filter every two months, but I think I’ll just wait until we notice a decrease in flow rate before we change it next time.

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While we were downstairs, Barbara checked our inventory of canned cream of * soups and said we’re actually in pretty good shape on them. We have a half dozen or so 8- and 10-packs, plus a considerable number in the kitchen pantry. So I guess we’ll hold off on a Sam’s run for the time being.

The next time Barbara goes down to Winston, if she has time she can make a Costco run and pick up more canned stuff, including three or four more 8-packs of Campbell’s cream soups, a couple cases of canned green beans, and several more cases of canned tomato sauce/paste. We have a partial case of small cans of Kirkland tomato paste in stock, but that’s it. And Barbara is making a batch of sloppy joe sauce in the slow cooker today.

Walmart came through on their two-day shipping promise. I ordered 18 jars of Bertolli alfredo sauce on Sunday, and they arrived yesterday. The box was pretty badly beaten up, but as usual they’d wrapped each jar individually in that crinkly paper stuff and then bagged them in groups of half a dozen. I also have a small order arriving from Amazon.com tomorrow: a case of 24 small cans of shiitake mushrooms and one #10 each of Augason dehydrated celery and dehydrated carrots. I think I’ll repackage the Augason stuff in quart canning jars with oxygen absorbers and keep one each up in the kitchen. We’re cooking a lot more from scratch/LTS, and many of the recipes call for either or both of those items.

When we do make up a batch of cream soup according to the recipe I posted yesterday, I think my first effort will be Cream of Ground Beef soup. We can make up a quadruple or octuple batch and freeze it in pint or quart bags.

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Wednesday, 1 February 2017

10:29 – It was 39.3F (4C) when I took Colin out this morning, but with not much wind. The snow is all gone, but we have colder temperatures and precipitation in the forecast for now through the weekend, so we may have more before the weekend. Barbara is off to the gym this morning and then volunteering at the Friends of the Library bookstore this afternoon.

If you’ve tried to order antibiotics from aquabiotics.com recently, you noticed that their site no longer lists any products. You can still order frm them, though, but you’ll have to pay with a check or money order. Their credit-card processors, originally PayPal and more lately WePay, find out that they’re shipping “prescription drugs” and refuse to continue to process payments, even though those drugs are for ornamental fish only and therefore completely legal to ship. I paid by check when I ordered last time, and they shipped what they were supposed to ship and in a timely manner. I got email Monday from Dave Folsom at aquabiotics.net.

Wepay has terminated merchant service, so we are now reduced to checks/money order payments. I have removed all items from the website, but left the site up as a point of contact. If you need anything, please use the table below, or the attached spreadsheet. The spreadsheet will allow you to enter your discount percentage(as a decimal) and calculate your total. Discounts are 5% for orders $35.00+, 10% for orders $150.00+, and 15% for all rescue/humanitarian groups on any size order. If you take the rescue discount, please give me the rescue name as our benefactor will pick up a portion of your discount.

I apologize for what has been 13 months of chaos, and in advance for what might be 100 months in the future.

The headlines yesterday said that Walmart was declaring war on Amazon, which is more than a slight exaggeration. All Walmart has done is announce that, as of yesterday morning, they are now selling many products with free 2-day shipping with a minimum order of $35. They’re very careful to point out that it’s literally 2-day shipping, as in two days’ transit time after they actually get around to shipping the order. It’s not going to arrive two days after you order it, because Walmart takes at least a day and often two or three to get the product to the shipper.

Even so, many people expect this to have a severe impact on Amazon Prime, which charges $99/year for unlimited two-day shipping. And Amazon’s actually is two-day from order to delivery at least 50% to 75% of the time.

I’ve been a member of Amazon since their very early days, and a member of Prime since soon after they started offering it. I’ve never particularly liked Amazon, starting when they patented their so-called one-click ordering. Bezos is also a big-time progressive, who now owns WaPo. He supported Obama and Clinton, and has apparently never seen a progressive cause he doesn’t support.

But the real reason I’m considering dropping my Prime membership is that their pricing is often no longer competitive. As in 50% to more than 100% more for exactly the same product I can get elsewhere. I also don’t like their pricing games. If I log on to Amazon and check a price, and then check that same product’s price in a separate browser without logging on, I often find that the logged-in price is noticeably higher than the anonymous price. Obviously, Amazon is punishing current customers because it assumes they’re willing to pay more.

I’ve already started to shift purchases away from Amazon. If they carry something at a better price than is available elsewhere, I can still get free shipping with a $50 minimum order, which is never a problem. That means the only Prime benefit is really their streaming video, but looking back over the last year we really didn’t watch much on Prime Streaming.

So I’ll talk about it with Barbara, but unless she makes a serious objection to dropping Prime, that’s what I’m going to do.

We had a decent January. Kit revenue was up 33% from January of 2016, although still 20% or so lower than an average January. Of course, we’re now into the deadest period of the year. In an average February, we might ship only three kits per week and have total revenues of only two or three grand.

Email overnight from Jen, who wants to get started home canning, and what she wants to can is bacon. She’s concerned because the instructions for doing so are all over the map. Some sites give detailed instructions, while many others say that canning bacon is dangerous. She doesn’t want to take a chance on botulism, obviously, and asked me what I thought.

The truth is that the USDA officially recommends NOT canning bacon, simply because they’ve never done the detailed testing required to determine how to do so safely. But millions of people have been home-canning bacon for a hundred years. Before pressure canning, our ancestors preserved bacon simply by layering the raw meat in barrels, pouring hot lard on top of each layer, and storing the barrel in the kitchen or on the porch. When they wanted some bacon, they’d scrape off the top, rancid layer of lard and eat the bacon beneath it, which was perfectly safe.

The worrisome aspect is our old friend Clostridium botulinum, an anaerobic bacterium that produces deadly botulinum toxin. But it’s safe to eat foods that are contaminated with C. botulinum bacteria, a very common soil bacterium, as long as they’re cooked properly. Boiling destroys both the bacteria and the toxin, although not the spores. Eating the spores is safe for anyone except infants, which is why it’s unsafe to give honey to infants: honey is always contaminated with C. botulinum spores.

I intend to pressure can bacon in the future. I’ll do so by cooking it until it’s soft and slimy, transferring those strips to a canning jar, filling the jar with a brine solution, and pressure canning the hell out of it. For canning bear, beef, lamb, pork, veal, or venison in strips, cubes, or chunks in quart jars, the USDA recommends:

Hot pack – Precook meat until rare by roasting, stewing, or browning in a small amount of fat. Add 1 teaspoons of salt per quart to the jar, if desired. Fill jars with pieces and add boiling broth, meat drippings, water, or tomato juice, especially with wild game), leaving 1-inch headspace.

They recommend different pressures depending on the type of pressure gauge on your canner and your altitude, but the top numbers they recommend are 15 PSI for 90 minutes. I intend to use 15 PSI (or higher if my canner allows it) for 120 minutes, which should kill the shit out of anything in there.

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