Posted: 10/9/2008 7:13:24 PM EDT
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I have been a lurker here for sometime but I have finally gotten the family on board for preps. Now the question is "Where to Start". We have the guns and ammo so that isnt an issue. We have 2 BOL's depending on the event. One is close by our house and will provide better protection the our existing house. Our long term major event BOL is a little far but a couple of lesser known overland routes have been planned and driven. What we need now are food preps . Where do we begin? We have limited means and like most Americans we live mostly paycheck to paycheck with little left over. Debt reduction is definatly a part of our preps but we are wanting basic survival stuff now. I just get a feeling we are going to need it . Cant explain why, just do. There are 6 of us in the house. I know about storing wheat and pinto beans and the wife has plans about buying them in bulk but what else. What food stuffs will provide us with enough balanced calories for long term survival. Thanks for any and all help |
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You probably already know but here it is: Buy what you eat and eat what you buy. can goods are good to stock and have a good shelf life if stored properly, cool dry area. rice and if you like them dehydrated potatoes (bagged potato flakes). water, water and more water |
| I have bought some starter food kits kits from the LDS church website I did a google search "food storage starter kits' and it came up top one. I got oats, wheat ,beans, and rice..some staple foods and it has some good info on food storage both short term and long term. 36.00 bucks was cheap for the amount of food I got really cheap. If I would have bought it from be prepared. com it would have cost alot more... |
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as quickly as possible, increase the amount of your daily use food up to three months worth. look for sales, go to your local bulk place. once you have that move to some bulk items, rice, wheat, beans, oats, etc. as far as long term storage, check here for a great food storage calculator. input the number of people you have and it'll give you how many pounds of the basics (a lot of basics) you'll need for a month. btw, trust that gut feeling. |
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make a goal. based on the event you want to prep for. Or for a time frame you want to prep for. make a menu for 1-3 days then buy it. start slow, but extra items you already eat ( can goods etc). then slowly build up dry goods, and or pack your own LTS items to save money. but make your goal 1st. and stick to it. or else you may get overwhelmed or lose sight and sell yourself short . aka- " wow thats alot of food" just becuase of how BIG it all looks! if you have a BOL start prepping the area for gardens, or fruit trees if you can, set up the abilty to have live stock. aka- rabbits maybe. have a buck and doe at home as "pets" and if you have to BO, stick them in carries and re-locate them with you. This way your ready to roll on producing some of your own food and can supplement what food preps you have to make them last twice as long! ymmv |
This is a real truth. The rice beans and wheat stored is great but can you grind it and bake a loaf of bread? How can you do rice and beans every day? Canned meats, soup bases, stuff to make chile can REALLY make those meals a little more platable. Our focus now is getting the bread bakeing skills going as well as learning to use the basics, like ok we can make pancakes but do we have a stock of honey or syrup? A little honey on those grapenuts is heaven. |
Big +1 to this. I'm a little heavy on freeze dried and MRE type products but then I eat it all the time too. Other than water, food is about the easiest thing for anyone to start stockpiling. It can even cost you nothing to do so. It can be as simple as changing your buying patterns to once a month on most items instead of weekly and buying in bulk and during sales. I'm not a big advocate of recommending folks to buy buckets of rice or beans unless that's what you eat normally. SHTF is not the time to be trying a new diet and quite frankly eating the same stuff day in and day out has some real detrimental effects from impacting your families appetite and depression. That doesn't mean you can not switch but it is a good idea that if you do introduce the new food into your normal diet before its a necessity that you do so. A good start is simply storing what you eat normally which for most of us is short-term storage foods, 2 years or less like canned goods or dry goods. You can move many of the dry goods up into the long-term storage category, 5 years or greater, by changing the packaging (hermetically sealed and oxygen absorbed.) A key element to any good food storage plan is a good rotation plan. Needless to say, rotation doesn't work at all if you don't eat the food regularly you store. A rotation plan can be as simple as first in first out and either mechanical (how you put them on the shelf) or using a simple date system. Unless you know something is really coming down the pike or have spare monies to invest in such an endeavor, its often best to increase your stores over time. There's a learning curve and you get better as you go. Everyone's learning curve will be different since we all don't have the same eating patterns. When it comes down to it, in life the only thing that really matters in survival is food and shelter, everything else is a nice adder. Its why many people use the rules of three not only as a good guide for basic survival but survival planning priorities. Tj Story Time Though the son of depression parents and always into putting food and water back for hard times, it was Hurricane Alicia that drove the point home for my wife and I. In Houston at the time, we didn't get an opportunity to bugout. They had evacuated the outlying areas first and being new to the area we didn't really realize the highways would be jammed tight. We waited too long. The storm knocked all services, power, water, and stores out for one week. We were in an apartment in those days so had nowhere near the supplies we do now, however all that camping gear combined with the food we had put back put us way ahead of many if not most of our neighbors. It was quite the eye opening experience. We were not only able to do pretty well ourselves but help out a number of our neighbors. Many of those folks a can of green beans was dinner or breakfast and they spent much of their day looking for drinking water. To us, it was like camping in our apartment. We had light, radio, TV, took baths, flushed our toilet, and cooked meals. Though not normal and often things smaller or shorter, it was more an adventure than a real hardship. To others it was as if their world had come to an end and they were thrust instantly into the middle ages. It was from those others we learned and vowed to not allow ourselves to be in that position. Tj |
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Start in the beginning! You need a PLAN. What are yo preparing for? Make a list of events in order of possibility of importance combined with consequences of not prepping. You'll find that a camp stove, plenty of water, and two weeks worth of canned/dry goods will get you through most anything. If it gets cold where you are, you'll need some form of alternate heat, you may need alternative lighting, etc. Once you have an attainable objective in view, work on taking it. An extra $20 worth of canned beef stew, spaghetti sauce, pasta, and rice per week will add up to a good sized suppy in a month or two. We built up our Y2k supplies this way, and we only recently used up the last of them. Don't let the big stashes some of us have deter or doscourage you, some of us have been at it for 30 years or more. Keep at it, one step at a time.. Ops |
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I have stored up a decent quantity of rice because I really like it. A chicken bullion cube and some vegetable medley seasoning and I have a very nice meal. Throw in some chicken and I am a happy guy. I could eat it all the time. I am finally getting some decent variety. I bought some beans for chilli and am working on getting the rest of the stuff for it. I have to get over my dislike for mashed potatoes and get some of the tater flakes. They really aren't that bad. I will have to do some menu planning and figure out what stuff I can put into the potatoes to make them more palatable without butter. Maybe butter flakes, chives, and some other seasoning. (Ideas?) Just stocking up on a staple without making sure that you have a way to dress it up would end up being torture! I couldn't imagine straight rice all the damn time! No one wants to end up eating some form of gruel. We want to be happy, healthy, and strong. Those chores don't get done if we don't have enough energy to work! |
Ranch Dressing! everything goes better with ranch. Fried poetato cakes with ranch dressing yum. |
This is why I come here! Just thinking about what you would eat or like to try during good times, and then making sure you can do it easily during bad times. I will have to try some ranch dressing with mashed potatoes. I haven't tried frying up some "cakes" yet! Great! |
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i've never had any luck making tater cakes from instant potatoes(flakes or pearls)... and if you like ranch, also pick up some of the dressing dry mix. it comes in foil packs and will last forever. just mix some of the dressing mix with some half and half and an egg to make a batter and batter your chicken then roll it in bread crumbs(or if you prefer no batter just mix the ranch seasoning with the breadcrumbs and an egg, gotta make it all stick together somehow) and brake till perfection. i prefer to finely dice some a generous portion of green chilis with it, but you could use jalepenos, chipotles, or whatever you like, even some bacon crumbles(NOT BITS<CRUMBLES. i like the hormel packaged bacon crumbles, there pretty lean by bacon standards and keep a long time) if you so desired... i.m.h.o. ranch, certain hot sauces, extra garlic, onion, cumin, chilis peppers, bacon, or crabmeat, in some combiation and in enough quantity will make anything acceptable to your pallet... |
Umm, gravy?  We've had some of those little gravy packets sit around for a long time prior to use. Not the best gravy mind you, but for dried mashers - better than nothing. |
You guys are awesome! This stuff may seem silly in a survival forum, but this is the kind of stuff that needs to be thought about to figure out whats for dinner. This stuff will help the OP to get his mind right about storing good food so he and his family can survival and thrive. Not just 800lbs. of beans. |
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SEEDS!.. not just typical garden seeds but the seeds for an herb garden, chilis, you name it. if it's teotwaki, these would all make good bartering goods in addition to sprucing up ones own quisene... for short term just hit the spice racks at costco and the ethnic(mexican, italian, indian, asian, etc.) sections in your local supermarkets, even the nondried sauces and mixes etc. will keep for a long long time unopened... |