Hey, I ate the canned C rations. MRE’s are a delicacy compared to them.....
Basic food storage. What to buy and not to buy.
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MREs are decent if you add some spice, salt or tobassco sauce to them.
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I problem with freeze dried is it does tend to take up a lot of room, but yes it is a good way of preserving. I learned early on not to put freeze dried sliced yellow squash and stuff like that in mason jars. You just can't get many in a jar. I have since vacuum sealed in meal prep portions then put in a bucket.
Arctic 40 years ago my husband skinned deer for the entire town we lived in for so much a deer and the hide. He then tanned and sold the hides and combined it with the deer cleaning money and bought a big Harvest Maid Dehydrator. All these years we have used that dehydrator and it is still running. We have dehydrated year round everything you can imagine from jerky to fruit leather. It was an excellent investment.
A dehydrator is a good idea, we just dried some mistletoe and birch leaves for making cough syrup and tea. I make my own jerky and we dry other things before we loose them. It is small but works good. Not enough room in the cellar for a larger one, (maybe we should eat more of the stuff we already have and make some space??)
Yes, thanks for the pic. I was looking around and found these shelves to be most efficient than the ones in ikea or other store. Seems to be popular among preppers because it can hold the wight of the jars and other heavy can goods. Also I’m adding honey on my list. I’m glad you do canning. Because, I want to pick up this skill sometime in the future. if I didn’t succeed on that then at least I tried.
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Canning is not hard once you get down the steps. There are a few of us on here that do can and would be glad to help you out if you have questions.
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Arctic my husband built me a solar powered dehydrator last year from a pattern he got online that works wonderfully. Super simple design with easily available parts. Holds 4 times what my electric one does. Runs without electric and I don't know about the newer models but my older electric dehydrator is somewhat of an electric hog. My solar drier doesn't put heat in the house and was much cheaper to build than the initial cost of an electric one even 40 years ago. If my die hard older electric one ever dies I will not replace it.
I’ve seen several designs for then. If you can find a large piece of glass, like from a sliding door or something it would be really cheap to build. I’ve seen designs in Mother Earth News and grit magazines.
Wallmart carries the Ball blue book of canning. It is cheap and It’s a step by step guide to doing it safely.
Canned meat spam befe, chicken will have the highest value if shtf. Then dry goods like pasta and rice and powdered eggs and milk. Then Fruits and veggies. Water is number 1 though. We have 400 gallons stored and I think we will try to boost that to 600 gallons. If shtf we can’t take that much water with us. Just food and survivor gear. Knowing a bug out location with water is crucial. Meat is a morale booster and a game changer. We watched lone survivor reality show and every winner found meat fish etc to keep them going. We have at least a 2 year supply of meat and dry goods and cans of fruits and veggies.
SPAM.....Ugh! Only if I’m completely starving to death! That stuff is horrible!
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It's an "acquired taste," LOL.
I'm okay with a lot of cheap meats like vienna sausage, canned tuna and chicken, etc, but Spam is way too salty for me. I would really have to be starving to eat it, which is why I do not have it in my preps. I do have plenty of the others though.
I have low sodium Spam and Treat in my prepps.
All my long term storage are in #10 stainless steel cans, I have 20 6gal packaged sealed oat that are placed in a sealed 6gal bucket that are 8 years old. I have 9 5gal buckets of honey, over 400lbs of salt, close to 200lbs of sugar, 100s of pounds of rice and beans etc..
I have open and eaten 13 years old of can white gravy and sausage, I have shown that here a couple of years ago, I have open and eaten 10 year old can of corn and green beans, they all smelled ok and the taste was ok but certainly not the best and I'm sure the nutritional aspect gone way of the dodo a few years earlier but never the less it was eatable. Just keep in mind, acidity foods should be used by the date, I try not to store canned foods that are acidity foods but if freeze dried it's ok just not in liquid form diced tomatoes etc... On most can goods I ignore the dates (with in reason) your nose will always be your best defense followed by taste, still unsure? take a small piece and drop it between your lips pressing it with the tip of your tongue and hold it for 30sec, spit it out and touch your tongue to the roof your mouth and move it around and start tasting, if no weird taste or feeling or mouth filling up with saliva, then sample a piece (small) chew and swallow and wait 30 minutes. If you survive make a meal and enjoy.
I have open and eaten 13 years old of can white gravy and sausage, I have shown that here a couple of years ago, I have open and eaten 10 year old can of corn and green beans, they all smelled ok and the taste was ok but certainly not the best and I'm sure the nutritional aspect gone way of the dodo a few years earlier but never the less it was eatable. Just keep in mind, acidity foods should be used by the date, I try not to store canned foods that are acidity foods but if freeze dried it's ok just not in liquid form diced tomatoes etc... On most can goods I ignore the dates (with in reason) your nose will always be your best defense followed by taste, still unsure? take a small piece and drop it between your lips pressing it with the tip of your tongue and hold it for 30sec, spit it out and touch your tongue to the roof your mouth and move it around and start tasting, if no weird taste or feeling or mouth filling up with saliva, then sample a piece (small) chew and swallow and wait 30 minutes. If you survive make a meal and enjoy.
I just got a second chest freezer. I wanted a newer one but also a more energy efficient one for powering with the solar setup I’m installing. This one uses less than half of the amperage to run it. I went through the older freezer and transferred all the meats over to this one. I’ve always put dates on the packages when they go into storage but some stuff at the bottom easily gets buried and forgotten. It was a good thing to reorganize the stuff. I have three turkeys that were bought when on sale that need to be cooked before too long. Nothing so long to need to use as dog food but I really hate not utilizing food to its fullest. I do have several rabbits that are left over from my experiment with raising them. I will make something nice for the boys with those since I’m really not crazy with rabbit meat. I think I will barbecue one of them though to try it out again before the dogs get them.
Good advice on inspection before eating a full meal of something. Look, smell, taste and inspect the can or packaging. If it’s dented or swollen don’t take a chance. One interesting thing about corona virus is it’s common to loose your sense of smell. All I am certain of is during any emergency you don’t want to get a case of food poisoning during it. Be wary and if in doubt throw it out.
Maybe Rellgar is at an advantage to have so much in storage, but being able to use it all in the long run might turn out to be a big investment which "turned bad" so to say. Hope not. We only planned for around a year or so, plus what we could also pack up and Bug-out with and then be able to get more from the garden/hunting/fishing and such. No-one has the patent answer for the SHTF times. Do what you feel is right and what you can afford to get or afford to lose, then hope for the best...
Soup Mix. The grains in it has a long shelf life.
I hear the toxin from the can lining from the inside erodes of years and when you eat the contents of the can so do you eat those toxins> Is that right?
Not all cans contain the linings, more and more manufactures are no longer using BPA products in it's lining, it was the same BPA product lining used in aluminum water bottles. The reason I don't use aluminum water bottles is because you can't heat the water bottle over fire without breaking the lining down, same for the older food cans that used this type of lining.
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"At least 90% of today’s food cans have replaced linings that previously contained the controversial chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), according to the Can Manufacturers Institute. This is in reaction to market demands for more options in food safety."
https://www.packagingdigest.com/foo...no-longer-use-bpa-in-their-linings-2018-02-20
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even canning lids had the BPA linings for years but now state "BPA" free.
Peanut butter is a good thing also batteries, meds, and candles.
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The only thing bad thing about peanut butter is that it will last only about a year because of the high oil content. But by all means, it is a great item to have on hand. It's just not one that I consider long term so make sure it gets rotated every time. If it's getting close, it's time to make cookies. . . 
Peanut butter survives well in my opinion. It has protein and you can also cook with it if you desire. I know that peanut butter survives well because I have put it in mouse traps and forgotten about it for years and come back to it to find it still looking pretty tasty.
A lot of the cheaper brands will go rancid quicker than big named brands, the cheaper peanut butter uses too much oil. I ate skippy's, Jeff that were 4.5 years old and older and it was fine, cheaper brands you'll get .25 inch of oil on the top in about a year plus a lot of the cheaper brands will use high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar that will begin to crystallize in a year if stored above 74deg. I store my peanut butter in the basement, no sun and doesn't get above 66 nor any lower than 57.
