How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It - James Wesley Rawles [35]
Jerky
Nearly all of the energy bars on the market are fairly expensive. One good alternative is making traditional jerky and pemmican at home. The cost per ounce can be very low, especially if you hunt or raise livestock. But keep in mind that, just like with energy bars, if you store dried meat you will also need to store a good source of dietary fiber.
Ramen Noodles
The nutritive value of ramen is marginal, so it should not be considered a primary storage food. But there is wisdom in having some on hand as a food-storage supplement, especially in lean times, when hunger pangs will be a distinct possibility.
Cooking Facilities for Grid-Down Living
Plan ahead for cooking in grid-down circumstances and to cook over open fires if need be. Buy several cast-iron pots and frying pans, a Dutch oven, and a large kettle. You should also be prepared to cook in larger quantity. It is difficult to predict the exact circumstances, but chances are you will be cooking for far more than just your own family. At the minimum, this will require a couple of huge stew pots, two large frying pans, and lots of extra bread pans.
How to Store Food Safely
You can “do it yourself ” for nearly everything required for home food storage with the notable exception of canned powdered dry milk. (It’s messy to repack yourself, and because of milk’s butterfat content, it stores well for long periods only with commercial nitrogen packing.) Commercially canned “year’s supply” type units are needlessly expensive. Even the salt comes canned. Talk about overkill packaging. In the instance of wheat, you are paying two to five times as much for the product because of the packaging. You are better off buying your food in bulk (honey, whole grains, beans, and rice) and canning or otherwise containerizing it yourself.
Unless you have large-scale grain bins, one of the most efficient means of storing wheat and corn for small-scale animal feed or human consumption is to buy galvanized trash cans with tight-fitting lids. If they will be on a damp floor, put the cans up on two-by-four blocks to prevent rust. When galvanized trash barrels go on sale, buy a bunch. Another good storage method is five- or six-gallon food-grade plastic buckets with gasketed lids. These stack well, but be advised that they are not as vermin-proof as galvanized steel bins or barrels. Determined rats have been known to gnaw their way through plastic food buckets. So if you choose this method, be sure to set traps, and check the buckets every few weeks for signs of damage.
Crucial Equipment for Storage
Food-Grade Plastic Pails
Bulk wheat, rice, and beans are best stored in five- or six-gallon food-grade plastic pails.
If you use your own pails, make sure that they are certified food grade (most buckets made for paint are not). And if you reuse food-grade buckets, make certain that they were used only for non-smelly foods. Reusing pickle pails for rice can give you pickle-flavored rice!
Walton Feed has excellent prices and top-quality products. Pack bulk grains and legumes in plastic buckets yourself and you will save a lot of money. Note: Make sure that you use oxygen-absorbing packets (available from Walton) or the dry-ice displacement method to kill all the bugs and larvae before you seal up each bucket.
Food-grade five-gallon buckets can be found cheaply or for free from bakeries. For any buckets you acquire that are missing lids, I recommend that you buy Gamma Seal lids. These lids are threaded, making them very convenient for accessing the storage foods that you use most frequently. Gamma Seal lids fit standard five- or six-gallon buckets, and they seem to last forever. We’ve been using some of our lids on a daily basis for more than twenty years. In addition to our storage-food buckets, we have them on buckets for poultry feed, wild birdseed, and dog food. They are available from Ready Made Resources, Safecastle, Nitro-Pak (nitro-pak.com), and several other vendors for around six dollars each. If you want to buy twenty or more lids, you can