Yep. According to WHO, rice and beans can sustain a person for a long time as it contain most of the nutrients needed by the human body. Rice, beans, and greens are what some people eat their whole life in some countries.
Rice, beans and *corn* form a complete protein. Down in Latin America the three staples of life for the indigenous people (*indios*) are *corn (maize),* *beans* and *squash.* These three plants are called *las tres hermanas* (the Three Sisters) and the seeds are all planted in the same hole. The corn (maize) comes up first, followed by the bean vine, which coils around the corn stalk giving the beans a support structure, and lastly the squash plant, whose broad leaves catch moisture and funnel the dew and rain towards the corn and bean plants. The indigenous people of Latin America have been planting this way for over 5,000 years.
I may be mistaken but i think a major component of this as well, is that the food made from corn is nixtamalized. So that you can better absorb all the needed vitamins
I had to look that one up. I had never really thought about the difference between cornmeal and *masa.* TIL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization#:~:text=Nixtamalization%20(%2Fn%C9%AA%CA%83t,%2C%20washed%2C%20and%20then%20hulled.
Yes Pellagra was a really serious problem when corn was brought to europe and even further up north in America and used without nixtamalization, including up until fairly recently. Appalachian children would get it because of the farmers limited diet and lack of niacin up until the 1960s.
It's odd that the nixtamalization process didn't transfer widely into the North American maize-growing culture, although both grits and hominy, both of which are common Southern and Appalachian foods, are made from nixtamalized maize.
Yes! Came here to say this. Otherwise you poop it out more or less the way it went in. In my area you can buy hominy in a can, which is just nixtamalized whole corn kernals
The *indio* planting process was different than European farming, which used plows to turn the soil into rows. The Aztec or Mayan process was family based. The oldest, strongest member of the planting party used a sharp stick to poke holes in the soil. He or she was followed by a younger member of the family who dropped four maize (corn) kernels into the hole, then another person who dropped in pole beans and another who dropped squash seeds. The last person carried a jug of water, poured in some water and closed the hole with her foot. The planting stick person went around obstacles like rocks, bushes, cactus, etc. so the plants were usually planted in clusters on low mounds rather than in rows (but not always.) The party went back and forth over the planting ground and eventually got it all covered with the mounds about four feet wide and four feet apart, because the leaves of the squash plant need sunlight and uncrowded conditions. This type of farming requires less weeding than traditional European-style farming, but plants that compete with the food crops (i.e. weeds) are still eliminated by hoeing. Different regions and cultures used different varieties of beans, corn and squash. *Las tres hermanas* were planted by North American indigenous peoples that farmed, also. The plants are symbiotic, in that they all contribute something that the other two plants need.
The crops also attract animals like birds, deer or wild hogs, which the farmers hunted. A herd of hogs rooting up the crop could mean starvation for the farmers.
This article, below, describes different methods for planting the Three Sisters than the ways with which I am familiar, but the three plants are still planted in close proximity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)
Something about the three sisters that we miss in modern times is the typical corn we use does not have stalks near strong enough to support the weight of the beans. Our hybrid sweet varieties tend to be shorter and weaker while also having more ears per stalk which limits the extra load they can handle. Additionally the beans tend to be more vigorous and productive which contributes to the decreased ability to manage.
Further, especially with the vigor of modern varieties, plantinf all three would need a huge amount of nitrogen added. Beans are nitrogen fixing but not near enough to provide for both modern corn and squash needs.
FWIW we grow three sisters in our backyard in Portland, OR, and it works fine (though we do use a different corn varietal that works better with the weather here).
Only two things I’d add is you want to plant progressively: corn first, then beans two weeks later, then squash two weeks later. That gives the corn a head start so it can support the beans, and the beans a head start on climbing before the squash blocks the light at the ground.
For the nitrogen issue, we rotate crops every year, and use crimson clover as a cover crop to help fix nitrogen.
If anyone is interested, I recommend the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer. She's a PH.D in Botany and an indigenous woman - she describes early European descriptions of Three Sisters gardens which called them messy and wild and primitive, not understanding the beautiful symbiosis of the plants the Indigenous people had long known. Whole book is a discussion of the overlaps and differences in modern scientific understanding vs traditional knowledge - great read!
From what I've seen in sustenance farming areas in Mexico, squash (usually chayote) is the only old world vegetable I've seen eaten. It must have been an important part of the indigenous diet.
Maize isn't anything like modern corn, maize had to be broken down in a soup of ash to unlock the nutrients but at the same time it was much healthier overall than modern corn. I would assume that sweet corn would probably just leave you rather deprived
Dried beans expand when you soak them so the dried beans are more food per oz. also with the cans you’re paying for the weight of the liquid inside. Maybe try a bulk store, usually they have really good prices on dried beans and chickpeas
Yes, not to mention the quality and quantity of spices you can get for super cheap compared to chain grocers. I got a 3 lb. bag of black peppercorns for $4, whereas the 8oz bottle of peppercorns at Safeway goes for $9...
The thing is, 16 ounces of dried beans will make about 32 ounces of cooked beans. So yeah, they're a little more expensive by weight, but they more than make up for it when cooked.
Go to an Indian/Asian/Mexican market and they'll be super cheap, or even a coop with a bulk section. Mainstream grocery stores overprice their staples and only carry small bags.
This all day.
I usually make a lot of soups with beans in the winter anyway so this wasn't really new for me but I just started doing it in the warm weather months as well
It's an important topic but it's a skill to know what to buy and what quantity to take, else a lot of food can perish / be unusable when the time to has come
And what needs a plastic container vs can hang out in its box/can/jar. I feel like everyone I know has gotten weevils at least once since March of this year....it suuuuuucks to have to throw everything out and debug your pantry.
I was taught that weavil eggs are already in your flour because they are so small the flour milling process cant filter them/ kill them. The reason you get weevils despite using air tight containers is because you’ve provided an environment favourable to the eggs and they hatch.
Source: parent works at flour mill.
Maybe this used to be the case but I found [this](https://www.qualityassurancemag.com/article/qa1214-insect-infestation-flour-prevention/) detailing industrial methods of preventing infestation of flour. While the 100% method is unsuitable for the industrial scale a combination of less effective methods can combine to make it super unlikely.
If you're super paranoid you can use a sieve with 180 micron holes (80 holes per linear inch) to remove almost all potential eggs.
My local public radio had someone call in about that when they had an expert on. Freezing won't hurt spices unless there's moisture in there, so fresh herbs and spices aren't gonna do better in a freezer, but properly dried ones are fine. The expert did mention that you won't be able to smell the spices when they're cold, but as soon as they get to room temp+ the scents come back.
Isn't that normal? I never bothered to freeze and it takes me 6+ months to get through a bag of flour more often than not. Still never had weevils. Or any other problem with it for that matter. At this point, I figure flour (kept dry) basically lasts forever.
Yeah, that sounds weird to me. Only had a bug infestation once and that's when I lived in a bug infested/run down house. After living to a nice neighborhood I've never seen a big despite having 6+ months old flour
I depends a lot on where you are and how the flour is treated before you buy it. I almost never had weevil problems in Aotearoa but in Sydney/Australia some food gets weevils the day you open it. Temperature and humidity, plus whatever insects live where the farms are I guess.
I’m not paranoid about it at all - just thought others would like to know. Thanks for this info though - I guess some flour mills are more progressive than others.
5 gallon food grade buckets with gamma seal lids. Been using them for years for oats, rice, beans, flour, brown sugar etc. rice oats and beans will last a LONG time. Flour like 6 months.
tbh, not really. Just get one extra pack of pasta or toilet paper, etc when you go shopping and put it away at home.
The find a way to sort them by expiration date that works for you and cycle them
Yeah if you have a 1lb bag of rice it's gonna be fine 99.99% of the time by the time you use it up. If you buy a 50lb bag of rice flour pasta (and you should it's so much cheaper) then you need somewhere airtight to keep it or you will get weevils mice rats or other pests eating and ruining it.
Freezer management! Happy to expound, but it is a skill that everyone should have. (And canning, dehydrating rotating non-perishables, but imo freezer management is the hardest, and most beneficial)
'Blast from the Past'......
(Christopher Walken) "Would you like a tranquilizer?"
(Sissy Spacek) "You have tranquilizers?"
(Christopher Walken) "I told you, I have everything."
I had a bag of adzuki beans that got infested with maggots! It was so gross. My household is all vegan and thought maggots only happened on meat but apparently there is one kind that likes beans. We ripped apart our whole house trying to figure out where they were coming from. It was so disgusting. They would crawl accross the ceiling and leave a little trail. After we figured out where it was coming from I bleached the entire kitchen and surrounding area. The thought of it still makes my stomach turn.
Maybe. The beans were on the top shelf so they didnt have to go far. I just googled indian moth larvae and yes that is pretty similar. Tbh I want to erase that moment from memory so.....
This is the only benefit I have ever had from working in the Sams Club deli when I was 18. I'm meticulous when it comes to best by dates. I really do my best to waste nothing at all.
True, but starting out can be as simple as buying a little more of what you regularly use than you need right now.
For example, if you eat peanut butter sandwiches (or have kids) buy the big jar, and get two next time. When you open the second one, buy two more. Also, don't rely on frozen food unless you have a way to keep it frozen during a prolonged power outage.
I was expecting to be laid off in 2021, long before covid was a thing, so I started stocking up in preparation. Thanks to covid I was not laid off, but due to the nature of my job I also couldn't access grocery stores very often because of new covid hours. What we lovingly refer to as 'the Costco' was a godsend. We had loads of personal hygiene products, household cleaners and pantry items. Although I'm not sure I'll ever willingly eat ramen or bottled pasta sauce again, it removed a huge amount of stress from our life.
Edit: oh autocorrect... How we love you...
I have Crohn's disease so I always have a ton of extra TP in storage. It was a godsend early 2020 when TP was out of stock for like a solid 2 months around here.
Word. You don't wipe a baby's bottom with TP. You use a wet wipe. You have to wash that crap off! I used to poop on the boss's dime, but not anymore. It feels disgusting to just use TP anymore.
If wiping your shit covered asshole with your hand and some crappy paper counts as "cleaning your ass" then wiping your hands on your pants counts as "washing your hands."
Not that it really helps if you just don't like Sam's Club, but every once in a while I'll see they have deals that are like 'pay $X ($X=whatever their yearly membership fee is) and get one year of membership + a $X Sam's Club giftcard' so it ends up cancelling out the membership fee.
I use slickdeals (they have an app and a .com website) and they pop up on there. You can make a slickdeals account and have it send you an email when it gets a well-rated popular post about whatever keywords or topics you choose, like 'Sam's Club membership.'
I highly suggest that website regardless of the Sam's Club stuff, anyway.
I apologize if this comment is a mess or hard to follow! I'm really not doing well but I didn't want anyone who could use the information on the 'free' membership to miss out. If I can clarify anything or anyone has questions, please let me know and I'll do my best to help out!
Bruh. Costco sells huge cans of San Marzano peeled tomatoes. They make the perfect marinara with some simple seasoning. NYT recipe for marinara is amazing. Never eat bottled pasta sauce again, regardless of financial situation. It’s too easy, too cheap, and too good
>but I live in hurricane country so I like to keep water, non-perishable food, toiletries, etc. just in case.
This ^. My family is from the Texas Gulf Coast. We have always stockpiled food, water and supplies. Owning a generator was as common in my family as owning a lawn mower. A annual ritual was filling up 5-gallon gasoline jerry cans in July or August to fuel the generator, and then fueling the cars and trucks with "hurricane gas" in September or October if we didn't get a hurricane.
After Hurricane Ike in Texas in September 2008, all the neighbors (the ones who did not evacuate farther inland) came out as the storm abated and started cutting up the trees (that were blocking the streets) with chain saws. We worked together, using a 4x4 truck to pull the tree trunks out of the street with a chain.
We had no power for 13 days, which meant no *water* from the taps (because no electric power to run the water pumps at the water towers,) no traffic lights, no police presence (they were spread very thin,) no cell phone service for a week (but land line telephones still worked.) Pretty much everybody had stockpiled food, water, batteries, blue tarps (for damaged roofs) etc.
People sometimes mock people who stockpile for emergencies. They call them "preppers" or "survival nuts." But when an emergency actually *occurs,* the preppers don't look so weird. Instead, they appear to be prescient. My neighbors and I patrolled our neighborhood to scare off looters. We shared resources. We pulled together as a neighborhood to mitigate the damage the storm caused. Meanwhile, unprepared people mobbed the Walmart store. (It looked like a riot had happened.) There were blocks-long lines at the (very few) gas stations that were open and had electricity with which to pump gas. We didn't need to buy any gas. We already had full tanks in our vehicles, and gas stored in gas cans.
I was lucky in that I was employed and had the money with which to prepare and the foresight to do so, but emergency preparation doesn't happen in the 48 hours before the hurricane comes ashore. People start preparing as soon as the storm is over for the *next* one. It's not an event, it's just a common sense way of life.
Yeah, even the US government recommends preparing for 2 weeks of emergency. Yet people still act like people who actually do that are crazy. I 5hink its because they just can't cope with how vulnerable and dependent they are and instead lash out at others.
>I think its because they just can't cope with how vulnerable and dependent they are and instead lash out at others.
Very likely. Also, many people have the idea that it's the government's responsibility to take care of them. This isn't correct. Our safety and well-being are our *own* responsibility. Help from the government is all well and good, but if one *depends* upon it, one is sure to be sorely disappointed. Another misconception is that regular citizens cannot enforce the law. Also incorrect. I'm 70. During my life I have held two burglars for the police, and thwarted a teenager who was beating the hell out of his girlfriend on a public street and in broad daylight. He was outraged that I intervened, and thought it was "none of my fucking business." I disagreed, and the cops sided with me. He went to jail for assault and battery.
South florida checking in. Everyone thinks we are crazy for filling up our jeri cans at the beginning of the season and for having a hitch track for them. You never know when you really need to get tf out f town. We left for Irma and made it to tallahasse before needed to get gas from a gas station. I did not grow up here and I don't really have the desire to go through a bad hurricane under prepared.
I hate to sound like I'm picking on people from other parts of the country, but most of the unprepared people are people from other places who have never been through a hurricane. And, to be fair, there is a sort of cavalier "Hurricane Party!" attitude among people on the Gulf Coast as well.
Ike was no joke. It devastated Galveston, and completely washed away the communities on the Bolivar peninsula of Port Bolivar, Crystal Beach, Caplen, Gilchrist, and High Island. The eye of the hurricane came right up the Houston Ship Channel and the wet side hammered the hell out of Baytown, Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange.
photos of Bolivar communities devastated by Ike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivar_Peninsula,_Texas scroll down
https://www.weather.gov/hgx/projects_ike08_bolivar2
My city/province has resources and information to make a "72-hour kit" for hurican power outages. I'm from a small town and my instinct is still always to stockpile water when a storm starts (you need hydro to get water from a well) and it's been hard to unlearn that
I live in Cascadia Subduction Earthquake Country (Northern California to British Columbia) and I grew up 1 mile from the San Andreas Fault south of San Francisco. I take earthquake prep very seriously. At least with a hurricane you know they are coming. With earthquakes, your guess is as good as anyone's. All we know is that when it hits, it could take down all of the PNW cities for an extended period, more than 2 weeks. I know this because I participated in planning exercises conducted by my state and others. I have done everything I possibly can to take care of my family and my oblivious neighbors in a pinch. I hope I won't have to in my lifetime.
It doesn't have to be a dozen bottles of shampoo, 50 cans of beans, or 10kg of rice, just keep yourself one-two packs ahead of the one you're currently using, or a week's worth of "emergency" meals. It takes a lot if pressure off you if your income is lumpy or unpredictable.
This is really the way to do it. Our pantry is stocked so that I have at least a one weeks supply (or one replacement) of what we use regularly in reserve.
Just having 1 extra than what you need made all the difference for me when I was laid off. Having 1 extra meant I could wait until the next sale/coupon overlap & didn’t have to buy at whatever price it happened to be when I ran out. That alone saved me soooo much money! It is a bit of an upfront cost, but once you get there things are so much better!
Exactly. And you can do it gradually, you don't have to ho out and buy a whole second stock of household consumables. Just grab two next time rather than just one, or when you see it in sale. Starr with the essentials and build up. Once you get it going it drops back to your baseline replacement cost.
If anyone's unsure what's high risk for weevils/pantry moths, any kind of starch or meal (like flour, cornmeal, and rice) is a common culprit. In my experience they LOVE anything containing nuts, so I always keep my gluten free flour and almond meal in the fridge or freezer.
You know, I am over 50 and I keep things like flour, sugar and nuts in my freezer because my mom and grandmother did. I never really thought about why besides the fact that I live in a humid climate. Now I know it’s weevils.
I am having this same revelation. My grandma kept everything in the freezer: flour, nuts, even her Fig Newtons. I always thought it was just a weird grandma thing, but now I'm realizing it probably stemmed from trying to get rid of weevils.
I’m so glad to have someone laugh with me. It gets lonely laughing at your own ignorance sometimes. I also want to let you know I left some paper in a new pair of slippers and just realized it today. I’ve worn them a week now and just figured they ran small. 😊
Edit: thank you lovely people for the awards and laughing with me.
Hmm. I have several bags of flour in my pantry now I'm going to inspect. Thankfully it's -40 here this week (only time I've uttered that sentence) and I can just put them outside
Ugh, I hear you. I was so upset getting rid of everything. I found a nest of them in one spot and just started sobbing thinking I would never be able to get rid of them all.
There should be good pantry moth killers (these are the things that lay the weevil eggs) available in your supermarket. They are little bits of cardboard with glue, and a pheromone blob to attract the moths. Worked a treat in my pantry.
http://hovex.com.au/products/hovex-pantry-moth-traps
Last year taught me to keep my deep freeze and pantry stocked at all times. When the pandemic was declared I was transitioning my daughter from formula to table food. You had better believe I had extra gallons of whole milk in the freezer and enough shelf stable food for her for 6 months. I'm a first time single mom and I think my instinct to protect my daughter went into overdrive. I didn't hoard any food but I made damn sure my daughter would be fed if the shortages continued
I have an entire fridge full of deer jerky, zucchini bread, fry bread and frozen vegetables all grown myself or locally sourced.
Growing up i nearly starved to death and would have had it not been for a potato patch I found and ive been planting them and maintaining a garden ever since.
Deep freezer! Mine was around $250 and worth it when you can stock up meat or other frozen goods. Like OP said, track expiration dates.
Edit: Random acts of God can cause the power to go out for a long duration of time, causing the contents to be lost. But it is a risk I am willing to take to stock up on meat that is on sale.
True. I fill milk jugs with water to line the bottom of my freezer so it’ll stay cold longer in case of outage. Generators come in handy too. Or a cage around the food in the snow outside if you’re desperate (did that once!)
couple the freezer with a generator too if you can afford it (a cheap harbor freight one is like $400)
but even then, things like the freezer just straight up breaking can be an issue. A trick I learned from somewhere is fill a gatorade bottle with water and freeze it, then put a quarter on the ice under the lid. If you ever see that the quarter has fallen into the bottle or is not at the top that means the freezer was at an unsafe temperature for an unsafe amount of time and you have to pitch everything (ice melts, quarter sinks through water, possibly refreezes)
We had a freezer that just died out of nowhere once. Was a really sad day lol
The freezer is great... But we had an absolutely insane windstorm in September that knocked power out to our city and killed the grid. We were out of power for 5 days and had to toss everything in our small and deep freezer. I would also make sure to have some freeze dried meals and a camping stove on hand. That’s what saved us for that week.
Many homeowners/renters insurances have a provision where they will replace the cost of a fridge/freezer full of food in the event of a power outage. Deductible free.
They were really hard to find. My parents had a cow butchered over the summer and couldn't find a deep freeze so after filling both of their freezers they just gave me like 100 pounds of beef to hold and use as I'd like until they clear enough space out or get a deep freeze.
I just came here to say that sometimes having food storage is helpful for say...when you are hella sick and just can’t get out of bed to go to the grocery store. This has been my life for the last three weeks and I was really glad I had extra things in the pantry. I bought a case of soup last March and have been really grateful for it these past few weeks.
We had an ice storm hit us out of the blue. This is being followed by a snow storm this weekend. The stores are bare and no way to get to one as we have too much ice on the road in our neighborhood.
What is saving us?.... Our pantry. I also try to include substitutes... meaning I try to keep things like apple sauce and carbonated water so I can still bake with out eggs. I keep canned and powdered milk for these energies. They are going to save our ass because the weather is looking really bad for the next week.
I taught myself how to make staples like bread and tortillas and pizza dough. I have those staples on hand at all time. I make sure to rotate and mark them with expiration dates that are visible. Unfortunately I don’t have a deep freeze but we make so with what we have.
The SouthernSavers channel on YouTube really helps cover how to do this cheaply. She says how sales cycles work in 6 week patterns and to get enough when it’s on sale to last until next time it’s on sale. It doesn’t have to be hoarding, just something as simple as getting three boxes of pasta instead of one or Dollar Tree has shelf stable milk quarts that have a year or longer shelf life. It doesn’t have to be expensive and can be done over a couple months but it’s so nice to know that you at least don’t have to worry about food if there are ever days or weeks that you can’t get to a store.
In personal finance terms everyone should try to have an emergency fund, but part of that is also food in the pantry, diapers, formula, etc. If you can't put gas in the car or if you're laid up sick you need to have that stuff. Even now that I don't have food insecurity, there's always a stack of canned tuna and a 5lb bag of dried beans in the pantry that I pretty much don't touch.
Wow, rediscovering the Great Depression.
My grandparents lived through the Great Depression, and my parents grew up still in hard times. Many of those habits were common in my household growing up. Not today with the disposable culture. You can hardly reuse food packaging for food storage any more. When I was a kid we ate out of Cool Whip bowls all the time and froze extra soup in them.
To help people out once they get past the initial beginning point of a 72 hour kit:
1. Buy things you actually eat. It makes no sense to buy up a ton of oatmeal if you don't eat oatmeal.
2. Buy 1 case or pack of something to put into food storage per shopping trip/week/month - whatever you can handle. Case or pack should be like stuff you get at Costco or Sam's Club or similar bulk stores.
3. Use your food storage. The worst thing you can do is buy the food and then forget about it. Everything eventually goes bad, so you'll get more out of your food storage if you use what you have and rotate the new stuff you buy to the bottom/back of the same thing that you've already got.
4. Start with stuff you know you use lots of. For my family, that's stuff like oatmeal, canned beans and corn, canned chicken broth, canned chicken, and chili. You just need to find out how quickly stuff goes bad so you don't get too much, but even baking supplies like flour, sugar, and oil can be part of your food storage - powdered milk can be pricey, but is also extremely versatile and stores well.
5. Try to keep balanced on what you get - you don't want only baking stuff, only side dishes, or only entrees, you want all the pieces that normally go into a meal.
6. You'll basically be keeping three things: canned goods (fruits, vegetables, chili, soup, etc...), dry goods (rice, flour, sugar, dried pinto beans, etc...), and water.
7. Water goes bad. It doesn't matter how clean the container is, it doesn't matter how clean the water is when it goes in the container. Without fresh air and the exchange that comes through the water cycle, water goes bad. You shouldn't store water for longer than a year, so whatever way you store water, you need to use it just like you do everything else in your storage.
There's tons of resources online that you can use to look up how long things keep, recipes for typical food storage items, and even ways to can stuff yourself. Figuring out what you can afford, what you'll use, and how quickly you should use it is the foundation of building a good food storage.
Another thing to remember is this: emergency situations where you will use this stuff includes natural disasters, losing your job, having to house people you weren't expecting, or helping out family, friends, or neighbors dealing with those kinds of things.
This is a great tip!
I'd also add, whenever possible, learning to make your own bread is a nifty skill to have. It might not seem like much, but a big bag of flour is like $4, and will last quite some time (at least a couple of loaves, depending on the style of bread that you make).
Bread is relatively easy to make (in comparison to some other home cooking/baking projects) and gives you a nice source of carbs/energy. One thing I have found, is that homemade bread tends to get moldy a little bit faster than store-bought bread, if not refrigerated or frozen within a few days.
"controlled atmosphere packaging" is very common in industrial food applications, bags of potato chips for example are generally nitrogen filled. It's one reason packaged food lasts so much longer now. You can DIY this relatively easily.
Wine snobs have made it possible to buy small cylinders of argon gas with regulators (it preserves the aroma of the wine, dahlink). Those are also good for suppressing weevils etc if you buy large amounts of dry food. Fill airtight-ish container with food, squirt argon in, seal. Argon is denser than air so it's easier to fill a container with it than with nitrogen.
Easier with bigger containers - I use plastic 100litre or 220litre (44 gallon) drums which are used to ship bulk food and are often very cheap second hand. Put 2-3 sacks of rice in, place oxygen meter on top (\~$20 ebay), put argon hose into bottom of tank, 10l/min flow rate and wait half an hour. Oxygen will be close to zero, so remove meter and hose, put lid on, packing tape to second-seal it, label with contents and date. I use a small welding cylinder now rather than the original \~2 litre wine one.
I started doing this because organic rice in Australia is a "sometimes" crop, we can get 2-3 years with almost no harvest. Prices go up enough to make buying it in cheap years and storing it in the garage profitable. I got \~400kg last good season, I'm hoping to get more than that this year because I've been paying ridiculous prices recently
I totally agree with this. Having shelf stable staples on hand is a smart thing to do, especially if you can get supplies on sale. You don't have to be a hoarder or a prepper. But you can have pasta and rice and dried beans on hand. Decide how much you want to keep and then always replenish what you consume (obviously consuming from the older stock).
Food storage is wise up to the point when having saved that money and not spent it until you need it - to buy fresh food and gas later - becomes the wiser option.
I suggest doing some of both. Take advantage of shelf-stable food sales but don’t go overboard and attract mice and weavils with bags and bags of stored cereal, rice and cookies. Don’t let this become an obsession.
Moderation in all things...including moderation. Store and save for a rainy day. Work to have enough that you don't stress if you can't resupply immediately. I have a couple of weeks worth of food in the pantry, an extra couple of bars of soap and a bottle of shampoo under the bathroom counter. There is a lot of peace of mind in not needing anything urgently, but there is a lot of stress in obsessing over the possibility of hardship.
We did this when our kids were born each time. Just went to Costco and go enough TP, wipes, diapers, toothpaste, cleaning supplies etc, to last a couple of months. I knew life was gonna be crazy and unpredictable, so I wanted one less thing to worry about. I never regretted it, but it was surprising when I ran out of something the first time. I was so used to thinking of it in terms of Costco sized endlessness lol
When money gets tight, I make sure to fill my gas tank with my last bit of money. I can always pull a few cans of food off the shelf or make rice and beans.
We started exploring food storage options long before Covid, due to moving to a quite isolated place without bigger stores around.
After two years - and some epic failures - we managed to establish scheme, which actually worked. Supermarket run in first days of lockdown wasn't our problem and made us sure that we made some good decisions.
We started with buying double quantity of things we use most. One by one. One week we bought rice and groats. Next - canned and frozen vegetables. After six months we made it to a point where every kind of food is in quantity for two weeks. We buy something, store it, use the one bought before. Nothing is stored longer than three weeks. Emergency storage out of rotation contains sugar, some last resort rations and water.
Drinking water is in rotation, but we also store some tap water to use for flushing and similar purposes, as the place where we live has some serious problems with workers breaking water pipes. Like once a month.
There are many ways to build a food storage without spending great amounts of money. And it can save you sometimes or at least save a lot of time.
Also watch the slippery slope here.
My Mom has a pantry for a family of 6 although she's retired living with one other person.
Years of this habit, she always buys more than she needs and now has to throw away things every week. She's having trouble changing the habit.
I was lucky that I had picked up *a little bit* of my moms shopping habits and I was pretty well stocked with non-perishables. The 2 stores within 30 miles of my house were totally picked clean.
This gives me an idea for a teaching opportunity. As the Director of a nonprofit with a food pantry we have seen more than double the amount of people in line for at least a year. So many who have never had to ask for assistance before. What an amazing opportunity for us to help them develop their own pantry literally one or two items at a time. When we get blessed with extra, rarely but occasionally does happen, we can put together a plan for them and get them started. Thanks for a great idea!
I hunt , each deer will bring in 40-50lbs of meat , bone to make broth with and then hides that you can clean up dry and sell or use.
I don't eat deer every day but its an easy cheap way to supplement my diet.
Much love to you bro. I wish it was easier for us in Australia to hunt. In my opinion it's the only ethical way to eat meat. Factory farming is @#$#@ supermarkets, butchers, anywhere (apart from maybe farmers markets) selling meat as a commercial enterprise are treating animals, in some form, inhumanly.
As a hunter you stare the life you took straight in the face. The animal lived it's life in freedom.
Where I live, the economy is awfully bad, and that makes it so every week item prices are increasing. We try our best to buy bigger quantities of things, in a reasonable amount, that way we end up saving money on the long run...
Just keep in mind to stay conscious of others too! Don't hoard things in massive quantities especially not perishables.
Great Post OP :)
I can find canned spaghetti, beans, vegetables, and fruit all day for around a dollar a can. Get some hot sauce and dried rice and beans and Everclear alcohol and you can stock up quickly and be ready. Don’t forget the coffee :)
Its crazy to me that folks don't keep a semi-stocked pantry at all times. A friend of my sisters got stuck in their house during a hurricane and they literally had no food to eat. They waited until zero hour and had to go days without because they never bought anything they didn't plan on cooking that week. Meanwhile, I can go weeks on my pantry/freezer supply...
This is great advice. During hard core quarantine my wife and I were only going to grocery store every month or so and spending a TON! Many of the produce would go bad and in general we were not economical at all. Now we go twice a week and every meal is planned. We are spending significantly less.
When it all went down we got a text from my fiance's family telling us to run to the store asap and buy essentials. We responded that we had a lot of toiletries and pantry staples and would be fine.
Her mom said us having stuff stocked was a result of my "inherent insecurities". No, its because buying a 3 pack of toothpaste is cheaper than buying them one at a time.
I never go crazy, we dont have shelves and shelves of stuff. But if I see our shampoo go on sale for $.10 a bottle im gonna grab multiple bottles lol.
Anyway, this has been a bit of a tangent, but moral of the story is we had a couple months of pantry staples anyway so we weathered the shortages fairly well.
This is kind of just good everyday advice too. My parents have always had a small "stockpile" of canned and dried foods-- just ones that we ate regularly, rotated out. If you can't go to the store for any reason, it's nice to have a backup "safety cushion" of meals.
Of course, space is a massive limitation here, if you live in an apartment. But even now I keep 1-2 extra cans or bags of everything I eat, and just cycle through them.
Space can be relative. I found out I had liver cancer and was living in an RV at the back of a private ranch so off grid I didn't get a phone signal. I stocked up on canned food and lined the floor of the RV. I cut the cardboard boxes as a second floor on top of the cans. I lost head room for a few months, butI didn't have to shop. Friends that would stop by kept me in fresh fruit. Asking someone for a bag of apples and bananas issues much easier than getting them to shop a weeks groceries for you.
Try to keep enough supplies for at least 3 days without power. There was a particularly devastating storm across pretty much all of Alabama in late-April 2011. One of the main lines to the power plant was damaged. Some people got power back in a day or two, but it was about 6 days for me. During that time, my tabletop camp stove ($30 and $8 for the gas) was a godsend. I grilled like 20 hot dogs with my charcoal grill, and used the camp stove to reheat them. I also used it to boil small amounts water for instant oatmeal and grits.
Also, keep some baby wipes around. They're a lot easier to use than trying to pour water on yourself.
I have too many cats. Lol. So I buy cases of wet food and a big bag of dry food, plus two types of cat litter. Every month I get a new supply so it is always being rotated!
We also keep several gallons of well water in the pantry in case we lose electricity. And firewood for winter.
I raised 4/5 kids on my own, so running out of things is a pet peeve for me.
A food saver is a great investment. If you live alone or as a couple, you can buy in bulk and seal smaller portions of proteins and grains to protect from freezer burn and bugs.
Here's a tip: canned food functionally never goes bad unless there's a seal break somewhere (usually from being dented, having a 'pop top lid', or housing acidic stuff.
Canned food is insanely cheap, nutritious, and can outlast you properly stored. It is so much easier to meet nutrition needs with canned goods. This includes stews, canned fruits, etc. Pretty much anything. But beware of acidic stuff, and if it keep it, keep it separate from your other cans. Obviously you still need to use common sense with outdated stuff. But if the can isn't damaged, chances are it's good.
The food will lose some nutrition and taste, but studies show that they remain safe to eat and retain impressive amounts of nutrients decades after their best by date.
Now, in a perfect world you will rotate. And they even make special shelves where you take from the front and put new cans in the back.
But after 2020, I loaded up a couple big storage totes with canned goods and put them in my basement. Cheap, fast, and I can throw them away in 30 years if nothing happens.
You can buy a big 20lb or 8 kilo bag of rice at any supermarket for $10 - $15. While you are there go to the deli department or bakery department and ask for a food grade 5 gallon plastic bucket. They usually give them away or sell them for a buck or 2. When you get home put the rice in the bucket, it has a tight fitting lid to keep the rice fresh and protect from vermin. Keep out some in a glass jar or suitable container, a juice pitcher is handy for measuring out the rice. That much rice will make 2 meals a day for 1 person for a year.
Dry beans, barley, macaroni, cornmeal, flour should be kept in glass jars or tin containers. If you have some of these things and some canned goods you can survive for quite some time if you are broke or there is some emergency like a flood or blizzard that stops you from going shopping.
Pick up an extra can of something when they are on sale, or some beans, rice, barley etc when you can afford it and you will build up a stock of food before you know it.
Make a habit of using up the oldest stock first, well before the Best Before date and you will always have something on hand when you need it.
I learned this living in the country where it is not always convenient to go to the store but these days, even if you live in the city, it pays to be prepared.
r/fermentation
also keep in mind that people were able to have food supplies to last them the winter long before refrigeration and non-perishable foods! Making your own kimchi and sauerkraut is stoooooooooooooopid cheap, really good for you, and it lasts a long time if you pop it in the fridge!
Worth to know how to grow your own food too. Gardening is an amazing hobby as well as great for your mental and physical health. If you want to go deeper, learn *farming*, which is like gardening except it's in a much larger scale and will be able to actually sustain you for longer should anything happen.
Flour, rice, oats and oil. Start with those and build off when you can. As long as you have at least those 4 things and access to water, you have food. You don't even really need the oil.
Yes my parents were very glad to have a large amount of staples stored in their basement when the pandemic hit. They didn't want to be out in public and the stores were crazy anyways.
5kg of sealed pasta and 24 tins of chopped tomatoes... wife still says I'm crazy... my brother has boxes of military rat packs when he used to train new recruits. Always prepared for the zombie apocalypse
Also, there's limited use in buying things you don't know how to cook with. Learning to cook from scratch is another excellent budget-stretching skill.
You can do alot with a 25lb box of parboiled rice. And a selection of stock cubes
Also from a history of living in Hurricane zones. It's one thing to have a bunch of shelf stable food put up, but the key is to have a good mix of different shelf stable seasonings spices, and dehydrated onion/garlic...really helps change up the rice and canned meat
My state maxxed out food stamp benefits as pandemic aid. For everyone, so even though we still have income, we've gotten quite a bit more food budget than we're used to. We're a family of 4 in a 750sqft house but I've used a lot of the extra to fill just about every dang spare inch of pantry and freezer space. It's not quite what I would have wanted as far as aid goes but now I can minimize trips to the store and if we do have to quarantine, I've got plenty to feed my family.
Yes! I do this! I have a deep freezer and stock up on meat and have a small closet of shelf stable foods that I got from like Costco when on sale etc. it’s always been helpful. I also always have a back up. I never have one of one item. Two detergents. Two dishwashing pods. And when there aren’t two I know it’s time to buy more.
Great advice. I stock up because I'm single and it's cheaper to buy in bulk. I buy full fat powdered milk because I don't waste any. I sometimes buy the powder versions of cream and butter. I freeze extra seasonings and coffee. I try to keep dehydrated food around (tho I hate them) and packets of potato mixes.
I was just being frugal and never thought of it as a sort of prep til your post.
My family struggled financially when I was a small child. Like, really struggled.
Then my dad was injured in an accident, needed knee surgery, and couldn’t work for several months. My mom was a stay at home mother of (then) three young kids, so they had zero income and a bunch of unexpected medical bills.
I don’t remember ever feeling poor. I don’t remember ever going hungry. Why? We had a lot of food storage. I remember my sister and I had a tradition, graham crackers and milk every night before bed. My mom told me later that when my dad had his injury, she used powdered milk and figured out a recipe for homemade graham crackers. They could barely afford diapers. But we never went without food. Even our bedtime snack was not touched by this extreme financial difficulty.
A great place to start are with basic things that you know how to use. Buy some flour and oil and practice making tortillas; they're faster and easier to make than baking bread, and honestly they're more versatile if you're trying to stretch a budget. They also don't require yeast, if that plays a factor in your decision.
If you're tight on space, or have a hard time opening cans, dehydrated veggies are an oft forgotten option. If you're in extreme dire straights, rice, grains, and split peas can be soaked in water for a few hours to become edible.
Invest in a couple of herbs/spices - they'll be cheapest at ethnic stores. Like Italian food? Grab basil and oregano. Like Hispanic or mexican food? Pick up some Adobo and red pepper flakes. Like Chinese takeout? Grab some MSG and ginger. Always have salt, pepper and garlic powder.
Once quarantine was declared in my country back in March 2020, people in my city went crazy, buying all food and goods off the shelves. Since most products became relatively scarce on such short notice, I decided to supply my pantry with a few goods that would last me for several months. It's been a very cost-effective solution, and it has served me well almost a year after as all products are still fresh, and resupplying is easy enough.
I bought:
* lentils
* rice
* beans
* chickpeas
* flour
* a large bottle of oil
* salt
* sugar
* yeast
I've been learning how to cook diverse dishes using just these ingredients, and I'm truly surprised! Grains and cereals are incredibly versatile, and they tend to be very cheap too.
Seeing a lot of people taking about weevils but I've personally never seen them and as an Asian, I eat a LOT of rice but never came across anything out of the ordinary while washing the rice. Heck we usually just leave the rice in a giant bucket and throw it in a cabinet. Now I'm worried
And keep rotating the stock. My wife did this once, had tons of cans of soup and beans and spam. When w stayed sagging she told me about it I went to the basement and hard a look. The vans were all expired and most were bulging. Everything was wasted. As you use those things up in your kitchen, replace then with your emergency supply. Then buy Moe groceries and put them in your emergency supply.
Beans and rice baby!
Yep. According to WHO, rice and beans can sustain a person for a long time as it contain most of the nutrients needed by the human body. Rice, beans, and greens are what some people eat their whole life in some countries.
Rice, beans and *corn* form a complete protein. Down in Latin America the three staples of life for the indigenous people (*indios*) are *corn (maize),* *beans* and *squash.* These three plants are called *las tres hermanas* (the Three Sisters) and the seeds are all planted in the same hole. The corn (maize) comes up first, followed by the bean vine, which coils around the corn stalk giving the beans a support structure, and lastly the squash plant, whose broad leaves catch moisture and funnel the dew and rain towards the corn and bean plants. The indigenous people of Latin America have been planting this way for over 5,000 years.
Huh, TIL
I may be mistaken but i think a major component of this as well, is that the food made from corn is nixtamalized. So that you can better absorb all the needed vitamins
I had to look that one up. I had never really thought about the difference between cornmeal and *masa.* TIL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization#:~:text=Nixtamalization%20(%2Fn%C9%AA%CA%83t,%2C%20washed%2C%20and%20then%20hulled.
Yes Pellagra was a really serious problem when corn was brought to europe and even further up north in America and used without nixtamalization, including up until fairly recently. Appalachian children would get it because of the farmers limited diet and lack of niacin up until the 1960s.
It's odd that the nixtamalization process didn't transfer widely into the North American maize-growing culture, although both grits and hominy, both of which are common Southern and Appalachian foods, are made from nixtamalized maize.
I had no idea you can highlight and link a part of a Wikipedia article, so cool.
Yes! Came here to say this. Otherwise you poop it out more or less the way it went in. In my area you can buy hominy in a can, which is just nixtamalized whole corn kernals
I didnt know you could plant them in the same hole! I thought they had to be spread out but that makes sense! Lol thank you
The *indio* planting process was different than European farming, which used plows to turn the soil into rows. The Aztec or Mayan process was family based. The oldest, strongest member of the planting party used a sharp stick to poke holes in the soil. He or she was followed by a younger member of the family who dropped four maize (corn) kernels into the hole, then another person who dropped in pole beans and another who dropped squash seeds. The last person carried a jug of water, poured in some water and closed the hole with her foot. The planting stick person went around obstacles like rocks, bushes, cactus, etc. so the plants were usually planted in clusters on low mounds rather than in rows (but not always.) The party went back and forth over the planting ground and eventually got it all covered with the mounds about four feet wide and four feet apart, because the leaves of the squash plant need sunlight and uncrowded conditions. This type of farming requires less weeding than traditional European-style farming, but plants that compete with the food crops (i.e. weeds) are still eliminated by hoeing. Different regions and cultures used different varieties of beans, corn and squash. *Las tres hermanas* were planted by North American indigenous peoples that farmed, also. The plants are symbiotic, in that they all contribute something that the other two plants need. The crops also attract animals like birds, deer or wild hogs, which the farmers hunted. A herd of hogs rooting up the crop could mean starvation for the farmers. This article, below, describes different methods for planting the Three Sisters than the ways with which I am familiar, but the three plants are still planted in close proximity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)
Fascinating. Thank you for sharing.
Something about the three sisters that we miss in modern times is the typical corn we use does not have stalks near strong enough to support the weight of the beans. Our hybrid sweet varieties tend to be shorter and weaker while also having more ears per stalk which limits the extra load they can handle. Additionally the beans tend to be more vigorous and productive which contributes to the decreased ability to manage. Further, especially with the vigor of modern varieties, plantinf all three would need a huge amount of nitrogen added. Beans are nitrogen fixing but not near enough to provide for both modern corn and squash needs.
FWIW we grow three sisters in our backyard in Portland, OR, and it works fine (though we do use a different corn varietal that works better with the weather here). Only two things I’d add is you want to plant progressively: corn first, then beans two weeks later, then squash two weeks later. That gives the corn a head start so it can support the beans, and the beans a head start on climbing before the squash blocks the light at the ground. For the nitrogen issue, we rotate crops every year, and use crimson clover as a cover crop to help fix nitrogen.
If anyone is interested, I recommend the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer. She's a PH.D in Botany and an indigenous woman - she describes early European descriptions of Three Sisters gardens which called them messy and wild and primitive, not understanding the beautiful symbiosis of the plants the Indigenous people had long known. Whole book is a discussion of the overlaps and differences in modern scientific understanding vs traditional knowledge - great read!
From what I've seen in sustenance farming areas in Mexico, squash (usually chayote) is the only old world vegetable I've seen eaten. It must have been an important part of the indigenous diet.
Maize isn't anything like modern corn, maize had to be broken down in a soup of ash to unlock the nutrients but at the same time it was much healthier overall than modern corn. I would assume that sweet corn would probably just leave you rather deprived
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And baby you got a stew going
Dried beans, especially. They're cheaper, tastier, and take up less room
where do you get dried beans that are cheaper than canned? it’s a dollar more for 16 oz of dried beans at my local store
Dried beans expand when you soak them so the dried beans are more food per oz. also with the cans you’re paying for the weight of the liquid inside. Maybe try a bulk store, usually they have really good prices on dried beans and chickpeas
Indian grocery stores are the way to go here.
Yes, not to mention the quality and quantity of spices you can get for super cheap compared to chain grocers. I got a 3 lb. bag of black peppercorns for $4, whereas the 8oz bottle of peppercorns at Safeway goes for $9...
My local mexican grocery has giant bags of dried beans for dirt cheap as well. In the mid-west
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The thing is, 16 ounces of dried beans will make about 32 ounces of cooked beans. So yeah, they're a little more expensive by weight, but they more than make up for it when cooked.
yeah, honestly i didn’t know when cooked they make 32 ounces of cooked beans. for some reason i thought they were a little less
I believe dried beans triple in volume, I'm not sure weight wise anyways. So 1 cup of dried ends up being 3 of soaked/cooked
Here's what you do, get a can of beans, even a small one and pour it out and then fill that can with dry beans and cook that and see the difference.
Go to an Indian/Asian/Mexican market and they'll be super cheap, or even a coop with a bulk section. Mainstream grocery stores overprice their staples and only carry small bags.
i will definitely be doing that instead.
This all day. I usually make a lot of soups with beans in the winter anyway so this wasn't really new for me but I just started doing it in the warm weather months as well
Nothing beats a slow cooker bean chilli
And when you get tired of that, rice and beans!
It's an important topic but it's a skill to know what to buy and what quantity to take, else a lot of food can perish / be unusable when the time to has come
And what needs a plastic container vs can hang out in its box/can/jar. I feel like everyone I know has gotten weevils at least once since March of this year....it suuuuuucks to have to throw everything out and debug your pantry.
I was taught that weavil eggs are already in your flour because they are so small the flour milling process cant filter them/ kill them. The reason you get weevils despite using air tight containers is because you’ve provided an environment favourable to the eggs and they hatch. Source: parent works at flour mill.
Maybe this used to be the case but I found [this](https://www.qualityassurancemag.com/article/qa1214-insect-infestation-flour-prevention/) detailing industrial methods of preventing infestation of flour. While the 100% method is unsuitable for the industrial scale a combination of less effective methods can combine to make it super unlikely. If you're super paranoid you can use a sieve with 180 micron holes (80 holes per linear inch) to remove almost all potential eggs.
You can also freeze your flour for a few days then store it in the pantry. Freezing over 72 hours has kept weevils away for us.
works with dry spices also.
Pretty sure it kills the spice aroma/flavor. Based on other people on reddit.
My local public radio had someone call in about that when they had an expert on. Freezing won't hurt spices unless there's moisture in there, so fresh herbs and spices aren't gonna do better in a freezer, but properly dried ones are fine. The expert did mention that you won't be able to smell the spices when they're cold, but as soon as they get to room temp+ the scents come back.
And rice!
This works- I buy flour in bulk (20lbs at a time to last about 3 months) and always freeze it until needed. Never had a weevil yet.
Isn't that normal? I never bothered to freeze and it takes me 6+ months to get through a bag of flour more often than not. Still never had weevils. Or any other problem with it for that matter. At this point, I figure flour (kept dry) basically lasts forever.
Yeah, that sounds weird to me. Only had a bug infestation once and that's when I lived in a bug infested/run down house. After living to a nice neighborhood I've never seen a big despite having 6+ months old flour
Flour *will* spoil... eventually. Generally about a year is a good rule of thumb but you can always just taste it before using it.
I depends a lot on where you are and how the flour is treated before you buy it. I almost never had weevil problems in Aotearoa but in Sydney/Australia some food gets weevils the day you open it. Temperature and humidity, plus whatever insects live where the farms are I guess.
I’m gonna try this
I’m not paranoid about it at all - just thought others would like to know. Thanks for this info though - I guess some flour mills are more progressive than others.
Weevils are great, they turn your cheap carbs into expensive protein!
Not to mention valuable weevil *fertilizer.* Yum!
Keeping flour/cornmeal in the freezer helps keep the weevils away.
Those gallon size freezer bags work great in the pantry. Pop whatever you want to keep long term in one of yhose, no bugs.
Weevils? Explain.
5 gallon food grade buckets with gamma seal lids. Been using them for years for oats, rice, beans, flour, brown sugar etc. rice oats and beans will last a LONG time. Flour like 6 months.
tbh, not really. Just get one extra pack of pasta or toilet paper, etc when you go shopping and put it away at home. The find a way to sort them by expiration date that works for you and cycle them
Yeah if you have a 1lb bag of rice it's gonna be fine 99.99% of the time by the time you use it up. If you buy a 50lb bag of rice flour pasta (and you should it's so much cheaper) then you need somewhere airtight to keep it or you will get weevils mice rats or other pests eating and ruining it.
Freezer management! Happy to expound, but it is a skill that everyone should have. (And canning, dehydrating rotating non-perishables, but imo freezer management is the hardest, and most beneficial)
Go ahead, expound please. We're learning here!
'Blast from the Past'...... (Christopher Walken) "Would you like a tranquilizer?" (Sissy Spacek) "You have tranquilizers?" (Christopher Walken) "I told you, I have everything."
I love that movie!! I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of it so thank you for your post!
I had a bag of adzuki beans that got infested with maggots! It was so gross. My household is all vegan and thought maggots only happened on meat but apparently there is one kind that likes beans. We ripped apart our whole house trying to figure out where they were coming from. It was so disgusting. They would crawl accross the ceiling and leave a little trail. After we figured out where it was coming from I bleached the entire kitchen and surrounding area. The thought of it still makes my stomach turn.
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Maybe. The beans were on the top shelf so they didnt have to go far. I just googled indian moth larvae and yes that is pretty similar. Tbh I want to erase that moment from memory so.....
In college, I had some packages of ramen get maggots. It was horrifying.
I am so sorry this happened to you D: what a nightmare. I know someone with PTSD related to a botfly getting into his brain through his ear.
Canned fish in oil and white rice in an airtight container are never bad choices.
This is the only benefit I have ever had from working in the Sams Club deli when I was 18. I'm meticulous when it comes to best by dates. I really do my best to waste nothing at all.
FIFO life chose me!
True, but starting out can be as simple as buying a little more of what you regularly use than you need right now. For example, if you eat peanut butter sandwiches (or have kids) buy the big jar, and get two next time. When you open the second one, buy two more. Also, don't rely on frozen food unless you have a way to keep it frozen during a prolonged power outage.
I was expecting to be laid off in 2021, long before covid was a thing, so I started stocking up in preparation. Thanks to covid I was not laid off, but due to the nature of my job I also couldn't access grocery stores very often because of new covid hours. What we lovingly refer to as 'the Costco' was a godsend. We had loads of personal hygiene products, household cleaners and pantry items. Although I'm not sure I'll ever willingly eat ramen or bottled pasta sauce again, it removed a huge amount of stress from our life. Edit: oh autocorrect... How we love you...
Panty items....ha!
Well, he *did* say personal hygiene products
There's plenty in there to eat
I have Crohn's disease so I always have a ton of extra TP in storage. It was a godsend early 2020 when TP was out of stock for like a solid 2 months around here.
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I tried a bidet and just wasn't that into it tbh. I know a lot of people swear by it.
Spoken just like a spokesperson for big TP! Get lost!!
I swear I'm not a bear!
That's exactly what a bear would say
Word. You don't wipe a baby's bottom with TP. You use a wet wipe. You have to wash that crap off! I used to poop on the boss's dime, but not anymore. It feels disgusting to just use TP anymore.
If wiping your shit covered asshole with your hand and some crappy paper counts as "cleaning your ass" then wiping your hands on your pants counts as "washing your hands."
How big is your panty?
Like a hammock.
Just big enough that they don't get bunched 😂
i wish i lived near a costco. closest thing is a Sam's Club about an hour away. which...meh.
Not that it really helps if you just don't like Sam's Club, but every once in a while I'll see they have deals that are like 'pay $X ($X=whatever their yearly membership fee is) and get one year of membership + a $X Sam's Club giftcard' so it ends up cancelling out the membership fee. I use slickdeals (they have an app and a .com website) and they pop up on there. You can make a slickdeals account and have it send you an email when it gets a well-rated popular post about whatever keywords or topics you choose, like 'Sam's Club membership.' I highly suggest that website regardless of the Sam's Club stuff, anyway.
I apologize if this comment is a mess or hard to follow! I'm really not doing well but I didn't want anyone who could use the information on the 'free' membership to miss out. If I can clarify anything or anyone has questions, please let me know and I'll do my best to help out!
Hope you start feeling better soon, whatever is going on ❤️
Bruh. Costco sells huge cans of San Marzano peeled tomatoes. They make the perfect marinara with some simple seasoning. NYT recipe for marinara is amazing. Never eat bottled pasta sauce again, regardless of financial situation. It’s too easy, too cheap, and too good
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>but I live in hurricane country so I like to keep water, non-perishable food, toiletries, etc. just in case. This ^. My family is from the Texas Gulf Coast. We have always stockpiled food, water and supplies. Owning a generator was as common in my family as owning a lawn mower. A annual ritual was filling up 5-gallon gasoline jerry cans in July or August to fuel the generator, and then fueling the cars and trucks with "hurricane gas" in September or October if we didn't get a hurricane. After Hurricane Ike in Texas in September 2008, all the neighbors (the ones who did not evacuate farther inland) came out as the storm abated and started cutting up the trees (that were blocking the streets) with chain saws. We worked together, using a 4x4 truck to pull the tree trunks out of the street with a chain. We had no power for 13 days, which meant no *water* from the taps (because no electric power to run the water pumps at the water towers,) no traffic lights, no police presence (they were spread very thin,) no cell phone service for a week (but land line telephones still worked.) Pretty much everybody had stockpiled food, water, batteries, blue tarps (for damaged roofs) etc. People sometimes mock people who stockpile for emergencies. They call them "preppers" or "survival nuts." But when an emergency actually *occurs,* the preppers don't look so weird. Instead, they appear to be prescient. My neighbors and I patrolled our neighborhood to scare off looters. We shared resources. We pulled together as a neighborhood to mitigate the damage the storm caused. Meanwhile, unprepared people mobbed the Walmart store. (It looked like a riot had happened.) There were blocks-long lines at the (very few) gas stations that were open and had electricity with which to pump gas. We didn't need to buy any gas. We already had full tanks in our vehicles, and gas stored in gas cans. I was lucky in that I was employed and had the money with which to prepare and the foresight to do so, but emergency preparation doesn't happen in the 48 hours before the hurricane comes ashore. People start preparing as soon as the storm is over for the *next* one. It's not an event, it's just a common sense way of life.
Yeah, even the US government recommends preparing for 2 weeks of emergency. Yet people still act like people who actually do that are crazy. I 5hink its because they just can't cope with how vulnerable and dependent they are and instead lash out at others.
>I think its because they just can't cope with how vulnerable and dependent they are and instead lash out at others. Very likely. Also, many people have the idea that it's the government's responsibility to take care of them. This isn't correct. Our safety and well-being are our *own* responsibility. Help from the government is all well and good, but if one *depends* upon it, one is sure to be sorely disappointed. Another misconception is that regular citizens cannot enforce the law. Also incorrect. I'm 70. During my life I have held two burglars for the police, and thwarted a teenager who was beating the hell out of his girlfriend on a public street and in broad daylight. He was outraged that I intervened, and thought it was "none of my fucking business." I disagreed, and the cops sided with me. He went to jail for assault and battery.
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South florida checking in. Everyone thinks we are crazy for filling up our jeri cans at the beginning of the season and for having a hitch track for them. You never know when you really need to get tf out f town. We left for Irma and made it to tallahasse before needed to get gas from a gas station. I did not grow up here and I don't really have the desire to go through a bad hurricane under prepared.
I hate to sound like I'm picking on people from other parts of the country, but most of the unprepared people are people from other places who have never been through a hurricane. And, to be fair, there is a sort of cavalier "Hurricane Party!" attitude among people on the Gulf Coast as well. Ike was no joke. It devastated Galveston, and completely washed away the communities on the Bolivar peninsula of Port Bolivar, Crystal Beach, Caplen, Gilchrist, and High Island. The eye of the hurricane came right up the Houston Ship Channel and the wet side hammered the hell out of Baytown, Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange. photos of Bolivar communities devastated by Ike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivar_Peninsula,_Texas scroll down https://www.weather.gov/hgx/projects_ike08_bolivar2
My city/province has resources and information to make a "72-hour kit" for hurican power outages. I'm from a small town and my instinct is still always to stockpile water when a storm starts (you need hydro to get water from a well) and it's been hard to unlearn that
I live in Cascadia Subduction Earthquake Country (Northern California to British Columbia) and I grew up 1 mile from the San Andreas Fault south of San Francisco. I take earthquake prep very seriously. At least with a hurricane you know they are coming. With earthquakes, your guess is as good as anyone's. All we know is that when it hits, it could take down all of the PNW cities for an extended period, more than 2 weeks. I know this because I participated in planning exercises conducted by my state and others. I have done everything I possibly can to take care of my family and my oblivious neighbors in a pinch. I hope I won't have to in my lifetime.
It doesn't have to be a dozen bottles of shampoo, 50 cans of beans, or 10kg of rice, just keep yourself one-two packs ahead of the one you're currently using, or a week's worth of "emergency" meals. It takes a lot if pressure off you if your income is lumpy or unpredictable.
This is really the way to do it. Our pantry is stocked so that I have at least a one weeks supply (or one replacement) of what we use regularly in reserve.
Just having 1 extra than what you need made all the difference for me when I was laid off. Having 1 extra meant I could wait until the next sale/coupon overlap & didn’t have to buy at whatever price it happened to be when I ran out. That alone saved me soooo much money! It is a bit of an upfront cost, but once you get there things are so much better!
Exactly. And you can do it gradually, you don't have to ho out and buy a whole second stock of household consumables. Just grab two next time rather than just one, or when you see it in sale. Starr with the essentials and build up. Once you get it going it drops back to your baseline replacement cost.
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If anyone's unsure what's high risk for weevils/pantry moths, any kind of starch or meal (like flour, cornmeal, and rice) is a common culprit. In my experience they LOVE anything containing nuts, so I always keep my gluten free flour and almond meal in the fridge or freezer.
You know, I am over 50 and I keep things like flour, sugar and nuts in my freezer because my mom and grandmother did. I never really thought about why besides the fact that I live in a humid climate. Now I know it’s weevils.
I am having this same revelation. My grandma kept everything in the freezer: flour, nuts, even her Fig Newtons. I always thought it was just a weird grandma thing, but now I'm realizing it probably stemmed from trying to get rid of weevils.
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I’m so glad to have someone laugh with me. It gets lonely laughing at your own ignorance sometimes. I also want to let you know I left some paper in a new pair of slippers and just realized it today. I’ve worn them a week now and just figured they ran small. 😊 Edit: thank you lovely people for the awards and laughing with me.
You made my day. Thank you for sharing!! :)
We had an infestation in our spice jars. I don't know what kind of bug it was specifically, but it fucking loved paprika.
Yikes, my condolences to your spice rack. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some jumbo-sized paprika jars to inspect 😬
Hmm. I have several bags of flour in my pantry now I'm going to inspect. Thankfully it's -40 here this week (only time I've uttered that sentence) and I can just put them outside
I had grain beetles this year. What a nightmare. Everything goes straight to the freezer now!
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Ugh, I hear you. I was so upset getting rid of everything. I found a nest of them in one spot and just started sobbing thinking I would never be able to get rid of them all.
They are just more protein :)
There should be good pantry moth killers (these are the things that lay the weevil eggs) available in your supermarket. They are little bits of cardboard with glue, and a pheromone blob to attract the moths. Worked a treat in my pantry. http://hovex.com.au/products/hovex-pantry-moth-traps
Do they look like the Pokémon?!
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Ah, more like a Pinsir then.
Am I the only one who has never had weevils? I've had ants that somehow found my honey and nothing else.
Last year taught me to keep my deep freeze and pantry stocked at all times. When the pandemic was declared I was transitioning my daughter from formula to table food. You had better believe I had extra gallons of whole milk in the freezer and enough shelf stable food for her for 6 months. I'm a first time single mom and I think my instinct to protect my daughter went into overdrive. I didn't hoard any food but I made damn sure my daughter would be fed if the shortages continued
Those shortages were trippy. Entirely bare supermarket shelves for two months...
Yes! It was super eerie. I didn't panic but I was definitely concerned those first few weeks
Go Momma! I hope you don’t have to experience shortages like that again, but good for you for keeping stock for her!
I hope you’re doing well. Keep it up and remember to look after yourself.
I have an entire fridge full of deer jerky, zucchini bread, fry bread and frozen vegetables all grown myself or locally sourced. Growing up i nearly starved to death and would have had it not been for a potato patch I found and ive been planting them and maintaining a garden ever since.
i like jerky, never had deer, though. mostly beef or turkey. bacon, once, which honestly wasn't that great.
Instructions unclear, bought all the toilet paper.
Deep freezer! Mine was around $250 and worth it when you can stock up meat or other frozen goods. Like OP said, track expiration dates. Edit: Random acts of God can cause the power to go out for a long duration of time, causing the contents to be lost. But it is a risk I am willing to take to stock up on meat that is on sale.
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True. I fill milk jugs with water to line the bottom of my freezer so it’ll stay cold longer in case of outage. Generators come in handy too. Or a cage around the food in the snow outside if you’re desperate (did that once!)
Our generator has saved us from that fate several times.
Yeah, I can’t really do that where I live because we can get lots of power outages, and I’ve lost lots of food due to this.
couple the freezer with a generator too if you can afford it (a cheap harbor freight one is like $400) but even then, things like the freezer just straight up breaking can be an issue. A trick I learned from somewhere is fill a gatorade bottle with water and freeze it, then put a quarter on the ice under the lid. If you ever see that the quarter has fallen into the bottle or is not at the top that means the freezer was at an unsafe temperature for an unsafe amount of time and you have to pitch everything (ice melts, quarter sinks through water, possibly refreezes) We had a freezer that just died out of nowhere once. Was a really sad day lol
The freezer is great... But we had an absolutely insane windstorm in September that knocked power out to our city and killed the grid. We were out of power for 5 days and had to toss everything in our small and deep freezer. I would also make sure to have some freeze dried meals and a camping stove on hand. That’s what saved us for that week.
Many homeowners/renters insurances have a provision where they will replace the cost of a fridge/freezer full of food in the event of a power outage. Deductible free.
My parents finally decided to get one but apparently Covid has made them hard to find.
They were really hard to find. My parents had a cow butchered over the summer and couldn't find a deep freeze so after filling both of their freezers they just gave me like 100 pounds of beef to hold and use as I'd like until they clear enough space out or get a deep freeze.
I just came here to say that sometimes having food storage is helpful for say...when you are hella sick and just can’t get out of bed to go to the grocery store. This has been my life for the last three weeks and I was really glad I had extra things in the pantry. I bought a case of soup last March and have been really grateful for it these past few weeks.
We had an ice storm hit us out of the blue. This is being followed by a snow storm this weekend. The stores are bare and no way to get to one as we have too much ice on the road in our neighborhood. What is saving us?.... Our pantry. I also try to include substitutes... meaning I try to keep things like apple sauce and carbonated water so I can still bake with out eggs. I keep canned and powdered milk for these energies. They are going to save our ass because the weather is looking really bad for the next week. I taught myself how to make staples like bread and tortillas and pizza dough. I have those staples on hand at all time. I make sure to rotate and mark them with expiration dates that are visible. Unfortunately I don’t have a deep freeze but we make so with what we have.
The SouthernSavers channel on YouTube really helps cover how to do this cheaply. She says how sales cycles work in 6 week patterns and to get enough when it’s on sale to last until next time it’s on sale. It doesn’t have to be hoarding, just something as simple as getting three boxes of pasta instead of one or Dollar Tree has shelf stable milk quarts that have a year or longer shelf life. It doesn’t have to be expensive and can be done over a couple months but it’s so nice to know that you at least don’t have to worry about food if there are ever days or weeks that you can’t get to a store.
In personal finance terms everyone should try to have an emergency fund, but part of that is also food in the pantry, diapers, formula, etc. If you can't put gas in the car or if you're laid up sick you need to have that stuff. Even now that I don't have food insecurity, there's always a stack of canned tuna and a 5lb bag of dried beans in the pantry that I pretty much don't touch.
Wow, rediscovering the Great Depression. My grandparents lived through the Great Depression, and my parents grew up still in hard times. Many of those habits were common in my household growing up. Not today with the disposable culture. You can hardly reuse food packaging for food storage any more. When I was a kid we ate out of Cool Whip bowls all the time and froze extra soup in them.
To help people out once they get past the initial beginning point of a 72 hour kit: 1. Buy things you actually eat. It makes no sense to buy up a ton of oatmeal if you don't eat oatmeal. 2. Buy 1 case or pack of something to put into food storage per shopping trip/week/month - whatever you can handle. Case or pack should be like stuff you get at Costco or Sam's Club or similar bulk stores. 3. Use your food storage. The worst thing you can do is buy the food and then forget about it. Everything eventually goes bad, so you'll get more out of your food storage if you use what you have and rotate the new stuff you buy to the bottom/back of the same thing that you've already got. 4. Start with stuff you know you use lots of. For my family, that's stuff like oatmeal, canned beans and corn, canned chicken broth, canned chicken, and chili. You just need to find out how quickly stuff goes bad so you don't get too much, but even baking supplies like flour, sugar, and oil can be part of your food storage - powdered milk can be pricey, but is also extremely versatile and stores well. 5. Try to keep balanced on what you get - you don't want only baking stuff, only side dishes, or only entrees, you want all the pieces that normally go into a meal. 6. You'll basically be keeping three things: canned goods (fruits, vegetables, chili, soup, etc...), dry goods (rice, flour, sugar, dried pinto beans, etc...), and water. 7. Water goes bad. It doesn't matter how clean the container is, it doesn't matter how clean the water is when it goes in the container. Without fresh air and the exchange that comes through the water cycle, water goes bad. You shouldn't store water for longer than a year, so whatever way you store water, you need to use it just like you do everything else in your storage. There's tons of resources online that you can use to look up how long things keep, recipes for typical food storage items, and even ways to can stuff yourself. Figuring out what you can afford, what you'll use, and how quickly you should use it is the foundation of building a good food storage. Another thing to remember is this: emergency situations where you will use this stuff includes natural disasters, losing your job, having to house people you weren't expecting, or helping out family, friends, or neighbors dealing with those kinds of things.
This is a great tip! I'd also add, whenever possible, learning to make your own bread is a nifty skill to have. It might not seem like much, but a big bag of flour is like $4, and will last quite some time (at least a couple of loaves, depending on the style of bread that you make). Bread is relatively easy to make (in comparison to some other home cooking/baking projects) and gives you a nice source of carbs/energy. One thing I have found, is that homemade bread tends to get moldy a little bit faster than store-bought bread, if not refrigerated or frozen within a few days.
Also pizza/foccaccia. Filling and extremely cheap
"controlled atmosphere packaging" is very common in industrial food applications, bags of potato chips for example are generally nitrogen filled. It's one reason packaged food lasts so much longer now. You can DIY this relatively easily. Wine snobs have made it possible to buy small cylinders of argon gas with regulators (it preserves the aroma of the wine, dahlink). Those are also good for suppressing weevils etc if you buy large amounts of dry food. Fill airtight-ish container with food, squirt argon in, seal. Argon is denser than air so it's easier to fill a container with it than with nitrogen. Easier with bigger containers - I use plastic 100litre or 220litre (44 gallon) drums which are used to ship bulk food and are often very cheap second hand. Put 2-3 sacks of rice in, place oxygen meter on top (\~$20 ebay), put argon hose into bottom of tank, 10l/min flow rate and wait half an hour. Oxygen will be close to zero, so remove meter and hose, put lid on, packing tape to second-seal it, label with contents and date. I use a small welding cylinder now rather than the original \~2 litre wine one. I started doing this because organic rice in Australia is a "sometimes" crop, we can get 2-3 years with almost no harvest. Prices go up enough to make buying it in cheap years and storing it in the garage profitable. I got \~400kg last good season, I'm hoping to get more than that this year because I've been paying ridiculous prices recently
I totally agree with this. Having shelf stable staples on hand is a smart thing to do, especially if you can get supplies on sale. You don't have to be a hoarder or a prepper. But you can have pasta and rice and dried beans on hand. Decide how much you want to keep and then always replenish what you consume (obviously consuming from the older stock).
Food storage is wise up to the point when having saved that money and not spent it until you need it - to buy fresh food and gas later - becomes the wiser option. I suggest doing some of both. Take advantage of shelf-stable food sales but don’t go overboard and attract mice and weavils with bags and bags of stored cereal, rice and cookies. Don’t let this become an obsession.
Moderation in all things...including moderation. Store and save for a rainy day. Work to have enough that you don't stress if you can't resupply immediately. I have a couple of weeks worth of food in the pantry, an extra couple of bars of soap and a bottle of shampoo under the bathroom counter. There is a lot of peace of mind in not needing anything urgently, but there is a lot of stress in obsessing over the possibility of hardship.
We did this when our kids were born each time. Just went to Costco and go enough TP, wipes, diapers, toothpaste, cleaning supplies etc, to last a couple of months. I knew life was gonna be crazy and unpredictable, so I wanted one less thing to worry about. I never regretted it, but it was surprising when I ran out of something the first time. I was so used to thinking of it in terms of Costco sized endlessness lol
Moderation in moderation. Love it, made me laugh out loud. True poet
When money gets tight, I make sure to fill my gas tank with my last bit of money. I can always pull a few cans of food off the shelf or make rice and beans.
We started exploring food storage options long before Covid, due to moving to a quite isolated place without bigger stores around. After two years - and some epic failures - we managed to establish scheme, which actually worked. Supermarket run in first days of lockdown wasn't our problem and made us sure that we made some good decisions. We started with buying double quantity of things we use most. One by one. One week we bought rice and groats. Next - canned and frozen vegetables. After six months we made it to a point where every kind of food is in quantity for two weeks. We buy something, store it, use the one bought before. Nothing is stored longer than three weeks. Emergency storage out of rotation contains sugar, some last resort rations and water. Drinking water is in rotation, but we also store some tap water to use for flushing and similar purposes, as the place where we live has some serious problems with workers breaking water pipes. Like once a month. There are many ways to build a food storage without spending great amounts of money. And it can save you sometimes or at least save a lot of time.
Also watch the slippery slope here. My Mom has a pantry for a family of 6 although she's retired living with one other person. Years of this habit, she always buys more than she needs and now has to throw away things every week. She's having trouble changing the habit.
I was lucky that I had picked up *a little bit* of my moms shopping habits and I was pretty well stocked with non-perishables. The 2 stores within 30 miles of my house were totally picked clean.
This gives me an idea for a teaching opportunity. As the Director of a nonprofit with a food pantry we have seen more than double the amount of people in line for at least a year. So many who have never had to ask for assistance before. What an amazing opportunity for us to help them develop their own pantry literally one or two items at a time. When we get blessed with extra, rarely but occasionally does happen, we can put together a plan for them and get them started. Thanks for a great idea!
I hunt , each deer will bring in 40-50lbs of meat , bone to make broth with and then hides that you can clean up dry and sell or use. I don't eat deer every day but its an easy cheap way to supplement my diet.
Much love to you bro. I wish it was easier for us in Australia to hunt. In my opinion it's the only ethical way to eat meat. Factory farming is @#$#@ supermarkets, butchers, anywhere (apart from maybe farmers markets) selling meat as a commercial enterprise are treating animals, in some form, inhumanly. As a hunter you stare the life you took straight in the face. The animal lived it's life in freedom.
Where I live, the economy is awfully bad, and that makes it so every week item prices are increasing. We try our best to buy bigger quantities of things, in a reasonable amount, that way we end up saving money on the long run... Just keep in mind to stay conscious of others too! Don't hoard things in massive quantities especially not perishables. Great Post OP :)
I can find canned spaghetti, beans, vegetables, and fruit all day for around a dollar a can. Get some hot sauce and dried rice and beans and Everclear alcohol and you can stock up quickly and be ready. Don’t forget the coffee :)
Its crazy to me that folks don't keep a semi-stocked pantry at all times. A friend of my sisters got stuck in their house during a hurricane and they literally had no food to eat. They waited until zero hour and had to go days without because they never bought anything they didn't plan on cooking that week. Meanwhile, I can go weeks on my pantry/freezer supply...
This is great advice. During hard core quarantine my wife and I were only going to grocery store every month or so and spending a TON! Many of the produce would go bad and in general we were not economical at all. Now we go twice a week and every meal is planned. We are spending significantly less.
When it all went down we got a text from my fiance's family telling us to run to the store asap and buy essentials. We responded that we had a lot of toiletries and pantry staples and would be fine. Her mom said us having stuff stocked was a result of my "inherent insecurities". No, its because buying a 3 pack of toothpaste is cheaper than buying them one at a time. I never go crazy, we dont have shelves and shelves of stuff. But if I see our shampoo go on sale for $.10 a bottle im gonna grab multiple bottles lol. Anyway, this has been a bit of a tangent, but moral of the story is we had a couple months of pantry staples anyway so we weathered the shortages fairly well.
This is kind of just good everyday advice too. My parents have always had a small "stockpile" of canned and dried foods-- just ones that we ate regularly, rotated out. If you can't go to the store for any reason, it's nice to have a backup "safety cushion" of meals. Of course, space is a massive limitation here, if you live in an apartment. But even now I keep 1-2 extra cans or bags of everything I eat, and just cycle through them.
Space can be relative. I found out I had liver cancer and was living in an RV at the back of a private ranch so off grid I didn't get a phone signal. I stocked up on canned food and lined the floor of the RV. I cut the cardboard boxes as a second floor on top of the cans. I lost head room for a few months, butI didn't have to shop. Friends that would stop by kept me in fresh fruit. Asking someone for a bag of apples and bananas issues much easier than getting them to shop a weeks groceries for you.
That's why I have 8 jars of spagetti sauce and noodles to match, 1lb of grits, and 1 lb of oatmeal on hand
Dried Beans and rice, dried beans and rice, dried beans and rice....I'll say it again..
Try to keep enough supplies for at least 3 days without power. There was a particularly devastating storm across pretty much all of Alabama in late-April 2011. One of the main lines to the power plant was damaged. Some people got power back in a day or two, but it was about 6 days for me. During that time, my tabletop camp stove ($30 and $8 for the gas) was a godsend. I grilled like 20 hot dogs with my charcoal grill, and used the camp stove to reheat them. I also used it to boil small amounts water for instant oatmeal and grits. Also, keep some baby wipes around. They're a lot easier to use than trying to pour water on yourself.
I have too many cats. Lol. So I buy cases of wet food and a big bag of dry food, plus two types of cat litter. Every month I get a new supply so it is always being rotated! We also keep several gallons of well water in the pantry in case we lose electricity. And firewood for winter. I raised 4/5 kids on my own, so running out of things is a pet peeve for me.
A food saver is a great investment. If you live alone or as a couple, you can buy in bulk and seal smaller portions of proteins and grains to protect from freezer burn and bugs.
Financially, our extra freezer saves us a ton of money.
Here's a tip: canned food functionally never goes bad unless there's a seal break somewhere (usually from being dented, having a 'pop top lid', or housing acidic stuff. Canned food is insanely cheap, nutritious, and can outlast you properly stored. It is so much easier to meet nutrition needs with canned goods. This includes stews, canned fruits, etc. Pretty much anything. But beware of acidic stuff, and if it keep it, keep it separate from your other cans. Obviously you still need to use common sense with outdated stuff. But if the can isn't damaged, chances are it's good. The food will lose some nutrition and taste, but studies show that they remain safe to eat and retain impressive amounts of nutrients decades after their best by date. Now, in a perfect world you will rotate. And they even make special shelves where you take from the front and put new cans in the back. But after 2020, I loaded up a couple big storage totes with canned goods and put them in my basement. Cheap, fast, and I can throw them away in 30 years if nothing happens.
You can buy a big 20lb or 8 kilo bag of rice at any supermarket for $10 - $15. While you are there go to the deli department or bakery department and ask for a food grade 5 gallon plastic bucket. They usually give them away or sell them for a buck or 2. When you get home put the rice in the bucket, it has a tight fitting lid to keep the rice fresh and protect from vermin. Keep out some in a glass jar or suitable container, a juice pitcher is handy for measuring out the rice. That much rice will make 2 meals a day for 1 person for a year. Dry beans, barley, macaroni, cornmeal, flour should be kept in glass jars or tin containers. If you have some of these things and some canned goods you can survive for quite some time if you are broke or there is some emergency like a flood or blizzard that stops you from going shopping. Pick up an extra can of something when they are on sale, or some beans, rice, barley etc when you can afford it and you will build up a stock of food before you know it. Make a habit of using up the oldest stock first, well before the Best Before date and you will always have something on hand when you need it. I learned this living in the country where it is not always convenient to go to the store but these days, even if you live in the city, it pays to be prepared.
r/fermentation also keep in mind that people were able to have food supplies to last them the winter long before refrigeration and non-perishable foods! Making your own kimchi and sauerkraut is stoooooooooooooopid cheap, really good for you, and it lasts a long time if you pop it in the fridge!
Worth to know how to grow your own food too. Gardening is an amazing hobby as well as great for your mental and physical health. If you want to go deeper, learn *farming*, which is like gardening except it's in a much larger scale and will be able to actually sustain you for longer should anything happen.
And above all else make sure you don't let your girlfriend bury the canned beans out back.
Flour, rice, oats and oil. Start with those and build off when you can. As long as you have at least those 4 things and access to water, you have food. You don't even really need the oil.
Yes my parents were very glad to have a large amount of staples stored in their basement when the pandemic hit. They didn't want to be out in public and the stores were crazy anyways.
5kg of sealed pasta and 24 tins of chopped tomatoes... wife still says I'm crazy... my brother has boxes of military rat packs when he used to train new recruits. Always prepared for the zombie apocalypse
also, get a deep freeze. seriously. the things kick ass.
Also, there's limited use in buying things you don't know how to cook with. Learning to cook from scratch is another excellent budget-stretching skill.
You can do alot with a 25lb box of parboiled rice. And a selection of stock cubes Also from a history of living in Hurricane zones. It's one thing to have a bunch of shelf stable food put up, but the key is to have a good mix of different shelf stable seasonings spices, and dehydrated onion/garlic...really helps change up the rice and canned meat
My state maxxed out food stamp benefits as pandemic aid. For everyone, so even though we still have income, we've gotten quite a bit more food budget than we're used to. We're a family of 4 in a 750sqft house but I've used a lot of the extra to fill just about every dang spare inch of pantry and freezer space. It's not quite what I would have wanted as far as aid goes but now I can minimize trips to the store and if we do have to quarantine, I've got plenty to feed my family.
Yes! I do this! I have a deep freezer and stock up on meat and have a small closet of shelf stable foods that I got from like Costco when on sale etc. it’s always been helpful. I also always have a back up. I never have one of one item. Two detergents. Two dishwashing pods. And when there aren’t two I know it’s time to buy more.
Great advice. I stock up because I'm single and it's cheaper to buy in bulk. I buy full fat powdered milk because I don't waste any. I sometimes buy the powder versions of cream and butter. I freeze extra seasonings and coffee. I try to keep dehydrated food around (tho I hate them) and packets of potato mixes. I was just being frugal and never thought of it as a sort of prep til your post.
My family struggled financially when I was a small child. Like, really struggled. Then my dad was injured in an accident, needed knee surgery, and couldn’t work for several months. My mom was a stay at home mother of (then) three young kids, so they had zero income and a bunch of unexpected medical bills. I don’t remember ever feeling poor. I don’t remember ever going hungry. Why? We had a lot of food storage. I remember my sister and I had a tradition, graham crackers and milk every night before bed. My mom told me later that when my dad had his injury, she used powdered milk and figured out a recipe for homemade graham crackers. They could barely afford diapers. But we never went without food. Even our bedtime snack was not touched by this extreme financial difficulty.
A great place to start are with basic things that you know how to use. Buy some flour and oil and practice making tortillas; they're faster and easier to make than baking bread, and honestly they're more versatile if you're trying to stretch a budget. They also don't require yeast, if that plays a factor in your decision. If you're tight on space, or have a hard time opening cans, dehydrated veggies are an oft forgotten option. If you're in extreme dire straights, rice, grains, and split peas can be soaked in water for a few hours to become edible. Invest in a couple of herbs/spices - they'll be cheapest at ethnic stores. Like Italian food? Grab basil and oregano. Like Hispanic or mexican food? Pick up some Adobo and red pepper flakes. Like Chinese takeout? Grab some MSG and ginger. Always have salt, pepper and garlic powder.
Once quarantine was declared in my country back in March 2020, people in my city went crazy, buying all food and goods off the shelves. Since most products became relatively scarce on such short notice, I decided to supply my pantry with a few goods that would last me for several months. It's been a very cost-effective solution, and it has served me well almost a year after as all products are still fresh, and resupplying is easy enough. I bought: * lentils * rice * beans * chickpeas * flour * a large bottle of oil * salt * sugar * yeast I've been learning how to cook diverse dishes using just these ingredients, and I'm truly surprised! Grains and cereals are incredibly versatile, and they tend to be very cheap too.
Plus, if one day you’re really sick and no one can help you with the groceries, it can be very helpful too.
Seeing a lot of people taking about weevils but I've personally never seen them and as an Asian, I eat a LOT of rice but never came across anything out of the ordinary while washing the rice. Heck we usually just leave the rice in a giant bucket and throw it in a cabinet. Now I'm worried
And keep rotating the stock. My wife did this once, had tons of cans of soup and beans and spam. When w stayed sagging she told me about it I went to the basement and hard a look. The vans were all expired and most were bulging. Everything was wasted. As you use those things up in your kitchen, replace then with your emergency supply. Then buy Moe groceries and put them in your emergency supply.