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deleted
9 Posts |
 Posted - 01/03/2009 : 23:37:44
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Hi all,
Aside from the wealth of information I have gleaned from the copper colored section of this forum, you have all also started me thinking about emergency preparedness.
While it is probably more economical to buy bulk foods and rotate them into our regular eating, I have serious doubts that I would be able to do this and think that this food would probably go to waste.
Learning that freeze dried food lasts 25 years seems like a perfect solution. Have any of you chosen this route? Do you know the best places to get freeze dried foods for a reasonable price?
I am new to this and any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks and Happy New Year!
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Pennies make dollars |
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Nickelless
Administrator
USA
5580 Posts |
Posted - 01/04/2009 : 03:38:59
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Welcome to the board, Coinchamp, and thanks for chiming in! I haven't had much experience in using freeze-dried foods, but from looking over price lists on various sites, you can see that it can get pretty costly buying freeze-dried items because you're paying for someone else's work in freeze-drying and not just the food itself. My recommendation would be for you to get a good food dehydrator (or in my case, 12 of them--seriously). Nesco American Harvester is the best on the market, and it usually can be found for less than $40. See this thread for info I posted on the board: You must be logged in to see this link.
You say that you're worried about buying bulk foods and rotating them into your regular eating. The key is to buy what you would normally eat anyway (preferably unprocessed foods you can buy cheaply in bulk) and store the food in food-grade Mylar storage bags with oxygen absorbers or in Mason jars with oxygen absorbers as well. You can store bulk foods such as rice and beans in the Mylar bags and dehydrated fruits, vegetables and meats in the Mason jars.
Right now I have about 900 lbs. of rice, 600 lbs. of assorted beans, about 220 quart-size Mason jars of dehydrated tomatoes, spinach, apples, banana chips (which I bought already dried), spices and various other items I eat on a regular basis. Between what I have at my house and what I'm helping my girlfriend and her daughter stock up on at her place, we have enough food for three people for about eight months, and it takes up about as much space as a medium-sized walk-in closet. It's not as hard to put together as it sounds, you just have to be consistent in your preparation and set goals for food-storage milestones you want to achieve by a certain date. For example, this past week I dehydrated 32 29-oz. cans of diced tomatoes, 80 14.5-oz. cans of spinach and 48 cans of sliced carrots (which I further chopped into smaller bits using a food processor--smaller bits are easier to dehydrate), and the finished dehydrated products fill 24 quart-sized Mason jars. That's a LOT of dehydrated product in a very minuscule space after the water is removed. Rehydration is really easy, but the key is to dehydrate everything first both for the sake of storage space (since water takes up the majority of the volume in most foods) and for the sake of long shelf life.
Like I said above, if you buy your food in bulk and buy generic canned goods and/or fresh produce and meats you dehydrate yourself, you can save a whole lot more money than if you buy prepackaged freeze-dried items. The roughly eight months worth of food for me, my girlfriend and her daughter has cost us less than $1500 between trips to Costco, Sam's Club and local farmers markets.
I haven't gone searching for additional dehydration links in a while but I think I'll do that right now and I'll post them at the link above. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
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Visit my new preparedness site: Preparedness.cc/SurvivalPrep.net
--Latest article: Stocking up on spices to keep food preps lively
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Are you ready spiritually for hard times? http://www.jesusfreak.com/rapture.asp |
Edited by - Nickelless on 01/04/2009 04:22:09 |
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misteroman
Administrator
USA
2565 Posts |
Posted - 01/04/2009 : 09:55:25
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| welcome as well coin.The biggest thing I would think would be a problem with the frozen foods is keeping them frozen if TSHTF |
Buying CU cents!!!! Paying 1.2 unlimited amounts wanted. Can pick up if near Ohio area. |
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Freeze Dried Foods
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