An Emergency Food Strategy...

Developing a food strategy is a key factor for emergency preparedness.  What food? How long am I planning to be without stores to buy from? How can I cook?How long is the shelf file? Will i even like it enough to choke it down? Since food is second only to water in the hierarchy, you can't just toss a couple of cans in a bag and say "i'm good".  Well you can, but it will not be very effective.   Also with prepping becoming more commercialized you see ads for MREs and all types of dehydrated food buckets that are nice "feel good" things to have in the closet, but are they really the best solution?  To me food is a layered strategy and i want to share my plan and philosophy.

First "Store what you eat, and eat what you store".  Do I have some dehydrated food and MREs?  Of course, but they are a small part of my food solution and are for a specific reason or event.  The bulk of my food is normal everyday grocery store can goods.  Beans, rice, carrots, soup, the stuff we eat every day are the mainstay.  I have built over time an inventory of what we normally consume, and using stilltasty.com, and a handy dandy grease pencil to write on cans, I keep track of when and what I buy and store.  I know the I can be snowed in, locked in, shelter in place for whatever reason for X months without any outside food source.

The layering comes in as availability is impacted,  for example fresh meats and vegetables first, then frozen.  If refrigeration is still available my frozen meats would well outlast frozen vegetables, so they are "replaced" with canned goods.   When frozen meats are gone, by use or lack of power, I have specific canned meats (i like werlingandsons.com in Ohio the best) and i have developed and tried meals that surround using a 14.5 oz can of meat and traditional grocery items like Zataran's gumbo to feed my family of 4 with no waste.  I can also make stew and soups using the canned meat and freeze dried vegetables using a thermal cooker to minimized the use of cooking fuel which may be scarce at that time.

Breads are a key part of the food system so i took specific steps to resolve this (see my october 31st post). Since fresh bread would run out in a few weeks, I have off the shelf flour and bread/muffin mixes. Their limitation is they have a useful shelf life of a year or 2. The third "layer" is I also have a supply of Augason farms bread mixes.  Their extremely long shelf life makes them perfect for this. I keep the MRE's specifically for "on the road" or "low signature" meals if i needed to be mobile.

To get here i have cooked all of the different foods multiple times. I've tried the canned meats vs the dehydrated meats, used the small test cans of Augason and others in taste test before ordering cases of #10 cans. And after finding what works "off the shelf" but is in short supply, i've ordered bulk cases from the manufacture through Walmart and Costco. Key is i am not compromising taste, quality, or  nutrition anywhere along the way. Like any system, its work to develop. But after its running, its second nature.