But I don't want to eat rice and wheat and beans!

[riversong]

Some random thoughts about storage from a newbie prepper and some requests for advice.

Whenever I read US based prepper material they talk about large scale wheat and rice and pulses etc.
After a week of eating this I would be somewhat bored and be looking for the fatted calf.

The other question is the focus upon cans. (What pray is a #10 can? I couldn't find one in Asda)
Admittedly cans have a long shelf life but the advice is 'store what you eat and eat what you store'.
My family doesn't eat out of cans or generally frozen (unless we are having a lazy day). All of our food is fresh and cooked daily so it's difficult to use cans. I am however beginning to get into the mindset. What I need are gourmet cans!.

Freeze dried? I haven't tried them yet but they seem very expensive albeit long lasting. Any recommendations other than Mountain House?

How to store. I've looked at videos of other preppers using 5 gallon/6 gallon buckets. They tend to put all one product in one bucket. Which could mean you have 5 or 6 buckets open at one time.
I am think about a modular approach where everything, i.e. All meals, snacks etc for 2 weeks for 2 people, or 1 month for 1 person, or 1 week for 4 people could be contained in a single bucket. If I mylar bag the items with an oxygen absorber and then put it in a plastic bag and vacuum seal it, that should put us in a good position i think.

Any thoughts or advice or best of all, any lists to go into a one-month bucket??

Merci (Buckets)

[unsure]

if for the sake of argument , you can`t get fresh foods , shops looted or just plain flat not available for what ever reason , what do you plan on feeding your self on . having rice , pasta , beans ,lentils ect stored away wouldn`t be a bad thing would it . i know about the store what you eat and eat what you store rule.
i could see it being a bleak time for you come winter when theres nothing fresh growing or not alot .

tins if stored correctly will go way past their use by date and after a week of no food would look like a feast to me .

number 10 cans is a american thing , we don`t have them much over here the closest you`ll get it catering size , usually beans tomatoes or fruit ,ive never seen anything else in them . you could at one time get meat in that size but ive not seen it for a long time .

[tanstaafl]

My guess is that if the situation was such that you have to eat your food stores, you will have more things to worry about than what you are eating, just look at it as calories to keep you alive.

[preppingsu]

Before you start to store canned and dried goods may I suggest that you try a few with your family first. Integrate them alongside the fresh stuff and see what you like the best. No point storing food that tastes nasty, doesn't matter how hungry you are!!

If you are looking at long term storage (Myla and buckets) then again store what you need/use.
Everyone has different ideas.

Consider a days meals. Breakfast - porridge oats, dried fruit, dried milk.
Lunch - bread flour (to make bread so need yeast etc), tinned tuna/meat, dried soups,
Main meal - pasta/rice, dried mash, dried veg/soup mix,

You get the idea. That could all store in one bucket. Add tea bags, coffee, cereal bars, chocolate, and any other bits to fill the space.

Obviously if you grow your own you will supplement with fresh from the garden, eggs if you keep chickens.

However, some people store manageable sizes of Mylar with buckets just containing flour or sugar etc. whatever you chose to do have an understandable labelling system.

Although the American sites have some great ideas you must consider what is available here.

Perhaps make a list of everything you use on a daily basis (milk, sugar, tea, bread etc) and look at alternatives and how you can easily store.

Sorry to ramble, hope it helps.

[EddieEnzyme]

Good advice above.

Regarding #10 cans - the term we use here is A10, used mainly in catering. About 2.5 to 3kg.(Mountain house use this size for their freeze dried cans.)

As for Mountain House, I chose to only buy their cans of freeze dried chicken and minced beef to add to my own ingredients. Much more cost effective this way.

I've tried to store a wide variety of foods including rice, cous cous, bulgar wheat, lentils (red and green,) chick peas, dried veggies (lots more that I can't think of offhand) - I've steered clear of too many beans simply because of the amount of water and energy needed to cook 'em!
Lentils need a wash and 20 mins of simmering, or can even be cooked using the vacuum flask method (or hay box.)
Lots of spices & tomato powder will make things way more interesting.

I do have some cans stored too. Would be daft not to - they're cheap and keep for ages. Again though, I've stored "ingredients" rather than complete meals items - Corned beef, the mighty Spam, canned cheese, sweecorn, kidney beans, butter beans (long cooking times, remember? Cans don't need it.) etc.

My mylar stores are in smaller sized packs exactly for the reasons you suggest - I'm going to be opening 1kg of stuff at a time rather than 10. More convenient - those plastic boxes from Wilkos are great for mylar storage by the way.

[mushroom]

'What I need are gourmet cans!'

I also store ingredients rather than ready canned 'meals' - vegetables, various beans, meats, fish etc.
For high quality canned goods have a look here http://shop.conserva.de/en/ They are more expensive, but most produce is organic and they also sell items hard to find in the UK - such as canned cheese, bread, butter and even cake! They also ship with typical German efficiency!

[Plymtom]

Store what you eat and eat what you store is sound advice, you answered your own question when you said you don't want to eat the stuff, so lets say you invested in a load of stuff you have no intention of eating unless you have no other choice, what then when it is too old? I for instance only get through about a Kilo of red lentils and half a dozen can of red kidney beans in a year, I do bolster up stuff with tinned green lentils so I suppose I could do the same with dried ones, I use packet savoury rice and asda's tinned chicken in white sauce to make a very tasty SWYEAEWYS meal, and a simular thing with tinned meatballs and value noodles, the bonus with those meals could be that you could add a very cheap tinned soup into the mix or tinned tomatoes for fluids for the rice/noodles should water storage be an issue as it is for us.

So the real question is whats your back up options in the here and now? Because fresh unless you are a self sufficient small holder/farmer is not an option, ( remember not the appcalypse but any situation when you can't go to the shops) and freezer is ok as long as it lasts and you have juice to run it.

Also bearing in mind what you said.. I can't eat too many beans, the wind can get really crippling painful (spare the methane for fuel thoughts) the same goes for many foods for many people the variety we get as a norm prevents intollerences surfacing, os I asume too many pulses of any kind will have the same effect, as does soya mince, and peanuts... I got the taste for them a year or two ago after a lifetime of having a small pack at a club/pub now and again, I ate a whole large pack in a day and thought I was poisoned, I kid you not I was floored, the moral of the story if there is one , is that you do need a tested plan food wise, one or two "prepper meals" a week should do to test and ensure you are going to consume it before it is too old.

[Moony]

Rice and wheat and beans should just be the 'bulk' behind a tasty meal that you prepare. An important addition not mentioned so far is dried herbs and spices (and pre-mixed flavourings). These can make all the difference to a boring bland and otherwise unappetising meal.

[Brambles]

All the above is good advice. I also mainly store ingredients. Since having a complete rethink on my situation and what I wanted from prepping I have done away with long term (stored away in mylar for 10 yrs + etc) stores. I still have oodles of stuff, but I now have it stored under medium term conditions (protected from vermin 1 year stores) and I rotate everything out. I therefore really do eat what I store and store what I eat. Like you, in day to day life, I eat little in the way of tinned food. But I store what we like in quantity. I also 'can' (http://www.motherearthnews.com/canning. ... z2QW9tE9bx) my own foods. Again, all of this is rotated out. I also dehydrate other foods, and yep, all the items I dehydrate I rotate out and use in day to day cooking. I came to the conclusion I could still have months, even years worth of food stored should I choose to, and not have to put it away under long term storage conditions.
I'm not saying the equipment for home preservation is cheap and in the case of a pressure canner is difficult to get hold of, but they are available and once bought, you can preserve whatever you want within reason to have stores your family will eat. I found it was the only way to have the sort of preps I wanted in my cupboard.
Some staples will need to be in your stores, flour, sugar, oils and fats, salt, things like that.
Other folk do things differently, so did I until a while ago. I now feel I have some sort of balance.
Whatever you do and however you plan to go forward, don't get in a stew over it, you will make a few mistakes along the way(I know I did), but chalk them down to experience and remeber it for next time.
Oh, and good luck!

This site may help you, it's American, but is great for the budding prepper.
http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/

[BigMacKin]

I have a cupboard full of stuff that we generally eat but bought a few things I thought we'd like too and tried them out. Tinned hamburgers from Tesco are one example that didn't go down well with the family so these got scrubbed from the shopping lists - so I'd back up what was previously said and try things that you think you and your family may find enjoyable to eat and if you find something appealing, then stock up!

We have not gone down the Mylar direction but have stored up with tins of veg and bags of dried pulses but have started learning about foraging to complement the fishing and shooting - which if things got desperate I'd be doing more regularly - desperate for me doesn't necessarily mean social breakdown etc etc but as we increasingly find we are about 2 or 3 pay cheques from our own personal S hitting the fan, I can imagine myself in that situation quite quickly.

There are plenty of goods books in the library on all these subjects: Fishing, shooting, foraging and of course they are free to borrow. Ebay/Gumtree/Gunstar provide avenues to obtain the tools a little cheaper than the shops too.