YNAB You Need A Budget

[TLBauer]

Anyone have any good ideas on storing food for emergencies: what kind of foods should you store; how much should you store (per person); where should it be stored (it gets really hot here in the summer, so the garage would be out).

I looked at the foodinsurance.com website this afternoon. They deal a lot in freeze-dried foods. But, they seem to be on the expensive side. Any ideas?

[tigerskin]

Hello, you may find some ideas from the following webpages:
http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/f&web.pdf
http://www.emergencydude.com/emergency_food.shtml
http://www.closertonature.com/emergency ... d-food.htm

[jesse]

The first thing I would look at it just storing more of what you already eat -- a one-month supply of food for instance. Once that's in place, you could look at a three-month supply, then longer-term storage.

Our long-term storage includes: wheat, beans, rice, oil (that needs to be rotated), peanut butter, honey, sugar, salt, etc.

[Encourager]

My two cents worth on storing food.
First of all, store what you normally eat, not what some site on the internet says you MUST store. One of the frustrations I have experienced is this ~ for instance, regarding bread:
1. I like bread. 2. I like to make bread. 3. Whole wheat flour is best for me. 4. Whole wheat flour goes rancid quickly, but white flour is nutritionally a loser. So what should I do? How long of an emergency am I planning for? If just three weeks, I can make and store bread in the freezer, rotating it as I continue to make bread before an emergency. If it is a three months, hmmm, this might not work. So how do I make bread during an emergency that may last more than three months? Six months? A year or more?
A. Buy a flour mill. If you do not have a backup generator and enough fuel to run it, buy a hand mill, or an electric mill that can be converted to a hand mill. This should be a priority if you want to mill flour to make bread (or any other product using wheat berries.)
B. Mill enough flour for just that baking session to keep it fresh and nutritious.
C. How are you going to bake your bread? Learn alternative ways such as using a dutch oven on a wood stove, baking in a camp dutch oven (the type with a recessed lid and legs) using coals in an outside fire, using a solar oven ~ oops, need solar oven, put on list. Also put on the list other alternatives (camp dutch oven?)
Do you see what I am getting at? Buying and storing food is not enough. You need to know how to prepare food in alternative ways. I am not just talking about bread now. Think of how your life will be altered without electricity. Then start from there.
I think the most important point I want to make is that you must KNOW how to do the alternative thing...as in practice, practice, practice. In a crisis, you must be able to function, not panic. Overwhelmed yet? Been there, sometimes am still there, but making progress. I will next post on what to store.

[Encourager]

The first thing I would look at it just storing more of what you already eat -- a one-month supply of food for instance. Once that's in place, you could look at a three-month supply, then longer-term storage.

Our long-term storage includes: wheat, beans, rice, oil (that needs to be rotated), peanut butter, honey, sugar, salt, etc.

Okay, Jesse. I see your storage list. It is now three months down the road from whatever crisis happened...and it still is not over. How is your health?
You need to look over your storage plans. I hope it includes more than what you listed. For instance ~ vitamins? Laxatives? Fiber powder? Fruit? Veggies? Most important ~ protein? How about medicines you take every day, be they Rx or OTC. Have enough of those? How about sunscreen? Insect repellent? Toilet paper? Sanitary supplies? Mouse traps??

Do you have ready-to-eat meals? Anything you could actually eat out of a can without heating? (Beef stew comes to mind, or ready-to-heat and eat soup.)

What needs to be done is a meal plan. Make a meal plan for a week. List EVERY SINGLE THING needed to prepare that meal, without electricity, using alternative cooking methods. It will be a BIG list... Now that you have a plan for a week, it will be easy to multiply it to make it last for as long as you need. Now, this is a simple way to do it. It is very important that you have covered all of your nutritional bases ~ enough fiber, fats, vitamins, minerals.

I cannot tell you what to store; I do not know if you have any food allergies or if there are certain foods you absolutely hate. Making meal plans with food you normally eat is a great way to go. But you may not have access to fresh foods. You will need to alter your recipes to use canned or dried foods. For instance, you want to make vegetable beef soup. You normally fill the pot with fresh carrots, onions, garlic, potatoes, celery. But you haven't got any fresh veggies. What to do? You can dry all of the above in a food dryer and then store them in your emergency supplies or buy canned. The beef may be a problem. But you can buy canned stew beef or, best, pressure can that yourself! Canned beef broth makes it tasty. Good to go! How are you going to make your meals tasty so that children and the elderly will find it palatable? What herbs/spices do you use regularly? Got enough to last? Store the extra in Food Storage bags that have the air sucked out. The spices/herbs will last a long, long time.

Are you storing enough food so that if Great Aunt Mildred shows up at your door, you have enough stored to feed her, too? Do you have enough to give a bit away in an emergency?

It is NOT my goal to overwhelm anyone. But there is more to preparing for an emergency than buying extra peanut butter, beans and rice. Those items are a good start, but in and of themselves? No. But it is a start! Keep going!!

[only120xs]

...

Seriously? I cannot be the only person thinking that you are going a bit over the top.
Perhaps if you lived somewhere with frequent natural disasters and/or electric outages... but you live in Michigan (correct?). No hurricanes, no earthquakes, few tornadoes, (are you in a flood plane?), and I doubt electric is a major issue. To each their own, but I see no reason for you to go to such lengths to be prepared for an extensive emergency.

[Encourager]

Yes, seriously. And yes, I live in MI. Since we moved out to the country we have had two tornadoes miss us by less than 1/4 mile. One took out our neighbors 200 year old barn and killed a child who was sucked out of a window less than 1/2 mile away. The power was out for almost two weeks with the first one; about 5 days with the second. Another time a 'micro-burst' hit our property; we had a huge tree come down on the house. In winter, we have had power outages that have lasted nearly a week. We have had other outages that lasted long enough for the large freezer to thaw the food. So MI does have emergency situations.

If I may be so blunt, why would it be any of your business how I prepare? Who are you to judge why I do? Frankly, if you do NOT want to prepare for any emergencies, don't. Glad you aren't my neighbor. To each his/her own. I would rather be 'over-prepared' than have to depend on someone else, be it FEMA or a neighbor, to sustain me. If you had not jumped to conclusions by reading my post, you would have noted I did not say to prepare for the end of the world. I left it open to how much to prepare. Not everyone who read my post lives in MI or another relatively safe area of the country.

My point was to encourage one to look not only on WHAT to store for an emergency, but at how to prepare what you stored. And if you are storing grains, sweets, etc., you will have uninvited guests who will try to eat what you stored...hence the mouse traps. And that is from personal experience.

[only120xs]

Yes, seriously. And yes, I live in MI. Since we moved out to the country we have had two tornadoes miss us by less than 1/4 mile. One took out our neighbors 200 year old barn and killed a child who was sucked out of a window less than 1/2 mile away. The power was out for almost two weeks with the first one; about 5 days with the second. Another time a 'micro-burst' hit our property; we had a huge tree come down on the house. In winter, we have had power outages that have lasted nearly a week. We have had other outages that lasted long enough for the large freezer to thaw the food. So MI does have emergency situations.

If I may be so blunt, why would it be any of your business how I prepare? Who are you to judge why I do? Frankly, if you do NOT want to prepare for any emergencies, don't. Glad you aren't my neighbor. To each his/her own. I would rather be 'over-prepared' than have to depend on someone else, be it FEMA or a neighbor, to sustain me. If you had not jumped to conclusions by reading my post, you would have noted I did not say to prepare for the end of the world. I left it open to how much to prepare. Not everyone who read my post lives in MI or another relatively safe area of the country.

My point was to encourage one to look not only on WHAT to store for an emergency, but at how to prepare what you stored. And if you are storing grains, sweets, etc., you will have uninvited guests who will try to eat what you stored...hence the mouse traps. And that is from personal experience.

You're right, I shouldn't judge. I apologize if it sounded judgmental.
But I'm still going to say that a 3-month supply (as you suggest) of near-normal quality food is overkill for the vast majority of people.

[nibo]

I keep a large pantry, meaning we could literally eat out of our pantry and freezer for 2.5 months if needs be. And there have been times when work was very lean and that pantry saved our butts! We are self employed and our income is completely irratic, so it makes sense for us to stock up and store.

Now where do we have all this? I have a large pantry off my kitchen, about 10x6 feet of floor to ceiling shelving. Half of this holds food stocks, the other half holds kitchen items. Our freezer is protien only, that is a hard and fast rule that we have followed since we got married. It never has bread or veg, only meats. I do bake my own bread, leave one out and one in the fridge. And all our veg is either canned, dehydrated, or if I have the room stored in the freezer door ( only as a last resort to canning).

I do know how to cook in alternative methods, specifically on our massive gas/coal grill. In the summer it is not smart to heat up our house baking bread when I can do it outside on the grill. Looks the same, tastes the same, and doesn't raise the indoor temps. I also have a huge garden and we eat raw meals for much of the summer.

I really think we all define "emergency" differently. For my family, an emergency is a month or months without work. Or it could be a hurricane. Or a tornado. The last two not being common, but enough of a concern that we have prepped for it. There is huge comfort in knowing I can feed my family easily for months, whether we are without power or there is a Zombie Invasion.

[jesse]

The first thing I would look at it just storing more of what you already eat -- a one-month supply of food for instance. Once that's in place, you could look at a three-month supply, then longer-term storage.

Our long-term storage includes: wheat, beans, rice, oil (that needs to be rotated), peanut butter, honey, sugar, salt, etc.

Okay, Jesse. I see your storage list. It is now three months down the road from whatever crisis happened...and it still is not over. How is your health?
You need to look over your storage plans. I hope it includes more than what you listed. For instance ~ vitamins? Laxatives? Fiber powder? Fruit? Veggies? Most important ~ protein? How about medicines you take every day, be they Rx or OTC. Have enough of those? How about sunscreen? Insect repellent? Toilet paper? Sanitary supplies? Mouse traps??

Well, that’s not everything we have stored certainly, but it does represent some of the big staples. We've also supplemented with freeze-dried for a lot of the protein requirements.

What I'm currently doing is trying to stock up on basically anything that doesn't go bad, or at least doesn't go bad for a long time. Kind of for convenience, and also for wealth preservation (air filters, light bulbs, toilet paper, shampoo, razors...the list goes on and on and on.)

This is really good advice that you've given. Thanks for posting it.

[jesse]

Anyone have any good ideas on storing food for emergencies: what kind of foods should you store; how much should you store (per person); where should it be stored (it gets really hot here in the summer, so the garage would be out).

I looked at the foodinsurance.com website this afternoon. They deal a lot in freeze-dried foods. But, they seem to be on the expensive side. Any ideas?

Hey Terry, foodinsurance.com has got to be the most expensive option. Daily Bread is less expensive, and they're the same company. It's just that with Daily Bread you go through a sales rep. We've bought some food from Daily Bread but I've only tried the oatmeal so far (not bad). A friend of mine is a rep of theirs (part-time) and I trust her to provide good advice and a good quote (the pricing is fluid). If you are interested in the freeze-dried stuff, PM me and I can get you her info.

[Encourager]

only120xs, I accept your apology.
nibo, your storing up supplies because of the economy is another reason why I do the same. Especially if I can get what I need on sale, with coupons! Some items just don't go bad, such as toilet paper, tissues, paper towels for instance. I think with the economy so poor and the price of food going up and up, I am going to be very happy to eat from my pantry.
Thanks for the kind words, Jesse; glad to hear that was only the tip of the iceberg of your storage

Another point I will make, don't forget your pets. Many times you can get a substantial discount if you buy bulk (4 or more bags) of dog/cat/horse/cow feed. Just be sure to check the expiration date and store it in a cool, dark place mouse-proof place. The price of feed is going sky high...just like human food.

[mozzie61]

There is huge comfort in knowing I can feed my family easily for months, whether we are without power or there is a Zombie Invasion.

Looks like the US Government is also preparing for the return of the Zombies, and the news made it all the way down under! Maybe I should stock up now.

[WairereRose]

If the world is ending tomorrow then I won't need all that water I have stored

[mozzie61]

If the world is ending tomorrow then I won't need all that water I have stored

True, if the world ends no amount of stockpiling will save us. I think you're probably better off storing more water than food, as you can live a lot longer without food than water, but being a glass half full type of person I don't actually give much thought to it at all. I figure that if things are so dire that I can't get fed and watered in the largest city in Australia, then maybe curling up in a dark corner to wait for the Zombies to finish me off is a good option.