Posted on 03/14/2014 3:43:31 PM PDT by Kartographer
In late 2010 when we started our food pantry, we took what I would call a “hodge-podge” approach. We read different articles and made lists of what we used and did not use but was recommended by the various publications. There is a tremendous amount of information, and this was a new endeavor for us. So our list would take the following into consideration: rotation of meals; caloric intake/nutritional value; pleasure value (is it something we enjoy i.e. pancakes vs. oatmeal); and last but not least, cost. Before we bought, we went to an Amish bulk store and Costco to look and compare prices versus what was available on the Internet. We have children, and when we started this endeavor we were a fairly typical suburban family. We tended to lean toward home cooked whole food meals. (My wife and I argued this point a bit as "home cooked meals" has come to mean something very different now.) We also favored organic, but we did not turn completely away from fast food and processed boxed meals. We had a small garden to grow vegetables and a small raspberry patch. Still, we also would eat out at restaurants, buy bleached flour, and buy convenience meals, such as frozen pizzas, boxed pasta, and canned sauce. Considering this background, we urgently started on our pantry as priority number one. We just discovered prepping and felt that we were completely unprepared.
(Excerpt) Read more at survivalblog.com ...
“If it is stored in a tightly sealed container, honey can literally last a lifetime, and probably even your children’s lifetimes, too. There are even accounts of 2000+ year old honey found in tombs that is still edible.”
http://www.survivalblog.com/2007/03/honeystorage_life_crystallizat.html
Mix together a little butter or oil...some brown sugar and then a drizzle pattern of corn syrup....nuts if you choose, then a tube of biscuits for the very best upside down sticky buns you ever ate!
Bake in a reflector oven too,just turn often.
One can never have too much sugar.LOL
I buy a bunch of sugar everytime it goes on sale. Libs like that guy in New York may decide to ban it or tax the devil out of it. So I say stock up it lasts almost forever.
I also plant sugar beets. I have the directions for processing sugar beets to make syrup or sugar granules, just in case I haven’t stored enough.LOL
Hubby puts netting over our wild blackberry bushes. We also hung wren’s houses all around the fruit areas.
Wrens like to eat bugs, not berries, and they are territorial, so they chase of the birds that would like to feast on the berries.
Also old computer disks and aluminum pie pans strung up so that they move in the wind will help scare them away.
In or around 2008, when the oil prices jumped, I knew that inflation would shortly hit the groceries, and we had some extra money so I invested it in food.
The first item I stocked was peanut butter, because that is the one reliable protein that our grand daughter likes. The use by date was 18 months, so I stocked up on what I thought we would normally use in a year @ 99cents per 16 oz. jar.
The prices went up to $2.25 per jar and is now available on sale sometimes. I can get an 18 oz jar for 1.79 on sales.
We sure haven’t had to waste any - it goes pretty fast.LOL
Oil will not last very long. It’s a problem for long term storage. Lard will last considerably longer if it’s in cans with sealed lids (not that pull off aluminum crap), but it’s not “heart healthy”.
I have been doing some research on getting oil from nuts, since we have several nut trees that produce well on our property. I am also experimenting with sunflowers to see if I can learn to grow and produce oil from them.
I think it would be neat to be able to do it, and it could be useful in a long term hard times scenario.
Now I have floor to ceiling storage along 2 walls in the basement. That's 30 feet of shelves. I buy stuff on sale by the case or cases depending on how much I know we will use.
New purchases and long term 10-20 year stuff goes on the bottom shelves(also under beds and anywhere else I can stash them out of sight). The shelf at eye level and the ones directly above and below it are current usage stuff.
The top shelf has boxes that are labeled with content for stuff like water filters etc. The first shelf next to the door is where stuff that needs to be used within a month are stacked to make sure that they don't get lost. The veggies etc. are all stacked together just like in a grocery store.
I can see at a glance what we have used and need to replace, but I have a list hanging on the Refrigerator and every time we open a can or bottle I just put it on the list. When stuff goes on sale I check the list to see how many replacement cans we need.
When a case of veggies is used up, I just take a case from the next use by date and move it up to the eye level shelves.
Now, it is very rare that I ever have expired dates on the food we have stored. The little 2 foot pantry now holds a lot of the gardening stuff, charcoal lighter, cleaning supplies etc.
I vote for pintos. They are Hubby’s favorites, and our grocery sells them in 10 lb. bags. A person can also take them out of the grocery bag, and plant them to grow more.
Karo syrup is a must have for pecan pie!
If you get the urge for some "meat-like" calories, I'll trade a couple cans of Spam for some peanut butter...
Just a heads up, copper has tanked big time, its possible to get some good deals on copper coins even if they are novelties, as long as they are .999 copper they are worth barter. Why try to buy with silver when copper will do just as well?
Thank you Mr Smith (or is it Mrs Mith?)
This is why the prepper threads are great. Inspiration!
I’ll be at the garden store when they open this morning.
My blackberry and raspberry bushes are a fair distance from the house, and the squirrels have been able to make holes in my nets, and the birds have thanked them.
How does a drop line work?
It is hard to pay with $60 when you can buy a 50 lb bag of rice for $18.50 at Same Club.
Oh, I used netting, but the squirrels just laughed at me.
Thanks for the info about wrens. I will definitely try that.
What do I do about the squirrels, though?
I’ve got a combine and a moisture tester.i’m thinking about 5 acres or so as a test run.I need to do some research about plant density per acre and row spacing,but mostly it should be like raising soybeans.
Skippy, Jif, Superman, &c... not peanut butter, as far as I am concerned.
No need to suffer through old peanut butter. Make peanut butter cookies, pb bread, pb muffins, pb fudge, pb pie, pb ice cream, pb ice cream topping, bp cake, pb frosting, bp pancakes or use it in chinese dishes. There’s tons of ways to incorporate play-doh pb into foods. Feed it to the dog. When it’s rancid, put it into the compost pile.
That's when you clean out never used junk in the kitchen cabinets. Sell the junk, use the proceeds to purchase food preps and store it in those empty cabinets.
Then rebuild the pantry shelves to fit the size of what you store. That extra inches above the canned goods is wasted. Measure it out and you could probably add an extra shelf. Of course, companies reducing the size of their products will through off your good work. When we remodeled years ago, I measured out the bathroom shelves to fit tp rolls... well, you know what has happened.
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