“Just the savings on “emergency runs to the store” has been worth it.” – E.M. Smith
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Dirt-Cheap Survival Food Supply

E.M. Smith

I grew up in a Mormon Town (though as a non-Mormon) where the Mormon Church encouraged everyone to keep a 1 year supply of food. I once complained to my parents that we were not doing this and maybe the Mormons were right. Then my Dad pointed out we ran a restaurant with a big store room with way more than a year worth of food for just one family 

In the end, I still was interested in food storage and I’ve done a fair amount of work on it. Not least because I live almost on top of the San Andreas Fault and must be ready for weeks of “on your own”.

The Very Short Form:

It takes about 1 pound of dry food per person per day. Think of a lb bag of lentils or rice. You can buy a 50 lb bag of beans & one of rice for somewhere near $100 and be set for 100 days. 200 days on survival only rations. There’s no reason to say you can’t afford some kind of stored food.

I’ve stored both beans and rice in jars for years. Noodles too. It keeps better if stored without oxygen in the jar, but just air is fine for under 10 years. I’ve had lentils (the legume that stores best) stored for 16 years and still sprouted and grew. Do not store peas – they get hard and then do not soften in cooking.

Buy a small pressure cooker as it will more than make up for the cost in extending your stored fuel supply. I have this one and it works great for 2 people:
https://www.amazon.com/HAWKIN-Classic-CL3T-Improved-Aluminum-Pressure/dp/B00SX2YZMG/ref=sr_1_sc_3_m?ie=UTF8&qid=1543959134&sr=8-3-spell&keywords=hawkin%2Bpressur%2Bcooker&th=1

I use 1/2 gallon canning jars. Just pour the dry goods in and spin on the lid. No money? Well, buy your regular foods in larger jars and wash / reuse them. I have some stuff in quart jars that were originally olives and artichoke hearts. It takes longer to build up a supply of stored food, but it is free.

Canned goods keep for at least a year in good quality. Then there is a slow loss of flavor. At 2 to 3 years they start to be uninteresting and things like canned meat can start reacting with the can lining. But are you really going to store 3 years of SPAM? I’ve seen folks make a block of cans into a “coffee table” with a board on the top and a cloth drape over the stack – you do not need a garage of food… Just sliding cases of cans under the beds can give you months of food – and prevents the cat hiding under the bed too 

So if you regularly eat green beans, peas, corn, and refried beans, just buy twice as much each week. Put 1/2 into “storage” and eat the rest. At the end of the year you will have 1 year of “the usual” in stores. Now drop back to buying “the usual amount” and each week, pull that much off the block under the bed and replace it with the new. Now you are never eating food more than 1 year old (and well inside the quality range) while having 1 year of canned goods in “storage”. (Note that these are “wet” – so you need more pounds / day than the “dry” if you are only eating this stuff – OTOH, it already has water in it so you don’t need that much water storage).

Having a mix of both “wet” and “dry” goods can easily give you a year or two of stored food in not that much space. A closet is about enough.

Get a “seed sprouter” and then some of your beans / wheat / whatever can be made in to fresh green sprouts instead of porridge. In a pinch, one of your jars with cloth over the top is a decent sprouter.

More for anyone who cares to do more depth here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/food-storage-systems/

Then I found out you can make some things last longer by gently heating the jars in the oven, then tighten the lids and let them cook. Works well for things that don’t mind heat, like crackers or dry cereals. I did a test jar of rice and it stored nicely for over a year:

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/canned-crackers-dry-canning-say-what/

If you think you will be “restarting society” after a year or two and want to be prepared to start a major garden, you can easily store seeds. Despite the package saying they are only good for one year, in fact, frozen they keep for decades. IF your freezer fails in the end of life as we know it, well, you needed to defrost them anyway 

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/diy-survival-or-preparedness-seed-pack/

All of this can be done “Dirt Cheap” and without a lot of inconvenience. Once you have the stored inventory, then you are back to the regular run rate on food costs. I’ve used mine several times when “between jobs” and it’s also nice when you have that “Darn, out of {sugar, salt, rice, Oatmeal,…} moment and realize it’s just down the hall in the closet… Just the savings on “emergency runs to the store” has been worth it. Furthermore, if you buy some of it as “giant size” at warehouse stores like Costco, then you can actually end up getting most of it “for free” compared to the local high priced grocer.

I now regularly buy the giant size can of coffee and “decant it” (using a canning funnel that costs about $1) into what started live as 24 ounce jars of peaches. The coffee in each jar stays fresh as it is sealed. So I get cheaper coffee, I’m never out, and in an emergency I’m likely “set” for about 2 months on my withdrawal deadline  A couple of quarts of loose tea keeps for years, BTW. Takes many months to drink it all 

My jars (in cardboard box with newspaper crumple around it) came through a 7.x earthquake just fine. They are also water and rodent and bug proof. Jars, they are your friends.

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December 8, 2018 at 09:59PM