Category Archives: Food

Inspection

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Have a few (ahem) leftovers from the Mountain House group buy that are going into the Deep Sleep. I used this opportunity to adjust quantities of ‘broken case’ items. See, the boxes normally hold six #10 cans. If I have only five cans of, say, Diced Beef, that means that six-can box is short by one can…or, in other words, it’s a partial or ‘broken’ case. So, I used this opportunity to round out my broken cases. In the process it also gave me a chance to inspect things. Embarrassingly, according to the dates stamped on the box, the last inspection I made on these things was seven years ago. In reality I should probably inspect these things once every other year or so.

Why? Well, mostly just to check that nothing has started to rust or otherwise be compromised. Last thing I want is to be packing up one day to move to a new location, pick up a cardboard case and have a bunch rusted cans fall out the soggy bottom of the box. No, no, no,no. I did not spend this kinda money to just wind up heaving it in a dumpster someday because I didn’t take the time to do the things necessary to protect my stuff.

What sorta steps? Well, nothing terribly intricate. Everything is in a cardboard box, taped shut, the boxes are stacked at least two feet off the floor on wire shelving, away from electrical and water sources, and (in theory) routinely inspected for damage. If I really wanted to go balls deep on the preservation side of things, the guys at repackbox.com sell a kit for really going full Burt Gummer and protecting your investment. I might have to get that to try out and see how things hold up over time.

By the by, the oldest of the cans I have in storage are pre Y2k (in fact, they were purchased at a post Y2K sale) and the majority are about 14 years old. How have they held up? Pretty well. Labels havent peeled, can integrity appears solid, boxes show no damage….just a little dust on the boxes.

 

MH Arrival

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Well, that’s a goodly bit of freezedrieds. Somewhere, there is a ‘poverty prepper’ with a vein throbbing in his forehead and teeth a-gnashing as he rails about how many 2-liter pop bottles of beans and rice you could buy instead of all that yuppie survival food.

Local LMI: there are about 54 cans of misc. freeze drieds that are ‘extras’ that are available for purchase if you’re willing to come into Missoula. Email me if interested. I’ll make you an offer you cant refuse. (Unlike when you cross a mobster with a lawyer…in which case you get someone who makes you an offer you can’t understand.)

Rotate and replace – learn it, love it, live it

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As I’ve posted before, about a zillion years ago there was a sale on oatmeal at the local Albertson’s. I went long on it and wound up with a five-gallon Gamma-sealed bucket full of vacuum-sealed packets of instant oatmeal. And there they sat. Quietly waiting. Until one day about ten years later when I decided to pull ’em out and get ’em into the rotation.

Well, that means that what came out of long-term storage must be replaced, no? As I was flipping through Costco’s little sales flyer I see that they have 52-packs of oatmeal on sale for $5.99. That comes out to about twelve cents per package of oatmeal. Being the curious sort, I checked the scale and the packages do weight the same. However, and this surprised me, the apple flavor oatmeal packages contain almost 25% less product than the brown sugar or cinnamon flavor packets. Interesting.

But the point is that in the course of around 12 years, the sale price of the oatmeal products has remained virtually unchanged. Which I found rather interesting. It also nice to see that my food storage program has been going on long enough that even somewhat-long-term stuff hasstarted getting rotated and replaced on a regular basis. Go me!

Anyway, these things will get packed a dozen to a bag and sealed up for the Deep Sleep. Oatmeal isnt anyone’s favorite food, but it is very difficult to argue against it’s convenience. Some boiling water, freeze dried fruit to mix in, and you’ve pretty much got a decent breakfast. In the Venezuela-of-the-future you could have oatmeal, fruit, eggs, bacon, and orange drink all out of a can you put away twenty years ago. Kinda comforting, that. Speaking of Venezuela…this was too good to not share:

Food… it’s whats for dinner

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The usual scene: me carefully scrutinizing the meat department at my local Albertsons for remaindered meat. Annnnnnnnnd….pork tenderloin:So, the pork tenderloin was marked down from $10.99 to $5.00 each. Not bad…but not good enough for my tastes. Fortunately, they were marked down to 30% off because today was the last day to Sell By:

I head over to the meat counter.

“You’ve got nine of those pork tenderloins marked down 30%. I’ll take ’em all and empty out your bin if you’ll markk ’em down to 50%.”

“Okay.”

Thusly:

And thats how you wind up with receipt that says “You saved: 77%”. Or, put another way, dang near $99 at regular price but in my freezer for $22.50.

So…that’s a nice little score to go into the deep freeze. And it frees up a chunk of cash to buy silver today since it took a bit of a tumble and dropped down to a low of $16.55 before bouncing back. I caught it at $16.75 but still feel good about it.

Link – 5 Apocalyptic Realities In A Country That’s Out Of Food

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Mostly  out of laziness I haven’t really done any grocery shopping for the last three weeks.  I’ve pretty much just been living off of what is in the freezer and cupboards. And, unsurprisingly, I didn’t even notice it until the other day when I realized that I’ve used about $25 of my monthly grocery budget and haven’t bought anything other than Coke and a half gallon of milk.

I’d mentioned a few posts back that the bargain meat purchasing has led me to have a freezer full of food and that at the end of the month half of whatever is left in the freezer is carried over to the next month and the other half goes into the deep freeze for that rainy day. Well, it’s been three weeks and my freezer is still full of various bits of dead animal flesh. There is easily another few weeks of pork loin, steaks, turkey breast, pork chops, and such sitting in there.

The point? Clearly theres at least a months worth of meat in the refrigerator’s freezer, and it’s nice to be able to blow off grocery shopping and use the money for something else. Also, its a nice reinforcement that the current policy on picking up and tucking away the bargain meats has been working well.

Contrast with this fascinating piece about how in Venezuela, just having a couple mango trees in your yard can make the difference in avoiding starvation….but can also lead to armed men looting your tree for food.

“I have a mango tree … This tree is currently saving my life, but might also get me killed soon.”

That’s Busteq. He’s a middle-class Venezuelan who lives in a nice neighborhood. In short, he’s a lot like many of you, except his country (which has more oil than any other nation on earth) saw its currency go tits-up when gas got super cheap last year. This, combined with almost comical levels of government corruption, has brought their civilization to the brink of collapse.

Ah Venezuela….it’s like a nationwide Katrina experience that just never ends.

It’s nice to think that just the stuff sitting in my kitchen right now has gotten me through almost a month all on its own. And thats just the stuff in the kitchen cabinets. Once I dip into the long-term storage food I’d probably be right at a year or so, at least. Of course, as the link above demonstrates, having food when your neighbors do not is great for keeping you fed and lousy for keeping you safe. This is where the Venezuelan experience differs from what might happen here. (And, if you’ve been reading about the hurricane-ravaged islands in the Caribbean you can read some pretty scary stories about looters and other opportunists running amok.) In this country, assuming youve got your head screwed on straight and don’t think the world is all peace-n-love, the smart prepared individual will have the means to keep his property his.

What’s it like when a prepared survivalist rides out something like the recent hurricanes? Well, our Friend Of The Blog, Harry,  at Self Sufficient Mountain Living sat out the tail end of it and appears none the worse for wear.

It’s an interesting, but very predictable, time in a survivalists life when the gun stuff fades in precedence and the mundane things like food and toilet paper take the spotlight. On the other hand, having been into preparedness in one fashion or another for about thirty years it’s not unreasonable to think that within that time frame I’ve managed to get the gun needs pretty much met.

Anyway…..

Fun little piece about Venezuela and worth a read. Definitely makes you feel like heading to CostCo or SuperWallyworld to stock up. Oh, and before I go, here’s another piece in the same vein from the same source: My Wealthy Country Became A Dystopia Overnight: 6 Realities.

Remaindered meat

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I’ve mentioned before that my local Albertson’s has what I have come to call “remaindered meat”. It’s when the meat is on its last day of “Use By” and the store has to sell it or dumpster it. Since half a (meat)loaf is better than none, they mark it down to either 30% or 50% off to try and blow it out the door. I’ve mentioned this before here , here, and here.

You have to remember, these little sales are, for the most part, completely unpredictable. I could go a week or two without finding something worth buying or I may wind up picking up forty pounds of meat in one week. It’s unpredictable. As a result, when the end of the month rolls around the freezer in my refrigerator might be more than a little full.

A few months back I instituted a policy where all the remaindered meat I pick up goes into the freezer in the refrigerator. At the end of the month, whatever meat is left in the freezer, half of it goes into the big freezer as ‘food insurance’. I’m finding that this little program is working very well for me. When the new month starts I usually have a huge amount of meat still left in the freezer, and my ‘just in case’ supply in the deep freezer keeps improving. As the month progresses, a few more remaindered meat sales wind up in the fridge freezer and at the end of the month half of whats left gets put back.

Today’s score? Bacon wrapped seasoned boneless pork chops, two per tray, in oven-safe foil trays….just remove the plastic and slide ’em into the oven…$5 each marked down 50%, so $2.50. Bought ’em all.

20170821_104729The nice thing is that since it’s all ‘remaindered’ meat, I’m not paying full price for anything. Even if there are no interesting sales for a week or two, there’s still at least that much worth of ‘remaindered’ meat in fridge freezer. As a result, I never have to pay $4.99/# for beef. This frees up money for other stuff, which is part of what survivalism is all about: efficient resource management. I know what you’re thinking “There’s nothing survival related about this! This is a post more fit for a mommy blog about coupon clipping!” No, not really. My point is that you have to eat. Now, you can eat as cheaply as possible by living on a diet of, literally, beans and rice which is exactly what many Third World denizens do. But you are not a Third Worlder. We are meat-eating, gun-toting, flag-waving, moon-landing, Japan-nuking, culture-dominating citizens of the premier First World country. Why live like a Third Worlder if you don’t have to? If you can procure $500 a month worth of food for $250, that frees up $250 to spend on ammo, gear, guns, books, radios, fuel, storage food, knives, gold, silver, etc. And that is most definitely survival-related.

Missoula Cash and Carry opens

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I was knda excited yesterday. A new Costco-ish restaurant supply place opened up in town yesterday. Obviously, I don’t have a restaurant but what I do have is an interest in bulk food at low prices. So…off I went.

The biggest problem was that many things are in Costc-size packaging. Sure, it’s a great deal on ketchup but it’s in a 5-gallon bucket that, once opened, won’t stay good until I’m done with it. Lotsa that. But there were a few things that were of interest to the survivalist type. In a display that would make any homeless hardcore-alcoholic salivate, there was a bulk amount of Sterno products:

20170721_094010 20170721_094034There was also a huge amount of paper/plastic tableware…whcih is handy to have when you dont want to waste time and hot water in a crisis.

If you’re a beans-n-rice kinda guy, there was plenty of that as well:

20170721_094556The meat department had the huge cuts of meat all wrapped up in heavy plastic nad ready for cutting. That was a pretty sweet deal. They also had bulk italian sausage, which is always a staple in this household. (especially after this and this ).

All in all, the prices were okay. Some stuff was stupidly not-a-bargain (Coke for example), but other stuff was. There was also a great selection of frozen entrees and appetizers. For my needs, there were a few things in there that were worth making the trip. For a non-survivalist, convenience standpoint there was definitely some good stuff….for example, a few bags of frozen dumplings are nice to have for a quick meal.

If you’re in Missoula, check em out but keep in mind it’s geared more towards commercial kitchens, so you may have trouble with the product sizing.

 

 

Fortune favors the cheap

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Kinda been having a hankering for meatloaf this week. Thing is, have you seen the prices on ground beef these days? Outrageous. But, I figured I’d hit the remaindered meat bin at my local Albertsons. And, to my surprise, there was this:
20170430_192730Now, let’s do some math. Those are 3# rolls of ground beef. They are on sale at $5.99 per ‘log’. Let’s not split hairs and call it $2/#. They are marked down to 30% off since they need to get it our before it hits expiration. Hmm… lets see how many there are…1..2…3…..10. So thats 10 x 3# @ $2/#, or, another way, it’s 30# of ground beef for $60. That’s a pretty good deal. But….I bet they’d like to get rif of all of it. I wander to the guy in the butchers apron cleaning the meat case.

“Howdy. Is the meat department manager around?”
“No, he goes home at 4pm. Can I help you?”
“Can you point me at someone who has the authority to change prices?”
“I can do it if it’s on something that we already have marked down and today is the expiration date.”

20170430_194556

Achievement unlocked…..

“Excellent. Let’s talk money. If you’ll mark these down to 50% off, I’ll take all of them.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
“I can call the manager at home.”
“Awesome. I’ll wait.”

And thats how you get this:
20170430_193104And to put that in perspective, thats 30# of ground beef at $0.998/#. That’s right, less than a buck a pound for dead cow flesh.

How does this relate to preparedness? Well, for starters, my deep freeze now has another 30# of meat in it at dang near Carter-era prices. With ground beef hanging in there around $3.99/# that frees up $90 to go towards other foodstuffs.  These sorts of deals are out there, man. You just gotta look and you can’t be embarassed to ask the manager (or whomever has the authority) if they’re willing to make a deal if you take a big enough amount.

It’s a rare thing for me to feel pride in anything I do, but I am a wee bit satisfied with myself on this one.

Link – What I Learned Living off a 30 Day Emergency Supply of Food

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Interesting series of posts.

My goal was simple: to see what it would be like to live off a basic food storage kit for 30 days. I had no ulterior motives; I just wanted to see if I could eat what was in the box for 30 days. Sometimes I like to experience things or challenge myself in ways some people might think is odd. To me, I just see it as a fun experiment. Might be a bored housewife thing. Might be a quirk in my personality. Either way, I was actually oddly excited to try this. I was curious about so much.

Not all 30-day kits are the same, though. The Wise brand kits turn up in Costco and a few other places, and I’ve not really heard anyone say too many nice things about them. Mountain House makes a few different kits and most people are have neutral/good comments about them. Augason Farms makes a 30-day kit that I recommend as an entry-level way to try a variety of their products. It’s a broad selection of small cans (not pouches) with about 20 different items. I catch these on sale every once in a while and they make outstanding gifts.

Mountain House offers a few variations on this theme…2-, 3-, 4-, 5, and 14-day kits of pouches. I’ve sold the 3-day kits before and they’re an attractive and convenient option. (By the by –$50 Rebate when you buy the 14-Day Emergency Food Supply + Free Shipping!

All these kits, and this is touched on in the link at the begining of this post, are best when you use them to supplement or augment an existing stockpile of food. Rice, pasta, grain, whatever….these kits help stretch things out and prevent appetite fatigue.

In my opinion, where these kits really shine is in portability. If you have just got to go, go, go and it’s a matter of taking whatever you can grab and throw in the back of the truck in five minutes, thats where these things shine.

Anyway, I’ve seen a few people online do similar types of ‘dietary challenges’ and I thought it would be interesting to bring it to everyones attention.

 

By the case? Buy the case….Pt III

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So….my daily pass through the meat department looking for bargain meats. And, to my surprise, the spaghetti sauce I usually  prefer is on sale. Hmmm. Ok, I bought about 120# pasta a week ago…I guess I need enough spaghetti sauce to go with it. And it is on sale, after all. Ten cases please.

20170308_125222Annnnnd…another 120 Monopoly game pieces.

On the bright side, a trip to CostCo for a case of Italian sausage and I’ll be ready to have my favorite reasonably-quick comfort meal on hand for the next….mmmm…..two years. On the negative side, even for me, this is a quantity not usually kept…I need to do some re-arrangements of things in the food storage area. But…there is comfort (and economy!) in these sorts of maneuvers.