As much as I hate health/organic food stores due to their being bastions of soak-the-rich, kill-your-tv, fellow-traveller liberalism, they do tend to be a good source for 50# of hard red winter wheat and other grains to go into storage. Since I found out yesterday that a local vendor has the somewhat-difficult-to-find 15-gallon blue water barrels it only seems to prudent to pick up a couple and get another hundred or so pounds of wheat to go in them.
Why wheat and not flour? Well, wheat stores alot better and is a bit more versatile…you can crack it for bulghur or making cereals, grind it a little finer for mush, or grind it even finer for flour. You can also sprout it if your in need of some freshe greens.
Anyway, I called Dean headquarters bastion of failed liberalism and asked if they had wheat in 50# bags. Sure wnough…$22/50#. Reasonable. So I’ll pick up a hundred pounds later today and that shall be my Zero Deed For The Day.
I’m surprised you dont just buy it in bulk from Wheat Montana Farms http://www.wheatmontana.com/
Would think it would be pretty convienent.
Impudent question
Have you ever cooked from raw wheat? When you need flour in a recipe, do you actually grind up some of that wheat, use it, rotate it out?
The reason being, I know a lot of survivalists who aren’t in the least bit familiar or comfortable with their gear or their supplies. They have these buckets of raw goods stored away, but they only know how to use them in theory, and eventually it will rot just beacause using it is not a part of their lives. Or if something does happen, they’ll be faced with all these difficulties they aren’t prepared for, on top of everything else they’re trying to deal with. The apocalypse is a hell of a time to have to start experimenting with recipes because hand-ground flour doesn’t make bread quite like commercially ground flour, or you haven’t baked your own bread without an electric bread maker for years. But if you’ve been making bread in a dutch oven with hand-ground flour for the last five years for the fun of it, you just go on with life as usual.
I’m not picking on them, because I’m the same way. There are some things that I might use in theory, but won’t use in my normal life, and I try not to buy those things. Or I try to modify my life so that they do become part of it.
Re: Impudent question
your comment reminds me of the many well-meaning but ultimately stupid mothers I knew who bought the “Mormon four” in preparation for Y2K and A) had no means of preparing the food and B) had no idea what to do with it, anyway. Knowledge is infinitely more valuable than people realize.
Re: Impudent question
You pretty much hit the nail on the head. Alot of people buy/bought (esp. after 9/11) some gear, shoved it in the closet and thought “Ok, Im prepared”. Never mind that they didnt know the difference between Coleman fuel and Gary Coleman.
Buckets of raw goodies are iffy. Just throwing it in a bucket sometimes works but I take a few extra steps that push the shelf life into something measured by decades….half pound of dry ice wrapped in a paper bag goes in bottom of mylar bag. Grain is poured into bag. Dry ice evaporates, displacing all oxygen. Mylar bag is heat sealed with an iron. Bag is put into 6-gallon pail and then sealed watertight and airtight. Pail is left sitting on raised 2×4’s with plenty or room around it for circulation. Same deal for the 15-gallon containers.
The place that has the grain also has a ‘vending machine’ that is full of unground grain. It works like the coffee grinders at the market. You put a bag underneath the spigot and it grinds a pound of the stuff and pours it into the bag. I’ll be getting a pound to try some experimental cooking with later this week.
Funny you should mention dutch oven. I was inventorying my cast iron cookware yesterday and found the perfect 8″ dutch oven for sale at a local place. It’ll fit perfectly in my Volcano stove..
Since, at the moment, I live by myself, its pretty easy for me turn off all the lights and see if I can let an evening go by using my propane or kerosene lamps, or cook on my kerosene heater, etc, etc. I dont believe that theres anything in my inventory that I havent spent time familiarizing myself with. Im looking forward to trying some recipes from my extensive library with the fresh ground whole wheat and see how they turn out. And, to make it more interesting, I’ll cook them on either my Volcano or camp stove so I know what to expect.