Ok, here’s the scenario to imagine: its the dead of winter and, for whatever reason, you’ve been forced to head to your fallback location. Really, all you could take with you was whats on your back and not much else. Being the harshest part of winter, its a bit of a slog but you make it to your destination. You let yourself into your cabin (or whatever) and you’re wet, cold, and hungry after the stress-filled challenge of getting there. You grab a propane bottle off the shelf and get your buddy heater going so you can sit in front of it and get some immediate warmth while you wait for the fire in the woodstove to start warming the place up. You drag a plastic bin out from under the bunk and change your wet pants and socks for dry. So far so good. But..still hungry. This little haven has been empty for the last three months, so there’s been no heat. Whatever food you have in place is going to have to be something that can withstand freeze/thaw cycles without becoming inedible or simply exploding its packaging. So with that in mind, here’s my question for the collective hive-mind: If you were going to store foods in a location that was going to be subject to freeze/thaw cycles, what foods would be best choices? Obviously anything that is liquid is probably not gonna fly since jars will freeze and burst. Also, some foods simply do not handle being repeatedly frozen and thawed. To my way of thinking this means that youre restricted to things that are dry and have no liquid or semi-liquids to worry about….soup mixes, instant potatoes, freeze dried foods, rice, beans, etc, etc. Canned goods are probably off the list since they run the risk of the cans bursting from the cold, and the wet contents may not remain palatable through the freeze/thaw cycles.
No doubt someone will opine that the end-run around this is to have some sort of heat system in place that will run while the cabin’s owner is absent. A large propane tank and a thermostat, or some such setup. Thats not in the cards…while mechanically it is do-able, thats kind of putting a lot of eggs into a basket that may, at the worst time, simply fail.
And, also, keep in mind I am not asking about the quantity of food. Thats not really relevant here, Im asking what actual foods would be indifferent to storage in an environment where there is nothing standing between them and freezing.
Thus far, I’ve come up with dried pasta, rice, beans, hash browns, drink mixes (iced tea, Gatorade, Tang, etc.), egg mix, pancake mix, salt, sugar, most spices, hard candy, oatmeal, cornmeal,canned bread, mac-n-cheese, and a few others. MRE’s and freeze drieds are certainly an option and are part of the overall answer, but what else?
