Tag Archives: long term food

Mountain House MCW overruns

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The folks at Mountain House were offering for sale what appears to be some MCW rations that I am guessing were part of a contract overrun. Spaghetti w meat sauce, chicken with rice, and breakfast skillet. I actually have, literally, 15-gallon drums filled with pouches of freeze drieds, but I got these anyway.

These are slightly more compact than the Pro-Pak series of meals MH offers, and I wanted something for where space is at a premium. Most notably, for when I travel by air and risk getting caught in an airport overnight without food options. A couple of these, an electric immersion water heater, and a plastic spoon make for dinner.

How big? About the same footprint as a 20-rd AR mag, although thicker.

Weight is approx. 4 oz. and calls for 16 oz. of water, so in theory you’re looking at a 20 oz. meal.

Given the compact nature of these, I’ll definitely tuck them away for the situations where space/weight/size is a big factor. But they should do quite well for my airport-layover-kit.

They are available on MH’s website, but the retail price is a bit painful. Dealer is about $5 less per package. Twenty to a case. Might be worth checking out.

Article – How Long Does Frozen Meat Last? Here’s What You Need to Know About Freezing Meat

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When it comes to stocking up on food, there’s nothing as convenient as filling up your freezer with a variety of frozen meals and ingredients, since freezing your food is the best way to guarantee freshness, long-term.

If you’re like many people and keep key meat items — such as raw chicken or ground beef — in the freezer, there’s probably a question you might be wondering: How long can you freeze meat before it goes bad?

I have something this article does not – empirical data. And I feel rather qualified to say that this article is utter and total BS. IF you vacuum seal the meat and IF you store it in a deep freeze (not the freezer in your fridge) I can say without any trace of doubt that it will last years.

I routinely eat meat out of my freezer that is a couple years old and it’s fine. In fact, I have half a turkey from 2016 thawing out for dinner tomorrow. I believe the oldest meat I’ve eaten out of my freezer was over ten years old and it was fine.

Articles like this try to be helpful, and I know many people would be aghast at the thought of eating meat that is years old, but I and my content gastrointestinal system are here to tell you that IF you freeze it properly you can get years and years of storage life out of your meat.

So when you see a big deal on bulk meat, don’t hesitate to purchase it because you’re worried it’ll “go bad” or “Won’t keep” until you’re ready to use it up. Seal it, freeze it, and it’ll be good for a decade. Thats years of personal experience talking.

 

Wheat at WinCo

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WinCo has that little corner of the store that carries what could best be described as ‘preparedness minded’ products….bags of flour, rice, salt, sugar, 5-gallon buckets, lids, etc…but one thing that was notably absent was wheat. Oh, flour they’ve got plenty of..but wheat? Not so much.

So, I was a bit surprised to se this today:

Hard white wheat in 25# bags. I wonder if they’ll get more varieties or if this is a one-time ‘gauge the response’ sort of offering. Regardless, it’s a welcome offering.

Winco for the win

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I’d mentioned before that Winco has a little section in the corner of the store devoted to ‘long term food storage’. Well, apparently Winco, after selling out of 3- and 5-gallon buckets and oxy absorbers, thinks there might be a market for long term stuff. So, when I was over in that corner of the store checking to see if the buckets had been restocked I saw this:

They had banana chips, apple slices, butter powder, lowfat milk, potato shreds, and egg powder. Sort of a post-apocalypse breakfast selection. I’m curious to see if this is just Winco testing the waters and possibly bringing in more products.

For those of you who are local, or semi local, this is the Winco that is on Reserve and South Avenue, across the street from Rosauers.

Costco Powdered Eggs review

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I’ve never heard of anyone in the military who had to eat powdered eggs and had anything positive to say about them. Perhaps the military gets a lower grade of product…or perhaps military food preparation is abysmal.. or all of the above. My experience with powdered eggs has been okay. Theyre not “Ohmigod these are awesome!” but they aren’t “What the hell is this crap?” either. On a few occasions I have fed them to people without telling them what they were and no one said anything. I find them to be acceptable, and certainly a better alternative to no eggs. Anyway….All powdered eggs seem to be extremely distasteful before cooking. You get this orange-colored thing that looks like pancake batter and smells like burnt cheese from a toaster oven. It isnt until you start cooking them that some sort of transformative process begins and they become more appealing. These eggs, branded as “WildRoots” and picked up at CostCo, were exactly like every other powdered egg product I’ve tried. Not bad, not great, but definitely a worthy addition to the food storage. As mentioned a couple posts back, my local CostCo had them on closeout, marked down from $6.97 to $2.97 which is a stupidly good deal.

For those of us who, at the moment, don’t have a backyard full of chickens but want to maintain a semblance of ‘normalcy’ when it comes to breakfast, and have some protein on hand, these would be an excellent choice. Canned bacon, dehydrated eggs, hash browns, biscuit/muffin mix, powdered milk, Tang, canned fruit, pancake mix, honey, and you’ve got a pretty decent breakfast with a shelf life of several years. After a long night of manning the barricades, chasing looters, and guarding the house, a breakfast like that would be rather welcome, I should imagine. In a slightly more realistic vein, these are an excellent choice for hunting cabins and other non-grid locations where store-bought eggs aren’t an option and you’re not around often enough to keep chickens.

They are packaged in a foil-ish paper pouch but I would vacuum seal this stuff up to be extra sure it is protected for long term. If you can’t find these at your local CostCo, here’s the nutritional and company info:

Don’t get annoyed if you can’t find them at your local CostCo. It seems that powdered eggs are powdered eggs are powdered eggs… there doesn’t seem to be much difference between ones I’ve tried. Augason Farms sells #10 cans of powdered eggs and I’d bet they are identical to this stuff. Only major difference is packaging and CostCo’s remarkable discount.

At $2.97, it’s worth buying a box just for the experimental value.

 

Costco eggs closeout

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Remember a few weeks back I discovered that Costco was selling powdered eggs? Well, I was going through Costco and saw this:

The price ending in “7” instead of “9”, as well as the asterisk in the corner of the placard, indicate that this product is being moved out with no plan to restock it. So, if you’re close to the Missoula Costco and want a smoking deal on some powdered eggs…this is your chance. Hell, I have cases of #10 cans of eggs and I still picked up three packages. For three bucks you’dbe crazy not to. How are they….thats a post that’ll be ip in a couple days.

 

A couple CostCo finds

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CostCo, once in a while, winds up selling something worthy of catching the interest of those of us who share our rarefied interest. Notably, their canned pork and canned beef, which are surprisingly good. Todays discovery was that the Idahoan potatoes, which, according to the blog, I came to love about 16 years ago(!) are now being sold by CostCo in ten-packs.

And, much more interestingly, we have powdered eggs now.

Six 6-oz. packages per box, $6.97/box

That was a real eye-opener. You don’t normally see large-ish quantities of this sort of thing for sale pretty much anywhere except maybe restaurant supply stores. The Deb-El show up in supermarkets, but its a small quantity for a large price. My original experience with powdered eggs was way back in 2004. Interesting to note that fifteen years later the CostCo product is actually cheaper than the 2004 product. However, to be fair, the 2004 product was purchased at REI… a place not known for being a bargain hunters paradise.

I already have several cases of #10 cans of powdered eggs from Mountain House and Augason Farms. And, in fact, I still have a 5-gallon bucket of vacuum sealed powdered eggs from that initial 2004 encounter. (I should crack one of those open and see how it held up.)

Powdered eggs are 13g of protein per ounce. For comparison meat, like, say, canned beef, is about 5g per ounce. A nice option over shooting your dog and eating it. But, of course, if protein is all youre after you could probably just store some protein powder from the gym-shop…but it wouldnt make scrambled eggs, omelets, french toast, or any of the other foody things that you can do with eggs.

Anyway, for those who are interested, you may wanna hit your local CostCo and see if they’re carrying these. I’ll be trying them out over the next few days so I’ll let you know how they cook up but based on my previous experiences I expect nothing but positive results.

Wise decisions

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I read a mention over at SurvivalBlog that the Wise lawsuit has come to an end and Wise lost. (Some backstory and details) The gist of the lawsuit, as I understand it, is that Wise said their food would provide enough food for X number of people for Y number of days. Someone with a calculator and a knowledge of human dietary needs must have read the labels on the packaging because it was discovers that the whole X-days-for-Y-people thing only works out if those people are getting Bataan Death March portions and nutrition. Succinctly, on Wise’s schedule you would be getting less calories than many concentration camp prisoners.

What’s going to happen to Wise? Beats me. Maybe they’ll survive this, maybe not. What will be much more interesting is the repercussions throughout the industry. I guarantee you that the guys at Thrive and Mountain House are sitting down with their lawyers and nutritionists and double checking their packaging to make sure they are n’t setting themselves up for a similar problem.

Who got burned in this? Most likely the ‘casuals’. The not-really-survivalists who wanted to make one phone call, order one big pallet of food, and then say they were done with the food storage part of their plans. I’m all for turnkey solutions and one-stop-shopping, but having a backup plan for when the grocery store is empty is a serious enough task that perhaps a bit more homework is needed.Who can you trust? No one. So when ABC Food Co. says their package will feed three people for a month you should…do what? Correct answer: read the labels and do the math. Anyone with basic math skills and a modicum of intelligence would have realized that 450 calories a day is significantly less than the ‘2000 calorie per day’ mantra that’s been drummed into our head by government food label laws. Sure, 2000 calories is a one-size-fits-all approach that isn’t necessarily accurate, but it does at least give us something of a baseline.

Sitting in a bunker for three weeks waiting for the fallout levels to go down? Might get away with less calories. Snowshoeing to the lake to get water to haul back to your hidden cabin? A lot more calories, please. Even using the somewhat questionable 2000 calorie yardstick, you could see that some of these prepackaged kits were way, way down on calories.

I’m a huge fan of the long-term foods. I’ve got cases of pork chops, spaghetti, corn, apples, chicken, teriyaki, etc, etc. But those are part of a layered approach. I add up all the short-, mid-, and long-term food and thats the yardstick I use. And I use that 2000 calorie baseline as my minimum standard. I have absolutely no intention on subsisting exclusively on freeze-dried food made twenty years ago. I figure on using some of the expensive and exotic stuff (freeze dried meats) to complement the cheap and boring stuff (bulk packed rice and pasta) with the everyday stuff (canned vegetables, jarred sauces, etc.)

Im sure most of you guys are doing the same thing, right? On the one hand we have nitrogen-sealed #10 cans of Pasta Primavera and on the other we have #10 cans of wheat and dried onions from the LDS cannery.

 Moral of the story: avoiding starvation, and the desperate choices forced upon you by the threat of it, is too serious an issue to hand over to some marketing guys at a long term food company. Read the labels, do the math, make the spreadsheet, check other vendors, review other brands. It would be awesome if we really could make one phone call, write one check, and be done with it but that just ain’t gonna happen. Read the fine print, always.

Not Plan ‘A’

Link – Wise Food Storage Turns Over Purchase Records To Government As Part Of Shocking Class-Action Lawsuit

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A class action lawsuit against Wise Company, a survival and emergency food storage company, was filed on February 15, 2017 for “unlawful, unfair, and deceptive advertising and business practices.” Last year, the company agreed to settle the suit, and is expected to announce the settlement on its website by the end of business today.

The class action, known as Miller v. Wise Company Inc., U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Case No. 5:17-cv-00616-JAK-PLA, alleges that on its website and packaging, Wise made misrepresentations and omitted material information about how long its Long-Term Food Kits would last and how many people they would feed. Customers who brought the case (the “Plaintiffs”) allege that as a result, “customers were induced to pay more for those products than  they otherwise would have.”

What is fascinating here is the argument that since it is most likely no one has eaten this stuff, they cannot claim to have suffered damages. Kinda like saying its okay that your airbags are defective since you haven’t used them yet.

Any goober with a modicum of Google Fu can tell you that the usual 2000-calorie benchmark was nowhere near being met by these products. Or, really, anyone elses. And the ones that do have the high calorie counts usually get it by loading you up on potatoes or similar fare.

The biggest lesson here is that if you really want to do a long-term food solution you need to design your own package. You can use these guy’s products, sure… but YOU are the one who needs to calculate how much of that product you need…not them.

As for them divulging customer info. Well, its a class-action suit… without the names and addresses they have no idea who (or how many) are involved and where to send the legal paperwork. But, youre smart, right? You use other forms of payment and shipping info, right?

Although the idea that the .gov keeps a list of who ordered ten cases of Hormel seems rather tin foil-ish.

I’ll point out that if you go pay cash at the Mormon Cannery they don’t ask for ID. They may ask for a name but thats pro forma and no one cares to check if its legit.