Quantity of Food To Store

Based on what I saw on the plastic coffins video we could take a clue from someone and go directly to the worst case and work backward.

First get 100 lbs of rice, 100 lbs of beans and 2 gallons of oil for each member of your family. Now at least you will not starve.

Next get 50 lbs of sugar, cornmeal, flour, grits, oatmeal, and pasta for each member of your family. All of these things give lots of calories for the dollar.

Last get can goods and things you would enjoy eating. Tuna, fruit etc. But be smart. Buy tomato paste and make your own soup. A dollars worth of the basic soup ingredients will make 10 cans of soup. You have to prepare for 12 to 18 months so you must stretch your money. Also get spices, dried onions and celery. Things for taste.

Great additions to this area Suzi and Penham! Like I have said before my husband cannot have too much rice because of Kidney stones...don't ask me that is what the Specialists told us. So I have put in beans and corn because that is a complete protein.

I also have a lot of pasta. Pasta is good with and of thesse dry cheese powder, tom paste, oilve oil, plain butter. You can add a litte TVP or meat/fish to pasta and have a great meal.

Here is another web site for quantities:
http://www.providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,7498-1-4070-1,00.html

Penham wrote: Also, do things to try to "bulk up" your meal, like if you add mashed potato flakes to your soups it will make them think and creamy, more like a stew than a soup which will make it more filling. Also adding things like rice and noodles will make it more "meal like" instead of soup like, I may be the only one with this problem because my huband doesn't consider soup a "meal" . I am just thinking we will be eating a lto of types of meals and we will get used to it, but when he eats soup he is hungry an hour later. It's hard buying alot of one thing, fortunately everyone in the family does like pinto beans, not every one likes rice though, but I have bought some anyway figuring I may put in soups/stews/casseroles as fillers. So as far as canned goods, I have just bought a very large variety of different things that everyone likes.

  Recently found an article on the shelf life of canned and dry foods that suggests it's a lot longer than the use by date might have us believe. While I think it makes perfect sense to rotate preps, it's nice to know that if it came to it, canned food lasts a very long time.   Diane - was it dried potato you were storing? If so, this article says that in a cool place in "metalized bags" (mylar) and large buckets , it lasts up to 30 years.                                http://grandpappy.info/hshelff.htm

This is a great topic. We have seen many sites that have long lists of things we should have in supply and that we should be prepared to Shelter-In-Place with the event of terrorism, earthquakes, pandemic flu, etc. Here is a similar topic posted by Homeland Security today raising the minimal 72 hour kit to a ten-day kit. I agree we need to be ready to "survive" for 18 months or longer. More banks are failing daily. It's hard to believe what is going on economically. Here is the Homeland Security list: http://www.nationalterroralert.com/72hourkit/  Annie

I started out by knowing about how much my family eats in a three month period. when I got enough food for that then I checked my estimate by counting the calories I had stored, and then double checked that by counting the number of servings I had stored. I also looked at lists that others provided to see if what I had squared with what others had.

I did notice that we had about the same amount of food of a given period of time but that we choose to store different kinds of foods. I think that is ok. Everyone just might want to have different things for different situations.

I chose to make sure that I had the basic food groups covered - protein, carbs, fats, water. Then I made sure that I had foods with different storage requirements. I would not want to have it all in the freezer and then loose power. So I have it in the fridge, freezer, extra freezer, pantry, and cabinets and 72 hour bin.  Within that there are things that are canned, things that are in bags, boxes, jars, etc.

Lastly, just about everything I have is something we eat even when there is no catastrophe. I would not want to have 3 years worth of MRE's on the shelf and have it go bad after 20 years. So I cycle through my stuff all the time. My supplies consist of a great variety of stuff so that I rarely have to run out to the store to get something I am out of, I have trading power, and it won't get boring.

Additionally, I have been learing how to hunt, fish and forage.