Posts Tagged ‘food riots’

Mainstream online media post about stocking up on food

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

Some of you may have seen this article on Yahoo:

The top foods you should keep in case of an emergency

Some preppers may argue that when the mainstream media start to suggest stuff like this, things may be worse than we think. I hope that instead more and more people are just coming to the realization that they can’t rely on grocery stores to carry everything everyone needs at any given moment. The phrase “nine meals from anarchy” is a spot-on description of how far away from social unrest if the trucks stop rolling and the three-day supply of food on grocery store shelves is gone. Stock up now while you can. There’s no good excuse not to.

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Posted in Nine Meals From Anarchy | 1 Comment »

Don’t skimp on your food storage equipment — your life depends on it

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

I came across a thread in one survival-prep forum recently where someone posted the suggestion that instead of buying allegedly more-expensive oxygen absorbers, why not buy iron oxide hand warmers, they said, since the hand warmers were cheaper and readily available in sporting goods stores and, they said, had the same active ingredients as food-grade oxygen absorbers? Well, that’s all fine and good if the hand warmers are cheaper and if they’re food-grade, but is cheaper necessarily what you want when it comes to food storage?

I’ve tried probably eight or nine different brands of food dehydrators over the years, and the only one I’ve tried that I would recommend to other people (disclaimer: I haven’t tried an Excalibur) is the one manufactured by Nesco, which has an internal fan for air circulation and helps food dry in half the time compared to dehydrators without fans. I like the Nescos so much that I’ve bought a dozen of them over the past several years just so I’ll have plenty of extra food preparation tools if I need them. (Shameless plug: You can usually get a Nesco on eBay for around $30 (plus shipping) if you pick your auctions smartly.)

Now, I could buy a Ronco or other model without an internal fan that would in fact use less electricity during the drying process…but if it takes the dehydrator twice as long to adequately dry food, am I really saving any money? I think it’s more than worth a few extra pennies of electricity to have dehydrators with fans so that I know my food will dry quickly and uniformly…and in the end, I have the security of knowing that I have plenty of food if I need it. (If you’re so worried about a dehydrator with a fan using more electricity than a dehydrator without a fan, maybe you should unplug the appliance in your house that uses the most electricity — your refrigerator!)

Which brings me back to the point about getting what you pay for.

In 1996, I bought my very first car, a 1984 Toyota Corolla. (Yes, a Toyota. The brakes worked on this particular vehicle…but nothing else did.) The car had about 162,000 miles on it, and the dealer was asking only $850 for it. The only warranty it came with was for me not to let the door hit me on the way out of the so-called dealership. More than $1,000 and 1,300 miles later, the car wouldn’t budge out of my mom’s driveway. Well, that’s not quite true…I could drive it three or four miles before the engine would overheat and I’d have to put more (and more…and more…and more) water in the radiator after it cooled down…and watch the water go right through the radiator to the pavement because the bottom of the radiator was rusted out.

I’d spent close to $2,000 and now had nothing to show for it. I was not a happy camper. But at least I could catch a ride on good days and hope I didn’t have to walk very far the rest of the time.

Which brings me back to my first point.

It’s one thing to shell out a couple thousand bucks on a piece-o’-junk car and have the thing eventually stop running altogether and then chalk up the experience to a lesson learned the hard way. But it’s a whole different story when your life depends on something.

And you can’t live without food.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that hand warmers technically do have the same oxygen-absorbing properties as, well, oxygen absorbers. I haven’t been able to try to vacuum-seal a jar yet with hand warmers because (at least according to the sporting goods clerk at Wally World) they are a seasonal camping-accessory item and won’t be available until later in the year. But do I really want something to heat up my food items as they are undergoing vacuum-sealing, and risk denaturing the vitamin content of the food that my life could depend on if TSHTF? Or would you rather use tried-and-true methods and materials that have been proven time and time again to work, so you don’t have to worry?

I’m not telling you not to buy that 1984 Toyota. I’m just asking you if it will get you where you need to go when you need it to get you there. If you’re buying cheaper food storage tools that you can’t be sure will do what you need them to do — keep your food fresh and safe until you eat it — are you willing to risk your health and maybe your life just to save a few bucks?

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Another good reason to stock up: Looting will get you shot

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

I’d had the thought above running through my head for some time, but I hadn’t really put the concept on paper (or in this case, on screen) because I thought it’d be obvious to most people. But since you can’t cure stupid, I’ll waste a breath and state the obvious:

1. You need to stock up ASAP on food and other important things.
2. Looters will probably get shot.
3. If you eliminate your “need” to loot for food or other things, you’ll greatly reduce your chances of getting shot.
4. If your only plan for stocking up on what you need after TSHTF involves bullets, then you’re probably going to be stocking up on other people’s bullets…at about 1100 feet per second.

I think the excellent article “The Art Of Not Getting Shot” at the link below pretty much speaks for itself:

ww2.zombieinitiative.org/node/1481

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Pay more for food later, if you can find any…or stock up now while you can

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Maybe in some ways I might seem like a broken record when it comes to continually prodding people to stock up on food and other necessities before extended crises come for a visit, but quite frankly, I like to eat and hate being hungry, and figure most other people like to eat as well.

When people are hungry, they can do very destructive things that make a bad situation much, much worse. Given the unrest that usually follows an extended lack of food, and the breakdown of social order into very ugly scenarios none of us should want to see, I hope the article below will help compel you to at least start making a list of things you use now and will need later, starting with food.

And I’ll make a plug right here for some of the best money I’ve spent in my preparedness activities, the “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course by Jim Rawles of SurvivalBlog.com. It’s worth every penny. It’s worth being able to ensure your safety, security and lack of hunger when everyone else is rioting in the streets because food prices have skyrocketed and there’s none left on the store shelves. It’s happening right now:

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/03/15/business-as-india-inflation_7434569.html

It doesn’t matter how many meals away from anarchy we are or what particular event sparks unrest over a lack of food. Even the perception that a food shortage is coming could start a chain of events that would make it dangerous to go anywhere near where unprepared people are mobbing each other to get food or other supplies. Remember the Wal-Mart worker who was trampled to death on Black Friday 2008? The man was killed by people wanting to get marked-down TVs and computers at 5 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. How much more will people be desperate and dangerous if and when food panics start?

You can’t eat the money in your wallet. And that money won’t help curb your hunger if no food is left on the shelves. Like I said above, I don’t want to keep harping on the same point over and over and over, but since most of us like to eat every day, and since more and more stories about the prospect of food shortages keep showing up in the news, I’d really hate to get caught up in mobs of hungry people who didn’t plan ahead. And I hope you don’t become one of them.

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Posted in Nine Meals From Anarchy, Why should I stock up on stuff? | 1 Comment »

Stubborn and starving

Monday, March 15th, 2010

I’m simultaneously amused and dismayed at some of the comments at the bottom of this article by people who think that those of us who are stocking up on months, even years worth of food and other necessities of life are paranoid nutjobs with no connection to the real world.

And y’know, I think they’re exactly right.

Why be prudent now when the government can provide for us later?

Why scrimp and save and buy things that are useful when buying that Chinese-made plasma-screen TV will do more to stimulate the (Chinese) economy?

Why buy extra food and build up a substantial reserve pantry when we can rest assured that, no matter what, food will ALWAYS be available at the grocery store? (except when snowstorms, strikes, food riots, crop failures or other disasters strike)

Dang that I didn’t buy food when I should’ve stocked up, because the wife and kids are hungry right now and not too happy that we bought a much bigger house than we could afford on an adjustable-rate mortgage, and now our payments have skyrocketed, we owe more than the market value of the house and my industry is laying off people like blood gushing from a trauma patient.

Each one of us has choices as to how we spend the money we earn. It’s just that some people choose to spend money on really stupid things.

I’m having a hard time understanding what’s stupid, paranoid or disconnected from the real world when it comes to having a year’s worth of food for myself and my family. Is our collective memory as a society so short that we forget that little over 100 years ago, most families had at least several months worth of food in their pantry or at least easily obtainable in their communities? But now most of us are so far removed from the source of our food that if something — it could be multiple things — interrupts the supply chain that fills our grocery stores, we could be days…maybe weeks??…without food or other items. If having several months worth of food on hand made sense 100 years ago, how has it somehow become a ridiculous idea today?

Or to look at it another way, what good is it to have a 24-hour grocery store nearby if their shelves are empty? SOMEBODY obviously bought food and emptied the shelves, so why weren’t you among them?

Because they’re open 24/7. You didn’t “need” to go to the grocery store when you should’ve gone, just in case. Now you’re hungry.

But because the store is open 24/7, I’m sure they’ll have something on the shelves.

Eventually.

Whenever.

Well, there’s always Dumpster-diving.

Or you could stock up now while you still can.

What’s your excuse?

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Posted in Nine Meals From Anarchy, Why should I stock up on stuff? | 4 Comments »

Why should I stock up on stuff? Part 2: Buy it, then hide it!

Friday, March 12th, 2010

I tend to think that if something is worth having, it’s worth hiding and protecting. Think about it: Burglars don’t break into places to steal stuff that nobody wants. And who in their right mind (especially with the economy in the shape it’s in right now) would waste their money on stuff that nobody wants?

So it’s a pretty good chance that you’re buying what you want…but it might also be what someone else wants. As I noted in my previous post, not buying food, precious metals, firearms/personal protection or other important things because someone might (or might not) steal them just doesn’t make sense, because if you’re expecting the government to take care of you after everything hits the fan, I have a four-letter F-word for you:

FEMA.

If the FEMA debacle after Hurricane Katrina doesn’t haunt you to this day, it should. Because it perfectly illustrates the mess that can occur when people can’t — or won’t — prepare for their own safety, sustenance and survival WTSHTF and instead wait for the government to take care of them after the fact. (For you neophytes, “WTSHTF” stands for “when the fecal matter hits the oscillating rotary blade.”)

So if you’re not content with waiting for the government to “help” you after TSHTF…well, if you ARE waiting for the government, you might as well stop reading this now…but if you’re intent on becoming self-sufficient and stocking up on the things that can get you through whatever economic, natural or social disasters you’re most likely to encounter, here are some thoughts on how you can keep your proverbial “beans, bullets and Band-Aids” from being discovered by thieves.

What got me started thinking about how to hide food and other personal preps was a conversation I had with someone who was aghast at the thought of buying gold because they didn’t think they’d be able to put it in a safe enough place. After all, if you have an ounce of gold, which at the moment has a spot price of just over $1,100, WHAT IF SOMEONE STEALS IT???

Rest your brain for a moment.

There are two issues to consider: What you can do to hide what you have, and whether what you have is worth extensive efforts to hide it. But if something isn’t worth hiding, why do you have it in the first place? And if it’s worth hiding, why not go all-out to protect it?

A troy ounce of gold weighs 31.1 grams. If that amount of gold were put into a cube, it would measure less than half an inch on each side.

And if you can’t figure out a safe place to hide something that’s less than half an inch on each side, you really, really aren’t trying hard enough.

But if it’s as valuable as gold, isn’t it worth doing whatever you can to make sure it’s well-hidden?

So let’s talk about something that’s even more important than gold.

Food.

I don’t know many people who enjoy being hungry. And it’s well-documented that when people get really, really hungry, they will do stupid, destructive things to get what they want. So if you want to become as self-sufficient as possible right now so that you won’t be hungry soon, after several years of trillion-dollar U.S. budget deficits and the resulting hyperinflation leaves store shelves empty as desperate shoppers try to get whatever they can find while they can still afford it — look at what’s happening right now in Zimbabwe — here are a few simple things you can do to hide your family’s sustenance from would-be thieves.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional security consultant. I take no responsibility for any losses anyone incurs if they follow my advice. I’m just offering general suggestions based on the well-documented fact that most thieves want to get into a building, grab stuff quickly and then get out before they’re discovered. Putting a few food items or $20 bills or a few silver coins in plain sight might be incentive for the perp to grab what’s right in front of them and “get out of Dodge” now that they’ve gotten something they deem desirable and before the owner of the house gets home.

Buy it. Hide it. Protect it.

As I noted in this post, you probably have a lot more space than you think when it comes to storing food and other very important items. The issue isn’t really what space you have, but how well you use the space you have available and how well you can hide stuff where you’ve stored it. And what’s most important is not the hiding place itself, but how inaccessible or well-concealed the hiding place is so that people who shouldn’t find stuff won’t find it.

Think of the boxes of Christmas ornaments and other miscellaneous items that probably most of us have piled up in our garage or attic but that we rarely access. What thief in his right mind is going to go through boxes of Christmas ornaments or piles of junk to find valuables that may or may not be there anyway? Now take this idea one step further: If you have a safe installed in the far back corner of your house, or in the back corner of the basement if you have one, who’s going to go digging through boxes and boxes of Christmas ornaments to see if they contain valuables, or move those boxes of Christmas ornaments to see if you’ve installed a bolted-down safe in the concrete floor under all the boxes of your Christmas ornaments or other stuff you never use? Thieves aren’t going to waste their time picking through every last box in the house unless they have all the time in the world. All the more reason to make it as hard as possible for them to find in case they do have a lot of time.

So picture the far back corner of your basement or other spot in your house that is rather inaccessible and made even more inaccessible when boxes of all kinds are piled up on top of and in front of that space. (Hint: This might be a good place to install a bolted-down safe in the concrete floor. Just make sure your basement is dry.) Pile up furniture, boxes of Christmas ornaments and all the other rarely-used junk in your basement in front of the area you’re wanting to keep safe. Chances are good that most burglars won’t bother moving all of that junk because, well, it’s junk.

Now let’s get back to food (because you can’t eat gold). As I noted at the link above, you probably have a lot more space than you think to be able to store food. And since you need food, and since large amounts of food can be stored in a relatively small area — 27 5-gallon buckets — 3 rows of 3 buckets stacked 3 high — can hold approximately 675 lbs. of beans and rice (about 25 lbs. per 5-gallon bucket) and take up an area less than 5 feet wide, 5 feet deep and 5 feet high. Or you could store a few buckets in your kitchen closet, a few buckets in your bedroom closet, even a few under your workbench in the garage. It might sound odd storing buckets of food in places like the bedroom closet or your work area in the garage, but that doesn’t matter!! What matters is that you utilize all the space you have and store things where nobody will bother them. If I’m looking for valuables inside a stranger’s house, the last place I’m going to look is in a 5-gallon bucket in the garage unless I’m really hungry. But if I’m really hungry, I’m also probably not going to dig through piles of Christmas ornaments in the basement to see if buckets of food might be behind all of those boxes.

I had one person point out that it would be a pain to try to get to the food or other items they wanted if they first had to dig through dozens of boxes to reach it in the back corner of the basement or other such places. Well, would you rather put all of your stuff where you can reach it easily, but where thieves can reach it just as easily? I don’t know about you, but I’m going to do all I can to protect my food and other supplies, especially as the economy gets worse and people do more and more desperate things to try to get what they want. I don’t care if I have to work a little to be able to reach my food. I just don’t want thieves to NOT have to work to get it because I left stuff where anyone else could get it as well. How badly do you want to be self-sufficient and protect those supplies and tools that will help you maintain that self-sufficiency? Your answer to that question will determine whether you’re willing to put very valuable things — food, ammo, precious metals and many other items are valuable things — in places that are as safe as possible because they’re a pain for thieves to get to.

Happy hiding!

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Posted in Why should I stock up on stuff? | 5 Comments »

Nine meals from anarchy, part 5: Cheap eats, coming right up!

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

As I said yesterday, in general it’s a lot cheaper to dehydrate and store your own food than to buy prepackaged dehydrated or freeze-dried foods. It takes a little more effort than just entering your credit card number on a website and waiting for the package to arrive, but it’s typically a lot cheaper. And putting together your own food storage from home-grown or store-bought items also allows you to know exactly what you’re buying and storing.

For the sake of full disclosure, however, I will admit that there are certain kinds of foods I prefer to order from certain companies because those particular foods can be a bit challenging to dehydrate. In particular, foods that are high in naturally-occurring sugar will, of course, get gooey and sticky when they are heated. I dehydrated a batch of apples a couple years ago that were darn near impossible to pry off of the dehydrator tray, a problem that didn’t get solved until I bought food-grade plastic mesh sheets to put on the trays first to keep high-sugar foods and other items from sticking to them. (More on those sheets in a moment.) And in calculating how much or how little end product I was ending up with for the time I invested, apples (which had to first be cored, diced and dipped in lemon juice to prevent browning) ended up being more labor-intensive than I wanted to deal with (your mileage may vary), so I decided to order a can of dehydrated apples from WaltonFeed.com and have been very happy with the quality and the price. I’m planning to order a case of banana chips and a case of tomato powder from them very soon as well. (Editor’s note 8-26-10: Since I first posted this thread back in March, I’ve found much better shipping prices — $5 for orders over $75 — at BulkFoods.com.)

Having said that, though, I’ve found that most other foods are much less problematic to dehydrate, so your options are pretty wide-open as to what you can make with relatively little effort. And one thing you want to aim for as you’re putting together your food storage is to make sure you’re getting the biggest nutritional bang for your buck. I promise I won’t “preach” too much on the merits of making and storing food that is “good for you,” but it just makes sense: Healthy eating is especially important in high-stress situations, and if you’re in a situation where you’re having to rely primarily on your food storage for a while, I’m guessing that the situation itself will be stressful. So let’s use my favorite vegetable to illustrate how easy it can be to dehydrate and store food for your long-term survival and health:

SPINACH!

Mmmmmmmm, spinach!

Now, I’m not suggesting that YOU should like spinach, I’m just saying that as far as vegetables go, besides being my favorite, spinach is also packed with vitamins and flavor. And it’s pretty darn easy to dehydrate. So let’s start with the dehydrator.

A few caveats before we begin: I’ve had several of my ideas criticized online by people who tell me I’m not using the “best” dehydrator or that I should buy only fresh vegetables instead of frozen or that I shouldn’t buy my food at Wal-Mart or other big-box stores or that THEY do other things differently and so I should try to do things their way. You might hear the same things from people as you proceed with your own food storage. I’ll offer these few thoughts to the few points above and let you decide for yourself what is best for you.

1. I typically buy frozen vegetables unless fresh vegetables are in season because I can keep the vegetables in the freezer until I’m ready to dehydrate or cook them, and if the vegetables aren’t in season, I’m not keen on paying high prices now when I can wait for much lower prices when whichever fruit or vegetable is in season. It doesn’t make much sense to pay high prices for one thing now if you can buy other fruits or vegetables that are in season at a given time and which are cheaper as a result.

2. I own several Nesco American Harvester food dehydrators that I’ve picked up for about $25 each on eBay over the period of a couple years. They’re not high-end machines like the Excalibur, but they get the job done. And personally, I’d rather have multiple dehydrators since 1. I dehydrate a lot of food; and 2. if something happens to one machine, I still have a backup. Just my two cents, but these machines can save your life. I don’t think I’m exaggerating in saying that — at the moment, I’ve got about 20 quarts of spinach alone (that’s about 80 lbs. before dehydration) that I can keep in storage for a long time until I decide to eat it. The security of knowing I can prepare food by dehydrating it and storing it for several years until I need it (and to have a lot of food on hand that can feed me and my family for a long time) helps me worry less about food so I can turn my attention to other long-term needs. Having said all of this, Nesco puts out a very good product, and I’m willing to stake my entire food-dehydration process on their product.

3. I realize that buying food from various big-box stores, most notably Wal-Mart, is a contentious issue for a lot of people, so I’ll lay out my case and let you decide what is best for yourself. I buy fresh fruits and vegetables in season from local sources whenever and wherever possible. But as I type this, it’s early March, snow is still on the ground in some areas and not many crops are ready for harvest at this time. There’s no local farmers market selling tomatoes along the highway right now, so I’ve been buying packages of frozen spinach recently for about $1.30 per pound at Wal-Mart. The tradeoff of spending my money at big-box stores for frozen vegetables I can’t get fresh, inexpensive and in-season from other places at the moment is the price I’m willing to pay just for now until the local growing season begins and I can buy from local growers. I’d rather make a regular series of purchases from big-box stores during the offseason and keep building up my food storage year-round than only stock up on food when I can get it fresh and local. Most of us go grocery-shopping year-round, so I think it just makes sense to keep stocking up on food-storage items year-round as well.

Now, having gotten those caveats out of the way, on to the good stuff… ;)

food-grade plastic mesh that keeps your food from sticking

These food-grade plastic mesh sheets available from Nesco have saved me a lot of headaches since my first forays into food dehydration. As I noted above, high-sugar foods get really gummy when heated and can stick like super-glue to the dehydrator trays unless you use these mesh sheets. But since spinach isn’t a high-sugar food, we don’t have to worry about this at the moment. However, I will point out that because of how fine the mesh is, it will also help keep food particles from dropping through the trays themselves.

Let’s start with four quarts of frozen spinach:

I put quarts of frozen spinach into, well, quart-sized containers and let the spinach thaw for 6 to 8 hours. I could theoretically microwave it to accelerate the thawing process, but since I want to keep the vitamin content as intact as possible, I just allow several hours for the spinach to thaw and then put it into the dehydrator.

So I start off by spooning the spinach onto a dehydrator tray…

…and then spread it out evenly and as thinly as possible. You want to have whatever product you’re dehydrating spread out as thinly as possible so that you can have as much air flow through the product as possible:

Then I put the lid on, turn on the dehydrator, and in about six hours (your dehydration times may vary) I take the lid off the dehydrator to check on things.

You can see that after several hours of drying, the spinach has shriveled up a bit as the water has been removed. But you’ll notice that some of the pieces are kind of clumped up, and I can feel that they are still a little soggy, so I break those pieces into smaller pieces…

…and after another 4 to 6 hours, it’s done:

And now things get a little tricky.

These dehydrator trays are about 12 inches across and obviously not flexible. The plastic mesh sheet are flexible, but they have little holes all over and a big hole in the middle. The challenge is how to get the spinach from the tray and into a mason jar without spilling it all over the place. The first time I tried to figure out how to do this, I remembered a large, flat box in my office…

Don’t laugh…because it works. :P

I opened the box flaps, turned the box on its side, stuck the dehydrator tray into the box, inverted the box and then poured the spinach slowly from the box into a quart-sized mason jar, compacting it as much as possible until I couldn’t fit any more spinach into the jar. About 4 lbs. (pre-dehydrated weight) of spinach will fit into a one-quart mason jar if you pack it in tightly.

A couple notes about serving sizes of dehydrated fruits, vegetables and anything else: Obviously because whatever you dehydrate will take up less space after the water is removed, your serving sizes will be proportionately smaller. Leafy vegetables such as spinach are about one-fourth of their original volume after dehydration, so if you’re wanting to cook one cup of spinach, about 1/4 cup of dehydrated spinach or whatever other leafy vegetable will be what you need. Tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and other fleshier vegetables and fruits will take up about 1/8 of their original volume after dehydration, so measure accordingly. Breaking up the dehydrated pieces into smaller pieces will help you get a more accurate measurement.

Portion size is vital!

Measure your dehydrated foods carefully so you don’t overestimate how long they will last. If a recipe calls for 1 cup of tomatoes, using 1 cup of dehydrated tomatoes will be the rough equivalent of 4 cups of tomatoes, and you’ll burn through your food storage in no time at all. Portion control will help you ensure that your food storage will last as long as you intend it to last, all other circumstances being equal. Measure your dehydrated items carefully. And enjoy them. :)

To help you get started:

Here’s a file on dehydrating vegetables that I found at this link. The one thing that I’d recommend you NOT DO is peel the skin off of your fruits or vegetables before you dehydrate them if in fact the skins are edible. The skins are a great source of fiber and vitamins, and you’d be doing yourself a disservice to peel the skins off even if the instructions on that PDF file calls for peeling.

Got ideas or suggestions? Post ‘em below!

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Posted in Nine Meals From Anarchy | 5 Comments »

Nine meals from anarchy, Part 4: Start slow if you must, but get started!

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

I’d say there are two basic rules when it comes to stocking up on food for the long-term: First, stock up what you normally eat anyway. And second, get started!

But how many of us do neither?

I’ll admit, it took me about two years to really wrap my mind around the idea of “food storage” — after all, with so-called “just in time” inventory in grocery stores arriving, well, just in time on a regular basis, what’s the big deal? Food will always be on the grocery shelves when we need it, right?

Let’s recap a video from a few days ago:

http://www.youtube.com/v/gWnV1kQM0z4

On the spectrum of disasters, 30 inches of snow really is a cakewalk compared to a Category-4 hurricane like Katrina — at least with the so-called “Snowpocalypse,” people more or less knew it was coming, and they had a bit of time to prepare for it (although whether they actually did so is a different matter altogether). Yet in both cases, before and during the storms, preparation either becomes just an afterthought, or it leaves you like a deer in the headlights, overwhelmed and paralyzed by fear.

Time to take baby steps. Then more baby steps. And more baby steps. And then pretty soon you’ll be miles closer to where you want to be.

But get started now.

The first thing to do, obviously, is to look at what you normally eat and just buy more of it and use less of it each time you go to the grocery store. It’s the same way with budgeting money — the way you build up a surplus is to spend less than you earn. But to do that, first you need to know where your money is going. And in the case of food, it’s good to sit down, make a written list of what you normally buy — written lists will help keep you on budget and on track — and then build up your pantry from there.

Cheaper is better

It’s a lot cheaper to eat at home than to eat every meal at a restaurant. So why do so many of us think that the “best” way to build up our food storage surplus is to buy prepackaged dehydrated or freeze-dried foods from various companies we’ve read about online rather than preparing our own food storage as much as possible? I’ve perused dozens of sites selling dehydrated or freeze-dried foods for long-term storage — but on a per-serving basis, many of these items being sold through such companies costs just as much, if not more, than what you’d pay for a meal at a decent sit-down restaurant. And just like a lot of “normal” prepackaged foods, a lot of the dehydrated and freeze-dried items I’ve seen listed for sale have all the same drawbacks as the normal American diet — too much salt, too little fiber, not enough vitamin content. Why would I pay a lot of money for those things if I can make them myself for a lot less money? The flip side of the coin, however, is that by not “eating out” via prepackaged food storage items, we can get a lot more for our money and we can tailor our food storage to our own tastes, and we can take steps to avoid the extra salt and (some) fat. Fat and protein will be very important if we find ourselves in a more physically demanding environment for an extended period of time, so we want to make sure we have an ample (but balanced) supply of both in what we’re stocking up on. But by taking control of our food, we can control what goes into our food storage.

Four pounds of spinach, after dehydration, courtesy of my Nesco dehydrator–fits nicely in a 1-quart mason jar:

4 lbs. of spinach, after dehydration, fits nicely in a 1-quart mason jar, courtesy of my Nesco dehydrator

Getting started

Driving a sports car that gets 15 miles to the gallon is great if you can afford to fill up twice as often than if you get 30 mpg. But more often than not, you’re going to want good gas mileage. And how many of us have money to burn anyway? So also with your food storage: You want to get the greatest “mileage” for your food storage dollars. Fat, protein and carbohydrates are the building blocks of our diets. And even though beans and rice has gotten a bad rap at times because, well, it’s “just beans and rice,” the combination of the two is one of the most complete meals in the world. You get all three major nutritional building blocks in this simplest of meals.

You’ve got to be kidding…

Even casual car buffs know that there’s a HUGE difference between an Edsel and a Lamborghini. But they’re both cars, so what does it matter?

That’s like saying that Steak’n Shake must be just like Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse because they both have “Steak” in their name.

And so it is with beans and rice–your food storage can be really cheap but really good. Googling beans and rice recipes brings up more than 1.3 million results, enough recipes to last you at least a few weeks.

We frequently eat the same type of bread when we make all kinds of different sandwiches–pastrami, peanut butter, ham salad, grilled cheese–so what’s unusual about the thought of making hundreds of different beans-and-rice dishes out of, well, beans and rice? What kind of beans do you want? Pintos? Light red? Great Northern? Lentils? Split peas? Garbanzos? Black beans? Do you want white rice, basmati, brown rice, parboiled rice, medium grain, long grain?

I remember being amazed as a kid when I heard a commercial that said I could have a Wendy’s hamburger 255 different ways. Did I want ketchup? Mustard? Pickle? Mayo? Mustard and pickle? Cheese only? Tomato, ketchup and mayo? Onion? Everything except ketchup? Plain? Only tomato? It’s the same hamburger. But I could eat a hamburger a day for 255 days and not have it made the same way twice. So why can’t we do the same thing with rice and beans?

What it all boils down to is how long you want to be able to eat with the limited money you have, and starting now to stock up you beans, rice, veggies, spices and everything else that will make your food storage anything but boring. I’ll post photos and more tomorrow to show you how you can get started making your own food really cheap and making it just the way you want it.

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Nine meals from anarchy, Part 2: Don’t worry, the government can help!

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Maybe you saw this story on Sunday about the rescue and relief efforts in Chile following Saturday’s magnitude-8.8 earthquake. At first glance, it’s just your average recap of a major disaster: what happened, how many are dead, how bad the damage is and various accounts of those who made it and those who didn’t. But as I read the article further, several passages jumped out at me:

Paragraph 7: “Virtually every market and supermarket had been looted — and no food or drinking water could be found. Many people in Concepcion expressed anger at the authorities for not stopping the looting or bringing in supplies. Electricity and water services were out of service.”

Paragraph 13: “To strip away any need for looting, [President] Bachelet announced that essentials on the shelves of major supermarkets would be given away for free, under the supervision of authorities. Soldiers and police will also distribute food and water, she said.”

And beginning with paragraph 25: “One woman ran off with a shopping cart piled high with slabs of unwrapped meat and cheese. A shirtless man carried a mattress on his head. Some of the looters pitched rocks at police armored vehicles outside the Lider market, which is majority-owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

“Across the Bio Bio River in the city of San Pedro, looters cleared out a shopping mall. A video store was set ablaze, two automatic teller machines were broken open, a bank was robbed and a supermarket emptied, its floor littered with mashed plums, scattered dog food and smashed liquor bottles.

“‘It was a mob. They looted everything,’ said police Sgt. Rene Gutierrez, 46, who had his men guarding the now-empty mall. ‘Now we’re only here to protect the building — what’s left of the building.’

“He said police had been slow to reach the looted mall because one bridge over the river was collapsed and the other so damaged they had to move cautiously.

“Ingenious looters even used long tubes of bamboo and plastic to siphon gasoline from underground tanks at a closed gasoline station. Others rummaged through the station’s restaurant.

“Thieves attacked a flour mill in Concepcion — some toting away bags on their shoulders, others using bicycles or cars. One man packed a school bus with sacks of flour.

“Many defended the scavenging — of food if not television sets — as a necessity because officials had not brought food or water. Even Concepcion’s mayor, Jacqueline van Rysselberghe, complained that no food aid was reaching the city. She said the federal government should send troops to help halt the looting.”

Now let’s break this down:

Markets have been looted after the earthquake. No food and water can be found. People are mad at the government for not stopping stuff from being taken or bringing in more stuff (which could also theoretically be stolen by looters). So to make sure would-be looters don’t “need” to loot, the government does the looting for them–confiscating goods from merchants to give away free to hungry, thirst, angry people.

I’m sure the shop owners whose goods have been appropriated away aren’t happy about their losses, even though the confiscation of their goods was legal as long as the government did it. And even though there were a lot of people made happy by the freebies the government gave them, I’m guessing there were a lot more people who went away unhappy when the government ran out of free stuff to give them, after which the unsanctioned looting continued.

And police and other authorities continued to be overwhelmed and unable to do much that mattered. And hungry, angry people continued their looting.

There were probably freeloaders whose survival didn’t depend on what they were stealing. A lot of people were probably stealing just so they could make a few bucks. But what if there were people who didn’t need to wait for a government handout, while supplies last, because they had stocked up on food and water and had personal protection and other vital items, just in case?

Mobs of hungry, angry people don’t do much to ensure one’s personal safety or peace of mind. It’s always a good thing to stay away from those mobs unless absolutely necessary. And quite frankly I can’t think of a compelling reason at the moment to join a mob of hungry, angry people. In fact, I’d like to do everything I can to make sure I (legally) obtain things I will need to take care of myself and my family and the means to protect what I have. Or I could take the easy way out and just wait for FEMA to show up and repeat the stellar performance they had after Hurricane Katrina. It’s free. Courtesy of the U.S. Government. How long it will take help to arrive, and how much or how little they can do for you…yeah, good luck with that.

You can wait with all of the other hungry, angry people who get hungrier and angrier as they wait for the government to take care of them. Or you can start now to prepare your family for any emergencies that you might encounter. When the next disaster hits, wouldn’t the biggest disaster be if you weren’t ready?

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Nine meals from anarchy

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

The headline above isn’t my own creation–I read the phrase online some time ago referring to the fact that most grocery stores turn over their inventory about every three days. If no deliveries occur during any three-day period, the odds are pretty good that at the end of three days, under normal circumstances, the grocery shelves will be pretty close to bare. But how many of us keep telling ourselves that deliveries will keep arriving like they always have, so if we need bread, milk or anything else, we’ll just head to the store, get in, get out and get home? That’s usually no problem, unless thousands of your closest friends also decide to go to the store at the same time for the same items, just like hundreds of thousands caught in blizzard conditions on the East Coast.

Much of the East Coast was slammed by record snow late last year and early this year, so it’s no surprise that grocery stores may have been much busier than usual in the days before and even during the storms. But what good is a store full of customers if there’s no food left on the shelves?

If people get hungry enough, they’ll do just about anything to get food. Stories of food riots around the world seem to be increasing. Yet people in developed countries such as the U.S. deceive themselves into thinking that a food shortage can’t happen here. Do the math: If grocery stores have a three-day supply of groceries under normal circumstances, what happens if people even THINK there’s going to be a shortage of something? Forecasters call for a possible chance of snow, and hundreds of people all head to the store at the same time to pick up whatever limited supply of grocery items are left. But if they get there too late and the shelves are bare…

We’re nine meals away from anarchy.

One relative of mine keeps talking about how they can’t afford to stock up on extra food, all the while buying small packages of gourmet organic delicacies that cost twice as much and last only half as long. Meanwhile I’m going through the checkout lane at Sam’s Club with a 50-lb. bag of rice and 5 10-lb. bags of great northern beans for less than $60. Stir in batches of vegetables I’ve dehydrated myself and sealed up in mason jars, add a pinch of spices from among the two dozen quart-sized mason jars of dried onion, tomato powder, cumin, celery, cayenne or other spices I’ve bought dirt-cheap in bulk quantities and I have enough soup mix in my grocery cart to last at least two months.

A man who’s $100 in debt is $200 poorer than a man who has $100, but all other things being equal, the man who’s $100 in debt can eventually dig himself out of his financial hole by spending less than he earns. It’s the same way with stocking up on food and other essentials. Do you eat five cans of vegetables a week? Buy 10 cans of vegetables every week and build up a stockpile of food. If it sounds ridiculous to think that after six months–26 weeks–you’ll have 130 extra cans of vegetables or anything else you’ve bought and haven’t used up, then ask yourself how dumb you’ll feel if weather, riots, strikes or anything else interrupt the supply chain to the grocery store and your family is left with empty cabinets and empty stomachs that didn’t have to end up that way.

“But I don’t have enough room to stock up on food!”

Do you like to eat more than you like to have stuff you never use taking up space you could use for things you really need? Do you really need six boxes of Christmas decorations you only use once a year hogging space along the garage wall when you could use that same space to store several cases of canned food? Do you really need all that empty space under your workbench that you could use to store a couple 55-gallon drums of potable water in case your water service undergoes an unexpected, long-term interruption? Could you take those boxes that you’ve stacked three-high along one wall and stack them six-high and use the new-found space for cases of canned goods so your family can have food no matter what interruptions have left grocery shelves bare? Why not show your family that you’ve got their best interests in mind by preparing now to ensure their long-term well-being?

How many meals are you away from anarchy?

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