Food Storage - Foods to Store Forever
Be Prepared: 6 Foods to Store Forever
Posted on Pakalert on October 13, 2011
Anthony Gucciardi
Activist Post
In the event of a global food crisis, it is vital to be prepared. The key to preparedness is storing food that is easy to get a hold of, will last for several years or even decades, and is somewhat nutrient-dense. While it is always important to purchase high quality organic foods, in the event of a food crisis it is often essential to exercise your survival skills, which may mean it is hard to come across optimal food sources.
1. Be prepared with rice
When storing food for a global food crisis, rice is perfect as it adheres to the essential principals of food storage. White, jasmine, wild, arborio, and basmati rice all have an almost indefinite shelf life. Rice is considered by many to be the ultimate survivalist food to stockpile in order to be prepared for a food crisis. Brown rice, while a healthier alternative to white, has a shorter lifespan. Due to the higher oil content of the food, it will go bad faster.
2. Survive the food crisis with distilled white vinegar
White vinegar is a popular choice for salad dressings and marinades. With a long shelf life that makes it a perfect for food preparedness, distilled white vinegar will maintain its quality and taste for about as the entirety of its lifespan. Be prepared with distilled white vinegar.
3. Enhance your survival skills with sea salt
Sea salt is the ‘real’ form of traditional table salt, sodium chloride. It is the ideal choice over its unhealthy counterpart, but in the event of a food crisis sodium chloride can also do the job. It is better to be prepared with sodium chloride than to not have anything at all. Salt is a powerful flavor enhancer that will never go bad. It can also be used to cure meats, which is a great way to maintain the integrity of stored meats.
4. Honey
Honey has such a long shelf life that it has even been recovered from Egyptian tombs. While it can change color and crystallize over time, its edibility does not change. You can even restore crystallized honey by adding warm water and stirring. In its raw form, honey is also full of enzymes and essential nutrients.
5. Cornstarch, the everlasting food ingredient for a food crisis
Cornstarch is a food substance that has a variety of uses. Helpful in thickening gravies, sauces, or soups, cornstarch is a food crisis necessity that will help you be prepared. It is important to note that while all of these ingredients will have an increased lifespan when kept in a cool, dry space, cornstarch will particularly be affected.
6. Pure vanilla extract
Pure vanilla extract, different from its imitation counterpart vanilla extract, will last forever. The extra cost over its imitation is only minor compared to the elongated shelf life of pure vanilla extract.
Honing your survival skills will help you to be prepared if a food crisis is to ever strike the nation, or even the globe. Stocking up on these key foods will ensure that you and your family will not go hungry if such an event is to unfold. Even more impressive is the fact that these ingredients can be easily purchased at local grocery stores, making them convenient yet potent.
Storing food for a global food crisis may not be the first thing on your mind right now, but it is certainly great to know in the case of any food crisis. Although survival skills are not nearly as necessary in today’s society due to great advancements, having them could one day positively effect your life greatly.
Please visit Natural Society for more great health news and vaccine information.
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2011/10/13/be-prepared-6-foods-to-store-forever/
Black Blade: You can almost survive on rice alone as long as you had various flavorings to keep it somewhat interesting. Honey will last forever and a couple 5-gallon buckets are essential in any home food storage.
Organize and Rotate your Food Supplies
Organize and Rotate your Food Supplies
Posted on truther on November 5, 2011
Until recently, I thought we were organized with our food storage and rotation. I discovered that there is room for improvement!
We’ve been going through and packing all of our ‘stuff’ during the past month as we get ready to move to another area. We’re not on a schedule so we have been going through all of our accumulated stuff in a methodical way rather than throwing everything in boxes and shoving off.
http://www.pakalertpress.com/wp-cont...d-Supplies.jpg
We’ve managed to weed out alot of items that we really don’t use or need anymore and have donated or sold some of it. The big surprise though (other than the realization of how much we all accumulate over time) was finding stashes of food that we had forgotten about, which was well beyond expiration.
Many years ago we had slowly started to accumulate some extra food, because we live in earthquake country (although not for much longer…). We happen to live very near one of the big faults that they expect to let-loose… they keep on saying that the ‘big one’ will happen within 30 years, the same thing that they were saying when we moved here 14 years ago. One thing I know is, the clock is ticking.
Anyway, as beginners years ago, we bought lots of various foods and started storing them in various places. Some in bins, boxes, and shelves in the shed, some on shelves in the pantry, etc. One of the problems we discovered while recently packing is that we lost track of all that we had, and where it all was stored. We came across several bins and boxes of old food. Oops…
While we looked through the old foods, we discovered that the foods we bought those years ago were not the smartest purchases. We didn’t necessarily buy the foods that we normally eat. Not only that, but we bought too many of some items and we should’ve known that we wouldn’t eat that much of this or that. Nowadays we know the saying, “Store what you eat, and eat what you store”. As a general rule, you shouldn’t buy food that you don’t normally eat (there are exceptions).
I do believe that if all your food storage is visible, it will be a much less wasteful system than having foods stored in boxes and bins that you lose track of. Some people are better disciplined than others with maintaining lists, and may be perfectly fine with having foods tucked away here and there, but I’ll bet that most folks aren’t that disciplined, and need to ‘see’ what they have.
If you see what you have on the shelves, then you are less likely to buy too much of this or that, and are more likely to be able to rotate your foods such that you eat the oldest first and keep it going in order so nothing spoils over time.
So, hopefully some of you will learn from our own mistakes. Try not to hide away storage foods such that you may forget about it or forget exactly what you have and when you stored it or when it will expire (there are exceptions).
Source
Black Blade: One way to keep inventory is to constantly rotate and log our items in a spreadsheet in excel. Other items in my inventory like freeze-dried have no expiration date and will last forever. Even "expiration dates" on canned goods are meaningless as most every such item is good for years. Expiration dates are only for marketing reasons and is a ploy to get people to throw out older food stuffs and buy newer.
