Food Storage For People Who Don’t Hate Food

One of my favorite blogs that I've read, Northwest Edible Life, is no longer live on the internet. Many of the blog posts on that site really revolutionized my thinking. This is one of those. It's all about easily building a food storage full of food you like to eat and will cook/eat.

You can still find it on The Wayback Machine. But, for added insurance, I've decided to copy and paste it all here:

Food Storage For People Who Don’t Hate Food
In the preparedness world, things like this list go around periodically:

This is a guide to building your food storage on $5 a week. Ignoring for a minute that food prices have clearly gone up since this list was put together (5 pounds of honey for $5? I don’t think so), my reaction every time I see something like this is: whoever is following this must absolutely hate food and want to make it as disgusting as possible.



Now, I know the hard core preppers will say, “In an emergency, it’s all about maximum calories. Screw worrying about whole foods or organic or GMO crap – this is TEOTWAWKI!”

Maybe societal end times will come and I’ll be proven wrong, but I’m more interested in being prepared for financial instability from job loss, earthquakes and the sweet bliss of not having to run to the grocery store every other day than from hoards of roving zombies. Unless you have the means to buy $3000 worth of freeze-dried bug out food (in which case, hey, do whatever you want for food storage – stockpile caviar and melba toast for all I care) food storage only makes sense within the context of regular food usage.

You should not separate them, but preppers fall into this trap all the time, putting away #10 cans of oat groats for a family that regularly eats drive-thru. Store what you eat and eat what you store. Stockpiling 1000 pounds of wheat berries if you swell up like a Zeppelin when you eat gluten is a terrible idea. Filling your shelves with Kraft Mac & Cheese if you are hard-core into traditional foods – equally dumb. And if you are a paleo prepper and eschew all beans and grains, well – start making jerky now and buy a good local foraging book.

I believe in being prepared for the likely hiccups of life, but I take a different approach to food storage to many preppers, one I learned in professional restaurant kitchens. In a commercial kitchen, items are purchased in large quantities, in bulk, but you don’t keep a bunch of food you won’t use on hand just-in-case.

Managing food inventory is based on the twin concepts of “FIFO” – First In, First Out – and “Par” – the amount of staple items you like to keep on hand at all times. Applying these concepts to my home has allowed me to build up a deep, secure food store while filling my pantry with food we actually eat.

Here’s how it works, in a nutshell. I don’t wait until I’m out of something to go buy more. I buy more when I’m about to dip below my “Par” level of backstock. So, I don’t buy a tub of coconut oil when I run completely out of coconut oil. I buy a tub when I only have two tubs left (two tubs is “Par” for coconut oil around here) on the shelf. Similarly, I don’t wait to buy another case of tuna or 10 pound bag of sugar when I’m down to my last can or last cup. Backstock of these items is purchased when 6 cans or a lonely bag of sugar is still on the shelf.

Older purchases move to the front of the pantry and the newer purchases get tucked behind, which naturally rotates our food stores for maximum storage – that’s FIFO. This isn’t prepping the way most people think of it, but over time it has turned my pantry into something I could really use to feed my family for months, using staples to which they are already accustomed.

Treating food storage this way is how our grandmothers or great-grandmothers managed their larder. Those farm mama’s didn’t go out and buy bunch of nutrient-devoid processed food then throw a bottle of multi-vitamins in the cart to ward of scurvy. Nah, they managed a rotating (seasonal) inventory of staple foods and used those and garden produce to fill hungry bellies.

Thinking of building a larder instead of hoarding beans, bullets and band-aids is more versatile, too. Prepping tends to focus very heavily on emergency grains that can last for years, whereas building a deep larder allows you to incorporate all kinds of delicious seasonal foods into your “preps” – root cellar items like winter squashes, potatoes, carrots and cabbage – traditional cured meats, nuts, hard cheeses and even coffee, chocolate or wine can be items you choose to maintain at “par” levels.

This isn’t to say I don’t also store flour and grains and oatmeal and rice and beans – I do. But I do because these are foods my family already eats, and in a protracted emergency – a job-loss, say – I could stretch those staples for a very long time without asking my kids to substantially change their diet. My goal is to have enough food that, if I had to, I could feed my family for six months to a year just from the food in my larder.

That may sound a bit crazy, but just think about canning jam, or tomatoes: I try to put by enough strawberry jam or canned tomatoes in season to last us a year, typically. Now just apply that idea to everything you routinely use in your kitchen and you have your own personal “Par” list to start building towards. Having a year’s supply of strawberry jam sounds crazy, until you realize that might only be six half-pint jars. As long as you’re talking about foods you’d eat anyway, food storage through larder building starts to really make sense and can, over time, save you money.

I figured out approximately what we eat per week, then extrapolated that out to get a rough inventory of our annual consumption of larder items. My “Par” level for most items is 50% of that level – so at the point when I’m down to six months of stored staple food, I try to purchase, order, grow or make more as soon as is reasonable.

This doesn’t work with certain very seasonal items. If I run out of jarred tomatoes in February, it will be late August before I can make more. Salmon is the same way. I only buy it in the summer when the Alaska salmon are running and the prices are good. That’s the way it is.

Some items I do like to keep a lot of on hand for reasons that are a little bit more “prepper.” I like to have a lot of salt and vinegar and canning jar lids in my pantry. If we face an extended power outage (very rare in my area) we don’t own a generator. And before I watch my freezer full of perfectly good meat and fish thaw and spoil, I will preserve it in more traditional ways: salting, curing, picking or pressure canning (if gas is still available to us). A case of salt is a fraction of the cost of a big generator, and doesn’t require me to keep a ton of gasoline on hand in my home – something that, with two kids and in a tightly-packed suburban environment, makes me uncomfortable.

So you can adjust your par levels for ingredients up or down based on your concerns and comfort levels.

Some people aren’t going to sleep at night until they have a thousand pounds of wheat berries buried in the woods around their bug-out shelter, and that’s cool, if you want to take preparedness to that degree. My method of incidental preparedness through larder building works for me and puts my family in a very good position to weather the bumps of life I think are most likely to impact us.

I don’t think there is any kind of one-size-fits-all Food Storage plan – it’s about what keeping on hand what your family eats, after all – but I offer up my attempt at a real foods version of the above list based on the foods my family eats, and with an eye towards that goal of keeping between 6 and 12 months worth of basics on hand.

My Basic Pantry Par List

This list doesn’t include the massive quantities of veggies I grow and can, or the meat I buy in bulk and keep frozen. It’s just a representation of my pantry, and as such doesn’t really represent the full value of my larder, which stretches far outside and into my garden and chicken coop and community. But it’s a start, and if everything else fell apart, the food in my pantry would keep us going for months.

Download Par List as a PDF.



Whole Foods Preparedness List
I created my own version of the meme-like list I shared at the beginning of this post. It’s not perfect. It’s way more expensive, coming in at about $20 a week, and not everything on the list is organic. But it assumes that the person looking at this list for inspiration is attempting to juggle the same tricky balls I am: financial reality, accessibility of specialty items, overall wholesomeness and healthfulness of food, food storage optimization and food palatability for multiple family members.

This list further assumes that the prepper looking at it has a garden, or access to fresh fruits and vegetables. I can’t stress the importance of this enough. I rely on my pantry (dry goods) and my freezer (meats) for calories, but I rely on my garden and my relationships with local producers for nutrition.

In any event, take it as inspiration and adjust as is appropriate for your situation.

Download Real Food Prep List as a PDF.

How do you handle food storage?



Resources
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (The Mormons) are the reigning champions of food storage info. The LDS church promotes food storage as a duty for members and provides a ton of info to help folks in and out of the church get their food stores in order. Start here.

This all makes a lot of sense to me. It's not completely applicable to my situation, as I run a tiny grocery store and use this to a certain extent as my overflow larder! I try and have a couple of cans of what we use most to make an easy dinner, otherwise what we eat is mostly what is running out of date in the shop.
What they call 'par' I'm used to calling (from my days in automotive manufacturing) kanban - a visual system of knowing that you need more of something.

Completely agree and what a timely post! Prep what you eat already and rotate - FIFO. I enjoy cooking and eating, there is no way I am stocking things I hate. Why add stress to an already stressful (hypothetical) information? I will want at least some comfort, knowing myself.

And if there is something you want to store that you haven't cooked with a lot, now is the time to learn. Make a variety of recipes with each (versatile) food item you store. Plain oats get tiresome. Even sweet oats get tiresome. Perhaps a savory porridge, energy balls, and so forth.

Diversify the foods as well as perhaps storage locations and ways to replenish supply. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket type deal. Don't forget to store plenty of salt (unless you have easy access).

This one is obvious, but if you have a favorite item that stores well and it goes on sale, you may as well stock up. You will eat it quickly anyway.

This is something I've been struggling with. I have ALWAYS kept a deep pantry. I was raised in Alaska, and lived there as an adult with children two hundred miles from Fairbanks, so we went grocery shopping in either Fairbanks or Anchorage only two or three times a year, and we put up local meat and salmon as much as we could get. Then we spent several years in Eastern Oregon's high desert where we were 45 miles from town - sometimes an hour or more driving time, depending on road conditions. I used to keep a lot of the usual dry staples - whole grains, dry legumes, salt and sugar, vinegar, molasses, canned foods, etc. We never got down to less than three months worth of food on hand, and I tried to keep a year's worth. Plus we had chickens and dairy goats, sometimes raised a couple of pigs or lambs, often kept meat rabbits, and, when we were in Alaska, we ate quite a lot of game and salmon.

Fast forward to now. My handicapped daughter and I are both on a keto/carnivore diet (we mostly eat meat, a small amount of fermented dairy, and a small amount of mostly-low-carb vegetables) because we have no choice. We both have serious medical issues from most of what we used to eat. I would literally be non-functional if we went back to eating that way (daughter is pretty much non-functional anyway, but at least she's not laying on the floor screaming 24/7). I'm getting up there in years and have a very bad back, so other than a few goat in our small pasture, essentially have no livestock and am not able to hunt.

I have two chest freezers (one is currently not being used), as well as the bottom-freezer on my frig. I have been shopping for one month at a time. And it really, really bothers me to only have one month's worth of food on hand. Reading this thread has got me thinking about changing that, and how to make it work. I think, if I plug the other freezer back in (yes, it will run my power bill up a bit), I can put meat in both freezers, use down to the bottom in one, then refill it and start using from the other one until it's empty, and so on. (Stuff we plan to use right away goes in the frig freezer if it will fit.)

And, I can attempt to stock up on canned meats, although that's a little more problematic for several reasons. One is that in this humid climate (Kentucky) cans rust quickly. Another is that I think the nutrient value of canned meat is slightly lower than fresh or frozen (especially the vitamin C content - yes, most meat does contain some C). And third is that when we have canned meats on hand, those tend to get eaten quickly, especially if my back is acting up, because it's easier to open a can than to cook. So I need to think about how to do this.

Anyway, as Nicole said in the original post, everyone is going to have different food needs (I was reading the list that she posted and cringing, LOL!), and different storage problems to solve. And while you are at it, don't forget cleaning supplies and toiletries. And food for your animals.

My husband is on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) for his Crohn's, and eats largely meat, cheese, and some fruit and cooked vegetables. Stocking up food for him is hard!

We usually have a month's worth of cheese in the fridge, and that amount of meat and frozen berries in the freezer, but those require refrigeration. Here's some of the shelf-stable paleo/SCD/GAPS food we store (not all may work for you, and some are pricey!)

• Canned fish & other canned meat
• Lorrissa's Meat Sticks (these don't have anything funky in them--just meat and some herbs. We found them at our local grocery outlet store for really cheap and bought all of them. Now we buy them for an arm and leg at Amazon because it's one of the few foods my husband can easily eat)
• Moon Cheese These are just baked, dried cheese. They're a snack he can eat. They also cost way too much when we can't find them at Grocery Outlet (we buy all of them when we find them at Grocery Outlet)
• Dried fruit, like raisins. We also dry our own peaches and apples. This probably won't work for you, though
• Canned fruit (probably won't work for you, and are pricey. We could can our own, but life has not afforded me that time)
• Canned cooked beans (This likely won't work for you, but my husband can eat them in limited quantities. Soaking and preparing my own beans would be better, but I never manage to do that)
• Dried medicinal tea ingredients (mint, Oregon grape root, quercetin, turmeric, ginger, green tea, yarrow). We don't want to run out of these when he needs them. I try to dry as many as I can from our own property.
• Nuts (he can only eat a few, but it's a nice supplement/snack)

And third is that when we have canned meats on hand, those tend to get eaten quickly, especially if my back is acting up, because it's easier to open a can than to cook. So I need to think about how to do this.

I'm currently of the mindset that this is the sort of thing I'm preparing for. It's like a minor disaster. We need to be prepared for the times we can't cook (because life is too busy or our health is too bad). My kids just eat gluten-free & organic, so I try to keep some organic, gluten-free frozen pizzas and burritos and mac & cheese on hand for those when there isn't time to cook. And, because those (A) Cost more, and (B) Aren't as healthy, I make myself cook dinner whenever I am able. I save those "convivence foods" for our "minor disasters." My husband's meat sticks and Moon Cheese fit into these categories as well. Most of the time, I try to cook steak or eggs or ground beef or some other meat for him. But, it's hard to do that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner--especially since we both work. So, I have to be okay with spending a bit more to have food he can just eat without cooking or refrigeration.

I guess what I'm saying is, if your finances can afford it, don't stress about eating easy, canned food when life is hard. You need to eat to stay healthy and care for you and your kid(s). Part of the prepping is cooking dinner when you're able, so you can eat the canned food when you aren't able to cook.

You are describing something very similar to what I do. Some things especially home canned things I like to make seasonally and stockpile to work through during the year, other things I buy enough for 1, 3 or 6 months depending on shelf life and just keep cycling through it. It has saved us quite literally from taking very long drives to resupply when certain normal routes to town are I passable or twice, when we have been totally cut off by flooding and wash aways in the last 3 years, we have just kept going. Wish I could store as much duration of animal feed as human food, but space and cash flow just aren't there yet.

It is definitely the most practical everyday type of prepping and serves the most likely scenarios of when you might need to use such a back up. Would I also like a bug out bunker with a freeze dried pantry, sure... But myy budget doesn't go that far.

I wish we had Grocery Outlet or something similar near us. I used to get probably half my groceries at the Grocery Outlet in Klamath Falls, but I think it's essentially a West Coast chain. They have Aldi in this region, but none nearer to us than an hour and a half each way. Walmart is about the best we can do for groceries. Still, their prices are good for our budget!

As far as cooking for a mostly-meat diet, Daughter and I mostly just eat ground beef (patties or crumbled), chicken leg quarters, boneless pork loin roast, once in a while a ham, chicken liver, and some canned fish, canned chicken, and canned corned beef. I roast the chicken leg quarters in the electric cooker (Ninja brand instantpot) and they not only come out really well (375 F for one hour and ten minutes), but are great cold the next day. I either fry hamburger patties in the electric cooker, or in the countertop grill. Crumbled ground beef may have a can of green beans added to it and call it soup, or add some sour cream and call it stroganoff. Pork roast goes in the electric cooker to roast at 375 for twenty minutes per pound. And the canned fish gets turned into fish 'soup,' though I usually simmer it down until it is more casserole (not at all runny). Chicken livers get fried in leftover grease from the ground beef, or (once in a while) bacon grease. Oh, and our big treat once every couple of months is a bag of frozen shrimp - some goes into fish soup, and some gets wrapped in bacon and cooked on the countertop grill for a few minutes. The grilled bacon-wrapped shrimp is, surprisingly, still good cold the next day, and so is the pork roast. Leftover burgers can be warmed up - they aren't great cold. But if you could cook some chicken and a pork roast ahead, that would give your husband some leftovers in the frig that he could eat.

I suspect that my daughter has Crohn's or something close to it. A lot of foods send her to the floor, curled up screaming, but the reaction is delayed enough that it's tricky sometimes figuring out what caused it. Her dad was diagnosed with Crohn's probably ten years ago, but he'd had gut issues for as long as I'd known him (we were seventeen and eighteen when we met, fifty-two years ago; he died of cancer recently). We are still testing to see what we can safely add back without causing her pain. I have to do a lot of guessing, because, while she's not non-verbal, her communication skills are toddler-level. The vegetables and one fruit that seem pretty safe for her so far are sauerkraut, canned green beans, and very-well-cooked broccoli, and once in a while we have some blueberries and sour cream. I tried using up some dry lentils and split peas last year, and set her back about six weeks. So that stuff is completely out.

local food outlet 5lb sack whole wheat flour $2.99, everywhere else---at least $6. I'm storing in 1/2 gallon mason jars in refrigerator. Being prepared for the future is a good bet. but pantry inventory needs to be rotated even canned black beans have a shelf life.

Makes total sense. When my kids were younger, we did get a bunch of “just in case” wheat berries- that was 13 years ago and we still have most of them. If things go down, we can feed them to chickens. Mostly what we try to do is keep enough of nonperishable stuff to last a few months or till the expiration date- like one person in my house goes through about a 28 oz container of peanut butter a week. It lasts about a year, so ideally I’d have 52 containers- I haven’t got there yet but that’s the idea. We keep a bucket of rice and plenty of oatmeal, just lots of things that we use on a fairly regular basis.

I think the idea behind it is a good one. But ... as the comments already show: everyone's situation is different. We all have to make our own list of needed/wanted food.

When I saw that long list the first problem I thought about was: where do I put all that??? I live in a small apartment (only a little larger than a 'tiny house'). My 'pantry' is only one cupboard. There's no cellar. In the utility room is a chest freezer, but for the rest it's filled with many other things needing their space too (like my bicycle).

In my 'pantry', fridge and freezer I have everything I need for at least a week. In case of emergency I have some cans with different beans, canned fish, and some grains (to be cooked as rice) and pasta.
In my gardens fresh vegetables, herbs and fruits grow (in the season). But in case of emergency I might not be able to go pick those ...

That is a great list for getting folks into food storage for just $5.00 a week.

Adding recipes that use those ingredients would be a plus.

bruce Fine wrote:local food outlet 5lb sack whole wheat flour $2.99, everywhere else---at least $6. I'm storing in 1/2 gallon mason jars in refrigerator. Being prepared for the future is a good bet. but pantry inventory needs to be rotated even canned black beans have a shelf life.

Flours can oxidize and smell rancid, depending on their fat content. Most manufactured flours are defatted, so rancidity is not a problem, but oxidation can still occur, giving the flour an off flavor. Refrigeration just slows the oxidation.

Vacuum storage will extend the shelf life of flour, and allow you to store it in the pantry, freeing up refrigerator space.  By removing the air, you stop oxidation and hydration, and as a bonus, kill any bugs that would eat your flour. I use wide mouth mason jars, and a vacuum sealer equipped for jar sealer adapters, to vacuum most of my dry goods, especially anything that could go rancid, such as pecans. They keep forever and never go rancid.

Flours are a special case, as when vacuuming, the trapped air will form layered cracks in the flour, as it is trying to escape. The collapse of these layers will get flour particles under the lid gasket, causing slow leaks. That is why people top their flour with coffee filters or paper towels, to try and prevent the gasket contamination. Years ago, when I realized this was happening, I just tamped the flour down well by banging the jar on my cutting board, and then poked a hole down the center with a chopstick. This created a vent shaft for the air to escape, which prevented the layered cracks from forming, and no dust cloud to contaminate the gasket.

Vacuum storage can extend the shelf life of dry goods, far beyond any other storage method, because it stops every spoilage process except photo-degradation, and that can be easily solved with a dark cupboard or pantry.