Survival Food Storage on $10 a week:

karlsgunbunker · 03-25-2008

The prices in this article are a bit out of date but the idea is still sound.
My wife bought 20# bag of rice for $10 last week.

Survival Food Storage on $10 a week:

The first week

Your first $10 storage food purchase buys 10 pounds of rice, 2 pounds of beans, a jar of Tang, and 5 pounds of vegetable shortening. The 17 cents change is carried over into the next week.

This amount of rice and beans gives a ratio of 5:1, a perfectly acceptable essential amino acid balance (commonly called “making a complete protein”) for most healthy adults. An extra $3.45 expenditure will double the amount of rice and another $3.49 will buy five times the amount of beans. Purchasing the rice and beans first means you have food that can be made edible with no other foods having to be added to them and needing no preparation other than boiling. If cooking fuel is short, split peas, lentils, and black eyed peas cook quickly. Pre-soaking and/or pressure cooking is even more economical.

The Tang orange drink provides 100% of the US RDA vitamin C requirement in every 8 oz. glass (6 qts. = 24 8-ounce glasses), lesser amounts of other important nutrients such as vitamin A as well as some sweet taste since we have not yet bought anything else with sugar in it. Vitamins A, C, and D are the major nutrients typically lacking in most storage foods. Don’t assume that any drink mix or canned juice has vitamin C in it. Read the nutritional facts label on the side closely to see what the manufacturer claims it contains. An appalling number of juice products, even some canned citrus juices, claim no vitamin C content at all.

The last purchase is the can of vegetable shortening. Fat is actually a necessary nutritional component even if we do tend to eat too much of it in the present day U.S. The shortening allows you to make foods such as biscuits, fry breads, refried beans, pancakes, fried rice and pan breads, and contributes flavor. In a survival diet, fat is an important source of vital calories. This is an important consideration for small children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the ill who might otherwise have trouble eating enough bulky beans, rice, etc., to gain sufficient calories to stave off weight loss and possible malnutrition.

The second week

Your second $10 nets you 20 pounds of all purpose white flour, 5 pounds of granulated white sugar, 3 cans of carrots, and 3 cans of spinach. The 24 cents left over is carried over into the next week.

You now can make bread to give some variety to your rice and bean diet. If you don’t have any store-bought yeast to raise your bread, you can do what your pioneer forebearers did and learn to make “sourdoughs” to leaven it. If you have a grain mill or can acquire one then you may be able to find a local source of whole grains at a reasonable price to supplement or replace the white flour. The sugar allows you to make sweet breads, puddings from the flour or rice, adds calories, and greatly contributes to taste.

Of all the canned vegetables to be had from the grocer the dark green and the orange vegetables give the most nutritional value for the money. Canned greens such as turnip, mustard, collards, spinach, and kale range in value from 50-110% of the RDA of the important nutrient vitamin A (in the form of carotene) per half-cup serving. Many of them also include a fair amount of calcium and vitamin C as well. The carrots have 100% RDA of Vitamin A per half-cup.

The third week

The third ten spot buys you the 64 oz. box of dry milk. The slim remaining penny is carried over into the next week.

Sixty-four ounces of non-fat dry milk will make 20 quarts of skim milk to provide essential amino acids, necessary calcium, along with vitamin D (30% of the RDA of calcium and 25% of vitamin D per 8 oz. glass of reconstituted milk). Unlike fresh liquid milk, the dry powder is shelf stable and can be stored for long periods of time. It may be drunk as straight milk or used to enhance dishes made from the ingredients purchased in the other weeks. Dry milk can also be used to make excellent yogurt and even non-fat cheese.

The fourth week

Your last purchase of the first month’s cycle brings in 10 cans of tuna, 2 cans of pumpkin, and 5 cans of turnip, mustard, kale or collard greens. The remaining 32 cents is added to the surplus from the prior weeks, now totaling 74 cents.

Although the grain, beans, and milk provide all necessary amino acids, most of us will rebel at a purely vegetarian diet, so at least a little meat three or four days out of a week can go a long way towards making matters tolerable. Other canned meats can be substituted, but as a general rule tuna is leanest and cheapest per ounce. Beware of paying canned meat prices for fillers like pasta, rice, or potatoes. They can be added much more cheaply after the fact rather than buying them already in the can with the meat.

The pumpkin (plain solid pack, not pie filling) can be used like any winter squash, carrots, or sweet potatoes and carries a tremendous amount of vitamin A in the form of carotene (300% of the RDA per half-cup). A friend of mine has developed a pumpkin biscuit that I’ve grown quite fond of. It makes a good baked dish and is very versatile in casseroles, soufflés, puddings, and as either a sweet or savory vegetable. There’s more to pumpkin than pies.

The 74 cents left over seems trivial but it will buy 2 1-pound cartons of iodized table salt, or yeast to make bread with, or baking soda for leavening and other uses, or a small can of pepper to season food. You can also hold it over to combine into the next month’s surplus.

The purchasing cycle could be repeated month to month until you reach the amounts you desire, or varied to broaden the selection in your cupboard.

If you can afford to use the economies of scale that making larger bulk purchases gives you, then the price per pound of the foods you buy will drop considerably. By taking advantage of sales, bulk food outlets, warehouse groceries such as Sam’s Club and Costco, local restaurant and institutional food suppliers, or ethnic grocers (Asian, Hispanic, etc.) you will do considerably better than what I’ve outlined above.

If you have the time and resources available to you, much of the fruit and vegetable portion of your storage program can be economically acquired by growing it yourself. Not only do you get wholesome food, but by putting it up yourself you get exactly what you want in the way that you want it. If being frugal is of paramount importance though, growing your own will need some careful analysis to be certain you’re not spending more in time, labor, and equipment than the value of the food will make up for. This is especially true when it comes to food preservation, but you can at least partially offset this by choosing appropriate preservation methods. Pressure canning requires quite a bit of expensive startup equipment (canner, jars, lids, rings, etc.) which may make the operation uneconomical. However, if you dry the food instead you can often do this at a much lower cost.

One area of home preservation that generally will be worthwhile to do yourself is canned meats. Beef, pork, and chicken often go on sale and can be had for quite reasonable prices, so even with the price of the jars and equipment necessary to process it, home canned meat will usually be cheaper per pound than any commercially canned meat of equivalent quality.

There are two cardinal rules of successful food storage: The first is store what you eat and eat what you store. The second is to rotate, Rotate, ROTATE! Follow them always, keep a watchful eye on your local grocer’s offerings, and be willing to make a moderate investment of time and effort. Do this and you’ll have a successful food storage program that your family will look forward to eating in good times or bad without sacrificing your financial well being to get it.

scor5150pio · 08-26-2008

I kind of do a smimlar thing. I have a very deep stocked pantry. we use it for daily cooking. That way things get rotated and I don't have any out dated canned goods staring at me when we really NEED the food. If need be, I figure we have 30 days of food at normal consumption. We can probably make it 45 days if we ration.

Justus · 08-26-2008

Like the article said: eat what you store, store what you eat!

Never pounce on a store sale on something that you've never tried.

I learned the hard way!
i.e. found a sale on off brand/low sodium soups in flavors that we had never tried....
they sucked and we ended up letting them expire and throwing them away.

Warwagon · 08-26-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justus

Like the article said: eat what you store, store what you eat!

Never pounce on a store sale on something that you've never tried.

I learned the hard way!
i.e. found a sale on off brand/low sodium soups in flavors that we had never tried....
they sucked and we ended up letting them expire and throwing them away.

I've been there and done that....... just finished cleaning out the rest of the near expired stuff.

Sailor · 08-28-2008

Large tubs, of cheap peanut butter on sale, is about the most calorie dense food their is on a budget.

Patient Zer0 · 09-14-2008

That was a great article. Thanks, gives me something to look into for increasing our preps.

Mrs. Hoppes · 09-15-2008

Grow as much of your own veggies as you can. Buy in season produce from local farmers and can or freeze for the winter.

Have a root cellar. It can be boxes in a garage or in a basement. Things like potatoes, butternut squash, acorn squash, granny smith apples (which get sweet as time goes on), can all be stored as is and you have "fresh" produce in the middle of winter.

Go in with someone on a cow or raise your own food on the hoof. (For us, it's goats, chickens, turkeys, guineas, rabbits. And if the dog keeps me up all night barking again, I'll look up some Korean recipes and cook him too!)

Save spaghetti jars and store sugar and flour in them to keep out ants and other pests. It also makes for a great "premeasured" amount when baking. (Example: Just dump two jars of flour, add oil, a couple of eggs, milk, and baking powder for pancake batter.)

Canning in season fruit is much better than buying the canned fruit in a store. Opening a jar, heating it on the stove with a bit of honey and mashing the fruit down makes a great, easy, healthy, tasty breakfast syrup. (I don't remember the last time my children had Mrs. Butterworth's. Restaurant maybe?)

Someone asked me how much I would need to can for apples. I said 50-60 quarts. I was looked at funny until I explained.

52 weeks a year. That gives a jar a week for a family of 5. That really isn't all that much. Apple butter, apple sauce, apple pie filling. 50-60 jars total for all that sounds like a lot until it is broken down.

And, as is already touched upon, when it comes to growing or raising your own food, have it be food that you will eat. We got 11 free roosters a few months back because the people who raised them don't like chicken. We have them here and will be butchering them soon.

A friend of mine grows basil. She hates basil. But, she grows it. She harvests it and gives it away and as a result of picking the basil leaves, it gets bigger and bushier and she picks more and gives more away and it becomes a vicious cycle. (Fine for me. I like pesto. LOL) I asked her why she grew it and she said "Seems like the thing you're supposed to grow. Tomatoes, peppers, basil, and green beans."

If you don't like it, don't grow it. If you like it, but don't like growing it, find someone to trade with. My family loves green beans. I hate growing them things. More specifically, I don't like harvesting them. I am hoping to find someone to trade with. I've traded stuff before with local farmers. Pumpkin butter, raw honey, etc for fresh, organic produce.

Stock up the pantry with local produce and it will definitely work out to less than $10.00 per week.

Sailor · 09-17-2008

Apples and Pears are free everywhere, look around and ask. Many do not harvest their own.

03-25-2008	#1 (permalink)
karlsgunbunker 01FFL - Arming America Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Indy, Airport Area Posts: 1,253	Survival Food Storage on $10 a week: The prices in this article are a bit out of date but the idea is still sound. My wife bought 20# bag of rice for $10 last week. Survival Food Storage on $10 a week: The first week Your first $10 storage food purchase buys 10 pounds of rice, 2 pounds of beans, a jar of Tang, and 5 pounds of vegetable shortening. The 17 cents change is carried over into the next week. This amount of rice and beans gives a ratio of 5:1, a perfectly acceptable essential amino acid balance (commonly called “making a complete protein”) for most healthy adults. An extra $3.45 expenditure will double the amount of rice and another $3.49 will buy five times the amount of beans. Purchasing the rice and beans first means you have food that can be made edible with no other foods having to be added to them and needing no preparation other than boiling. If cooking fuel is short, split peas, lentils, and black eyed peas cook quickly. Pre-soaking and/or pressure cooking is even more economical. The Tang orange drink provides 100% of the US RDA vitamin C requirement in every 8 oz. glass (6 qts. = 24 8-ounce glasses), lesser amounts of other important nutrients such as vitamin A as well as some sweet taste since we have not yet bought anything else with sugar in it. Vitamins A, C, and D are the major nutrients typically lacking in most storage foods. Don’t assume that any drink mix or canned juice has vitamin C in it. Read the nutritional facts label on the side closely to see what the manufacturer claims it contains. An appalling number of juice products, even some canned citrus juices, claim no vitamin C content at all. The last purchase is the can of vegetable shortening. Fat is actually a necessary nutritional component even if we do tend to eat too much of it in the present day U.S. The shortening allows you to make foods such as biscuits, fry breads, refried beans, pancakes, fried rice and pan breads, and contributes flavor. In a survival diet, fat is an important source of vital calories. This is an important consideration for small children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the ill who might otherwise have trouble eating enough bulky beans, rice, etc., to gain sufficient calories to stave off weight loss and possible malnutrition. The second week Your second $10 nets you 20 pounds of all purpose white flour, 5 pounds of granulated white sugar, 3 cans of carrots, and 3 cans of spinach. The 24 cents left over is carried over into the next week. You now can make bread to give some variety to your rice and bean diet. If you don’t have any store-bought yeast to raise your bread, you can do what your pioneer forebearers did and learn to make “sourdoughs” to leaven it. If you have a grain mill or can acquire one then you may be able to find a local source of whole grains at a reasonable price to supplement or replace the white flour. The sugar allows you to make sweet breads, puddings from the flour or rice, adds calories, and greatly contributes to taste. Of all the canned vegetables to be had from the grocer the dark green and the orange vegetables give the most nutritional value for the money. Canned greens such as turnip, mustard, collards, spinach, and kale range in value from 50-110% of the RDA of the important nutrient vitamin A (in the form of carotene) per half-cup serving. Many of them also include a fair amount of calcium and vitamin C as well. The carrots have 100% RDA of Vitamin A per half-cup. The third week The third ten spot buys you the 64 oz. box of dry milk. The slim remaining penny is carried over into the next week. Sixty-four ounces of non-fat dry milk will make 20 quarts of skim milk to provide essential amino acids, necessary calcium, along with vitamin D (30% of the RDA of calcium and 25% of vitamin D per 8 oz. glass of reconstituted milk). Unlike fresh liquid milk, the dry powder is shelf stable and can be stored for long periods of time. It may be drunk as straight milk or used to enhance dishes made from the ingredients purchased in the other weeks. Dry milk can also be used to make excellent yogurt and even non-fat cheese. The fourth week Your last purchase of the first month’s cycle brings in 10 cans of tuna, 2 cans of pumpkin, and 5 cans of turnip, mustard, kale or collard greens. The remaining 32 cents is added to the surplus from the prior weeks, now totaling 74 cents. Although the grain, beans, and milk provide all necessary amino acids, most of us will rebel at a purely vegetarian diet, so at least a little meat three or four days out of a week can go a long way towards making matters tolerable. Other canned meats can be substituted, but as a general rule tuna is leanest and cheapest per ounce. Beware of paying canned meat prices for fillers like pasta, rice, or potatoes. They can be added much more cheaply after the fact rather than buying them already in the can with the meat. The pumpkin (plain solid pack, not pie filling) can be used like any winter squash, carrots, or sweet potatoes and carries a tremendous amount of vitamin A in the form of carotene (300% of the RDA per half-cup). A friend of mine has developed a pumpkin biscuit that I’ve grown quite fond of. It makes a good baked dish and is very versatile in casseroles, soufflés, puddings, and as either a sweet or savory vegetable. There’s more to pumpkin than pies. The 74 cents left over seems trivial but it will buy 2 1-pound cartons of iodized table salt, or yeast to make bread with, or baking soda for leavening and other uses, or a small can of pepper to season food. You can also hold it over to combine into the next month’s surplus. The purchasing cycle could be repeated month to month until you reach the amounts you desire, or varied to broaden the selection in your cupboard. If you can afford to use the economies of scale that making larger bulk purchases gives you, then the price per pound of the foods you buy will drop considerably. By taking advantage of sales, bulk food outlets, warehouse groceries such as Sam’s Club and Costco, local restaurant and institutional food suppliers, or ethnic grocers (Asian, Hispanic, etc.) you will do considerably better than what I’ve outlined above. If you have the time and resources available to you, much of the fruit and vegetable portion of your storage program can be economically acquired by growing it yourself. Not only do you get wholesome food, but by putting it up yourself you get exactly what you want in the way that you want it. If being frugal is of paramount importance though, growing your own will need some careful analysis to be certain you’re not spending more in time, labor, and equipment than the value of the food will make up for. This is especially true when it comes to food preservation, but you can at least partially offset this by choosing appropriate preservation methods. Pressure canning requires quite a bit of expensive startup equipment (canner, jars, lids, rings, etc.) which may make the operation uneconomical. However, if you dry the food instead you can often do this at a much lower cost. One area of home preservation that generally will be worthwhile to do yourself is canned meats. Beef, pork, and chicken often go on sale and can be had for quite reasonable prices, so even with the price of the jars and equipment necessary to process it, home canned meat will usually be cheaper per pound than any commercially canned meat of equivalent quality. There are two cardinal rules of successful food storage: The first is store what you eat and eat what you store. The second is to rotate, Rotate, ROTATE! Follow them always, keep a watchful eye on your local grocer’s offerings, and be willing to make a moderate investment of time and effort. Do this and you’ll have a successful food storage program that your family will look forward to eating in good times or bad without sacrificing your financial well being to get it. __________________ KGB 01FFL - $20 Transfers in Indianapolis Area "There is one Firearm for every Twelve people... How do I arm the other Eleven?"

08-26-2008	#2 (permalink)
scor5150pio Plinker Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Central Indiana Posts: 11	I kind of do a smimlar thing. I have a very deep stocked pantry. we use it for daily cooking. That way things get rotated and I don't have any out dated canned goods staring at me when we really NEED the food. If need be, I figure we have 30 days of food at normal consumption. We can probably make it 45 days if we ration. __________________ "I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." ~Tolkien "I dare not trust a government that does not trust me with my guns." ~Novus Ordo Seclorum

09-15-2008	#7 (permalink)
Mrs. Hoppes Wife, Mother, Homesteader Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: New Goshen Posts: 88	Grow as much of your own veggies as you can. Buy in season produce from local farmers and can or freeze for the winter. Have a root cellar. It can be boxes in a garage or in a basement. Things like potatoes, butternut squash, acorn squash, granny smith apples (which get sweet as time goes on), can all be stored as is and you have "fresh" produce in the middle of winter. Go in with someone on a cow or raise your own food on the hoof. (For us, it's goats, chickens, turkeys, guineas, rabbits. And if the dog keeps me up all night barking again, I'll look up some Korean recipes and cook him too!) Save spaghetti jars and store sugar and flour in them to keep out ants and other pests. It also makes for a great "premeasured" amount when baking. (Example: Just dump two jars of flour, add oil, a couple of eggs, milk, and baking powder for pancake batter.) Canning in season fruit is much better than buying the canned fruit in a store. Opening a jar, heating it on the stove with a bit of honey and mashing the fruit down makes a great, easy, healthy, tasty breakfast syrup. (I don't remember the last time my children had Mrs. Butterworth's. Restaurant maybe?) Someone asked me how much I would need to can for apples. I said 50-60 quarts. I was looked at funny until I explained. 52 weeks a year. That gives a jar a week for a family of 5. That really isn't all that much. Apple butter, apple sauce, apple pie filling. 50-60 jars total for all that sounds like a lot until it is broken down. And, as is already touched upon, when it comes to growing or raising your own food, have it be food that you will eat. We got 11 free roosters a few months back because the people who raised them don't like chicken. We have them here and will be butchering them soon. A friend of mine grows basil. She hates basil. But, she grows it. She harvests it and gives it away and as a result of picking the basil leaves, it gets bigger and bushier and she picks more and gives more away and it becomes a vicious cycle. (Fine for me. I like pesto. LOL) I asked her why she grew it and she said "Seems like the thing you're supposed to grow. Tomatoes, peppers, basil, and green beans." If you don't like it, don't grow it. If you like it, but don't like growing it, find someone to trade with. My family loves green beans. I hate growing them things. More specifically, I don't like harvesting them. I am hoping to find someone to trade with. I've traded stuff before with local farmers. Pumpkin butter, raw honey, etc for fresh, organic produce. Stock up the pantry with local produce and it will definitely work out to less than $10.00 per week. __________________ http://mrshoppes.livejournal.com/ The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. – Thomas Jefferson

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08-26-2008	#3 (permalink)
Justus Bitter Plinker Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: NW Indiana Posts: 248	Like the article said: eat what you store, store what you eat! Never pounce on a store sale on something that you've never tried. I learned the hard way! i.e. found a sale on off brand/low sodium soups in flavors that we had never tried.... they sucked and we ended up letting them expire and throwing them away.

08-28-2008	#5 (permalink)
Sailor Plinker Join Date: May 2008 Location: Fort Wayne Posts: 121	Large tubs, of cheap peanut butter on sale, is about the most calorie dense food their is on a budget.

09-14-2008	#6 (permalink)
Patient Zer0 Tactical Chef Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Nora Posts: 47	That was a great article. Thanks, gives me something to look into for increasing our preps.

09-17-2008	#8 (permalink)
Sailor Plinker Join Date: May 2008 Location: Fort Wayne Posts: 121	Apples and Pears are free everywhere, look around and ask. Many do not harvest their own.