Food
The type of food you choose to set aside for emergencies can be similar to what you already eat or it can be convenience items that store well and provide solid energy. Don't store anything you've never eaten before because you could be allergic to it.
Some people prefer to store ready-made items at home and in the car because if the electricity, gas and water goes off it may be difficult to cook regular meals. What you choose to store is your personal decision based on what other resources you have on hand and what your family will eat.
Here are a couple of comparison lists to help get you started...
Grab and Go Foods:
Peanut butter and crackers
Crackers and cheese
Protein or meal replacement bars
Trail mix
Nuts and Dried Fruits
Granola mix or bars
Candy, cookies and chips
Heat and Eat Foods
Canned soups and stews
Canned tuna, chicken or other meat
Canned pasta meals such as Spaghettios
Microwave meal cups
Shelf stable fruit cups
Dry cereal
Dray pasta
The heat and eat meal list includes many items that can simply be eaten directly from the can or container without heating first. Dry goods that you simply add water to can be handy as well, because they store on the shelf for a year or more without spoilage. Having easy to cook meals such as microwave meal cups or dried pasta mixes gives you more variety if you have the ability to cook.
Only store the types of food you know you can and will eat. If you've never tried a specific type of food, you have no way of knowing whether you or someone in your family is allergic to the food or an additive in it. The last time to find out about a new allergy is when you are in the midst of a crisis and have nothing else to eat.
You also need to be sure you're storing things you know you will eat. If you can't tolerate eating canned Spam for example, but you store it for an emergency, you will have a major problem if you're not able to force yourself to choke it down during an emergency.
Stocking and Storing Emergency Food:
An excellent way to be sure your family has at least three days’ worth of food available in the event of an emergency, is to simply not let yourself run completely out before you go back to the grocery store.
Generally you will find two separate camps of opinion on the best, or easiest, way to store emergency food: Continuous Stocking or Stock and Stash. Each approach has its own benefits.
Continuous Stocking:
The continuous stocking approach takes care of many issues all at once because you're consistently shopping for more groceries before your kitchen cabinets are completely empty. All you do is buy the normal meals, foods and ingredients you use for cooking every day... you just buy a slight bit more in the beginning until you have no less than three full extra days of food available. Once you have the extra food in your house, you continue your normal grocery shopping and cooking schedule.
If for example, you normally plan seven days’ worth of meals and shop for everything you need once each week, you just continue that same shopping schedule after you have purchased an extra three days of food.
If you have enough extra money to buy a full three days’ worth of extra food in one trip, you can easily get stocked up by just adding three days to your regular seven day meal planning list. Then you continue with your regular seven day planning and shopping each week.
The extra food you buy should be more of the things you already buy, because you know your family likes and will eat those meals, and you already know that no one is allergic to anything in them. This extra food is cooked and eaten just as your normal weekly food is, so it will be replaced regularly just like your normal food already is. This makes it easy to ensure the food is always fresh, and nothing is spoiled or wasted.
If you're unable to purchase a full three days’ worth of extra food at once, do it a little at a time based on what your finances can handle. Buy one extra day's worth of meals for the next three weeks for example, or buy just $5 worth of extra meal ingredients for however many weeks it takes for you to get the extra three days of meals into your kitchen cabinets.
Once you have the extra food there, you just continue your normal shopping and cooking schedules to ensure you will always have an extra three days of food on hand.
Stock and Stash:
Some people prefer the stock and stash approach because they just have to buy things once and set them aside. By setting the food aside, away from normal eating and cooking areas, it feels like the food is "safer" because it will not get eaten in the course of everyday life. Stocking and stashing food is similar to having emergency money in a cookie jar: You put the food somewhere safe where it will not be eaten or used unless an emergency arises.
When you want to stash away your food for emergencies only, place the extra food in a different location separate from your everyday food. The goal is to stock up on a set number of items and leave them stored until they're needed.
The risk with the stock and stash approach is that food can expire or spoil without you realizing it. You have to keep a strict routine of inspecting the food, checking expiration dates, and replacing items at least once or twice each year. You can't just put the food away on a shelf and trust that it will be of decent quality if you need it ten years later.
Most food expiration dates are not set in stone mind you. A can of tuna can be stamped with an expiration date that passed a month ago, but that does not mean the tuna is bad or unsafe to eat. It is not uncommon for food to taste just as good--and contain all of its nutritional value--a year or two after the stamped expiration date.
WARNING: Never eat canned food if the can is bloated, swollen, rusted, oozing fluids, or otherwise nasty looking. Swollen and bloated cans are a sign of bacteria growth inside, and rust or oozing on the outside of the can usually means the inside contents are contaminated.
Most canned food loses nutrition as it is stored. The longer a can of food goes past its stamped expiration date, the more it loses taste, texture, vitamins and minerals. Because of this nutrition loss, you must replace older canned foods in your emergency food storage stash; otherwise it may get so old that it is unable to provide adequate sustenance for you and your family in an emergency.
Taking the stock and store approach is admittedly easy. All you have to do is buy a minimum of three days’ worth of food and put it aside somewhere dark and cool. Then check the food every six to 12 months based on what you have stored.
If you have boxes of dry cereal and meal mixes such as flavored rice, you may find they become stale after three to six months -- or they become infested with bugs or chewed on by rodents. Storing metal canned goods is the safest way to ensure against most pest problems, and putting dry goods into glass jars or heavy plastic storage bins helps as well.
As noted earlier, finances can hinder emergency planning efforts. If you are not able to purchase a full three days’ worth of food to store away, then build up to it a little at a time. Purchase one full day's worth of extra food, or purchase one full meal. If money is super tight then simply allocate $5 of your grocery money towards purchasing emergency food supplies.
Since you're storing this extra food and not using it, you'll need to adjust items over time based on the changing needs of your family. If you have a newborn in the family and you store extra formula, chances are in about two to three years you won't need to store more formula because the baby has grown past that stage.
Even though in an emergency you can use older food, the best approach is to keep your stored items fresh. To do this, simply replace items as they near their stamped expiration date. Put the older previously stored items into the kitchen pantry for use in the next couple of weeks, or donate the older items to a local food pantry.
How ToPlan Your Emergency Food Supply:
Make a list of the meals you normally eat for breakfast, lunch and supper. Whittle the list down to meals that have ingredients which don't spoil easily. If one of your common weekly meals is taco salad for example, it's not a good candidate for the emergency food list because the salad ingredients cannot easily be stored for long periods of time.
Storable foods are generally dry goods and canned goods. Box meals such as hamburger helper or macaroni and cheese are good examples of storable meals, as is dry spaghetti and canned or jarred spaghetti sauce. Macaroni and cheese can be made with water instead of milk in a pinch, or you can store canned or dry milk to use in emergencies instead.
Once you have a list with at least three days of storable meals you normally eat, break the meals down into individual ingredients and amounts. If your family normally eats one full box of dry cereal every day, then write down three boxes of cereal. These are extra boxes on top of the normal seven you buy each week.
After your list of ingredients and the amounts is finished, start buying one or more items from that list each time you go to the grocery store. If you can afford to buy the entire extra at once that's best, because you'll have a three day's emergency supply of extra food from the start. Once you have a full three days extra, simply continue using and buying your groceries on your normal schedule. Add the new items to the back of the cabinet so that you're using the oldest food first. This means your original "emergency supply" of food will be eaten the second week after it was purchased, and it will be replaced with the newest version of the same item.
An Easy Approach to Emergency Food:
One of the easiest approaches to stocking up on food for emergencies is to simply buy a bunch of canned goods. This works particularly well for the stock and stash approach.
Canned soups, stews and pasta meals can be opened and eaten directly without warming them up and you don't have to worry about having extra water or other food ingredients to make the meal.
If you take the easy canned goods approach, try to mix in variety. Canned meats such as tuna, spam or corned beef hash are excellent sources of protein, but your kids might not be willing to eat them as a snack or for breakfast. Canned fruits and pie fillings can serve as both breakfast and snacks in a pinch, and canned spaghetti with meatballs or chicken noodle soup are easy solutions for lunches.
An Ultra Cheap Approach to Emergency Food:
When you start researching emergency food storage options, you will quickly find references to beans and rice. That's because dry beans and dry white rice are ultra-cheap, and they don't have to be rotated. Dried beans and rice will keep their nutrition, taste and texture for 20 years if they're stored properly. A pound of each is generally less than one dollar in most parts of the United States, and combined they can filling-ly feed a family of five people.
Dry beans and white rice are extremely bland and boring. But they are undeniably cheap. As long as you have a source of water to cook them, you can easily stock up three days’ worth of emergency food for about five bucks.
If you're concerned about having enough water to cook beans and rice, or having enough fuel to cook them in an emergency, a moderately inexpensive option is to purchase canned beans and instant rice: both of which come in various flavors to help combat the boring blandness.
If you choose to purchase canned beans and instant rice, they will not store 20 years. You will need to rotate them every one to two years depending upon how you have them packaged and stored.
Simple and Expensive:
The simplest way to keep emergency food on hand is to purchase ready-made survival food packages. These packages are expensive, but they give you a level of security very quickly, and they're hassle free for 20 years or more
Ready-made food packages generally include Meals Read to Eat (MRE) or large cans of freeze dried meal mixes that you just add water to.
All shelf stable foods keep best in cool, dark place. Generally this means the temperature should be around 60 to 70 degrees at all times, and sunlight is not able to shine on the foods. If your kitchen or other food storage areas do not meet these requirements exactly, don't panic or give up. These are the ideal storage conditions, but they're not critical requirements. If your food is subjected to extreme heat fluctuations then you just need to rotate it more frequently.
If you plan to store canned food as part of your emergency supply, be sure to buy a good quality hand can opener so that you can open the food even when the electricity is out.