Lots O' Food

[rp55]

I have a fairly good supply of ready to eat foodstuffs stowed away but have been pondering for a long time how to get some bulk basics set aside for long term storage. Here's what I did in case anyone else is thinking along the same lines.

I have bought from many suppliers and one of the best vendors has been Emergency Essentials. I was sort of resigned to buying buckets and mylar bags, bulk stuff from Costco and packing it myself which was not really something I wanted to do and why I put it off so long. I got a Black Friday sale email from them which announced a one day, one order sale with free shipping. I looked at their Year Supply of grains and legumes which was not exactly what I wanted but it was close enough. It is normally $600 but was on sale for $479.95 with free shipping which helped me decide so I ordered two on Friday morning plus two pails of white sugar. This turned out to be roughly 1350 pounds of food.

My order was shipped FedEx Freight from Orem, UT on Monday, arrived in Salinas Wednesday and I called and set a delivery appointment for today.

The truck shows up and they had tried to put all the buckets on one pallet, which fell over and spilled. No problem though. FedEx guy handed them out one by one and I stacked them in the driveway. It was kind of like an all hands stores loading party back in the day.


I sorted them and stowed them away in the garage.


Here's what the inventory of buckets looks like:

Hard Red Wheat 4
Soft White Wheat 2
Regular Rolled Oats 2
Yellow Popcorn 2
White Rice 4
Pinto Beans 2
Small Red Beans 2
Hard White Wheat 6
Pearl Barley 2
White Sugar 2

Buckets are roughly 49-53 pounds depending on the contents.

[vetnet]

Wow !

I've been looking at this exact bulk purchase, but never even saw the special black Friday deal or my garage would look just like yours right now - LOL

Way to go!

I am a little curious how they seal the top of the interior bag, as the picture on their site doesn't look like it could be vacuum sealed. I'm pretty sure they also pack those with oxygen absorbers too.

[thempopresense]

That's awesome, and you have enough to do some practice prep so you can figure out a few good recipes!

[rp55]

That's awesome, and you have enough to do some practice prep so you can figure out a few good recipes!

I have been buying some wheat and such from whole foods to practice grinding a cooking stuff. I picked up a GrainMaker mill last year and it's awesome. Learning about teh types of wheat like hard red, soft white and how to use them.

[Noraku81]

rp55,

In case of SHTF scenario, I'm fighting my way way to you. I'll bring hops and my micro brew kit! Can we get anyone with a tortilla maker so we can make chips? lol

[SVRider]

Nice!

What is the storage life of the grains like that?

[rp55]

Nice!

What is the storage life of the grains like that?

If you keep the Oxygen out and keep it below 70 degrees it can last 20-30 years. I would like to get into the "Eat what you store and store what you eat" routine but not close yet. I did develop a taste for steel cut oats though and eat them often for breakfast. Like a lot of whole or raw foods they take a long time to cook, like 30-40 minutes, and often I just don't have the time to cook them. A good place to find out about preparing these kinds of foods is Whole Foods and you can buy small amounts to practice with. One thing I have not quite figured out is yeast. I have some of the bulk containers from Coscto in my freezer and they last 10 years or so frozen but significantly less at room temp. I bought a solar over from the solar oven society and have assembled it but haven't tried to cook with it. That should prove interesting.

[Californio]

I have soaked the whole red wheat over night in water, drain in the morning. Add brown sugar and a splash of milk, its good.

[progrock]

Nice rp55. I sure do wish they'd make those buckets more discreet though. That said, I guess there's not too many non-edible things that would come in buckets like that. Neighbors must think we're

[gandalfdagrey]

Nice. I’m also looking into this, but having never really cooked with raw wheat and barley, I'm curious how much water do you think on average you will use in cooking each meal? I'm just thinking for me, that in California absent "the crunch", earthquake would be the most probable need for this and water would be at a very high premium.

[rp55]

For steel cut oats it is 4 cups water to cook 1 cup of oats and as I recall it is close to that 4 or 3 to 1) for all whole grains. So this raises a sort of strategy question. Do you eat the stuff that does not require water (like MREs) first or save them for if water become scarce. I always planned on eating the MREs first but that may not be optimum.

I have 30+ days worth of water stored for my wife and myself. I have a seasonal creek by my house and have one of those big Katadyn Ceradyn filters to use with that. I am also walking distance to the ocean and am thinking about building or buying a solar still like this.

By the way. I was watching all those gold advertisements on TV and got to thinking. All that food cost me around 20% less than one ounce of gold. Now I am not disrespecting gold, I have a bit socked away myself , but I tell you I sleep better having that food than I did with just gold. I believe that there are plenty of people buying up lots of gold who will have regrets that they did not spend a little of that money on food.

[ireload]

Rp55 that's good you were able to take advantage of the Black Friday sale. I have saved over 12 5 gallon buckets from work and slowly purchasing lids with gasket, mylar bags, and oxygen absorbers. Eventually I'll assemble similar food buckets like yours.

Currently I store #10 cans from Mountain House, MREs, and wet packed canned foods. By the way if you want to get a good pricing for 55 gallon drums since you mentioned you have 30+ days of water, SOS Products:

http://www.sosproducts.com/index.html

They are located in Van Nuys. The drums are priced cheap enough.

[AEC1]

look into using dry ice method vice the oxygen absorbers. Works better nad is cheaper.

[westcoastr]

nice buy, at ~35 cent per pound not bad compared to buying bulk food and the packing materials and doing it yourself.

[m98]

Good find. I'm gonna keep that website on hand for my stock up. Thought I really think that the company should change the name on the buckets-keepin' it low profile......Like maybe a smiley and a SMALL image of what the contents are and ofcourse, their logo, but in small print.