I have a vacuum sealer and some five gallon buckets, and know where to get oxygen absorbers. I also understand that local LDS churches have canneries and let outsiders use them when they do not need them.

The problem is that you have to have the stuff that you are going to seal on hand.

Since I am not making powdered milk, or granulated sugar, or processed hard white wheat, or dried pintos, you still have to get them shipped to you, which might as well be in the final packed configuration. Shipping charges are horrendous. The alternative is that I understand if you buty a minimum amount, they periodically send trucks out on the circuit route for semi-local deliveries, but the chearges are only reduced somewhat, and am not able to fill half of my garage with bulk food.

Anything that you can get in bulk locally could be packed as you suggest fairly easily, packing materials (buckets, bags, absorbers, etc.) and instructions are available online.

I suppose that you could configure buckets with a variety of staples configured as you desire (making acquisition easier as well), but I have not seen that done before. For maximum shelf life, the products still need to be kept in a cool, climate controlled environment, like a basement.

Good thinking though.

TR

Vacuum Seals
 

Just something to remember when vacuum sealing. Once you suck it down it will be as hard as a rock.

Bulk storage of one mylar bag and a 6 gal. bucket will fill just about every square inch of space. A number of smaller irregular vacuum sealed bags would fill the same space but have less volume due to voids.

The technique used should be tailored to the individual's needs.

Pete

Who vacuum sealed many a cloth item for a sub-surface swim using plastic bags and a boat foot pump.

Pete:

Roger that.

Sharp or pointed items (like grain) will puncture most plastic bags, even without vacuum packing, that is why they use a good quality Mylar bag for vacuum packing bulk food inside the buckets.

TR

I have no idea if this will work with other grains (it does work with rice and dry pasta) but the following is how Thai farmers store rice long-term for their own use.

Take a lidded plastic garbage can.

Fill it 80% full (approximately) with rice grain.

Add enough chili-peppers to cover half of the remaining space.

Stir the chili peppers into the rice (so they are fairly uniformly dispersed throughout the container).

But the top on.

The chili-pepper keeps both pests that would eat the rice and bacteria away.

It works. Extraordinarily well. No requirement for vacuum. Remove the peppers from scoops of rice taken out for preparation and use for seasoning.

Thanks for this! Really useful info, and given the current immigration situation bulk supplies of peppers are available at the local supermercado. I assume the really hot ones are used?

If you have a big chest freezer (I don't) I've heard that freezing sacks of rice/grain for 3 days prior to putting into mylar bag/bucket also works well. Kills all the eggs. Of course, the dry ice/oxygen absorber/nitrogen methods to be found all over the net are reputed to work well.

Reaper, I was in the same boat as you regarding bulk grains and shipping. I eventually found bulk supplies of legumes, dent corn, wheat, amaranth, etc. at a local business that supplies the restaurant trade with "premium" product. They also carry morels, truffles, blue corn for $12 appetizers, etc. While the price was probably double fair market value, the fact that there was no shipping made it a screaming bargain compared to the Walton Feed/Emergency Essential route. And the product was beautiful, I have to admit. Clean, dry, no broken grains, etc. Still had to be put up in mylar/buckets.

It's also worth a shot calling the LDS chapter and inquiring about getting in on a bulk buy. Food co-ops often have bulk product, there's a state list here. Organic food stores are sometimes a good resource.

I've been away in Singapore. The people I worked with represent a mirror image of the average American: they are all prepping like mad, even given the challenge most face with small living spaces. Many Indonesians commute to S'pore (on cheap charter flights) to work as domestics, service workers, etc. The Singaporeans know they are on the front lines if a pandemic pops up in Indonesia.

Recipes
 

Regarding bulk food purchases:

It's a really good idea to dig up recipes on the Internet and print them out now. You'll identify the additional ingredients needed to turn the bulk product into edible food and you'll be forced to think about cooking/baking requirements. Team Sergeant will parch his corn on a heated flat rock and choke it down with agave juice, but I'm hoping for a better menu. ;)

We have a mix of canned food that we try to rotate (unsuccessfully in most cases), Mountain House (this was a freebie) and bulk rice, corn, hard red wheat, soft white wheat, legumes, and pasta. I plan on stretching the canned food and the Mountain House by serving it over rice and beans (a big single-serving can of Progresso soup poured over four cups of rice/one cup of beans is a filling meal for four, and certainly better than the noodles and ketchup I've eaten for weeks at a time :) ).

Now, I make a mean loaf of crusty peasant bread, and I have the ingredients to make it, but I think it would be foolish to count on my oven being available in any serious crisis. Recipes for wheat tortillas, Indian Roti and Chapattis, and other unleavened flat breads are all over the Internet and they can be cooked using a cast iron skillet over an open fire. You do have a cast iron skillet and dutch oven?

Corn bread, polenta, hasty pudding, and other recipes for using ground dent corn are also all over the place. Corn needs to be soaked in a lye solution (wood ashes in water is the traditional method) to make the niacin in corn nutritionally available (as in grits) but just grinding it makes a really tasty cornmeal that has dozens of uses. Those cowboys ate cornbread and beans for a reason: as with beans and rice, corn and rice in combination has all the essential amino acids.

Grinding. You can sprout your grains or simply boil them into a mush but to really make anything tasty out of them you'll need to grind them. Manual grain mills don't come cheap. In a pinch, you can get three lengths of black pipe (the kind that carries residential natural gas) and wire them together side-by-side into a single triangular length. Open both ends of big coffee can, place it on a concrete surface, and fill 1/3 with grain. Drop the pipe into the can. Repeat a gillion times. I prefer a mill and I'll reluctantly say I have the Country Living Mill. It's not the Cadillac of mills, but it's reasonably priced compared to the others and it has Cadillac performance. As noted in the link, the mill is mostly plastic, but it's German plastic and this little mill has a rabid following if you do some research. It's reputed to hold up well. YMMV.

Finally, cooking oil. Oil and shortening will provide many essential nutrients and calories in an extended emergency. I have several large cans of olive oil (cost a bomb) and it's reputed to last virtually forever if left unopened in the can in a cool place. Cooking oil has the shortest shelf life of any stored food - I can't get a straight answer on this but I hear 6 months to a year. Canned Crisco can be stored for a coupla years, I've heard. But at the first hint of trouble, I'll be finishing my preps by getting several of those bulk jugs of canola oil used by turkey fryers.

Don't forget salt and vitamins.

Great info as usual.

I was thinking about this today. You can survive on plain, boiled rice, but you're not going to be having a good time doing it. Salt, spices, etc will really go a long way in having a tasty meal.

And vitamins will help where you might be lacking. What's the usual shelf-life of a normal multi-vitamin??

I have a Family Grain Mill.

It comes hand powered or electric. The hand version can be found for less than $100, delivered. It is durable, reliable, and does a good, if slightly coarse job.

The Country Living Mill is a Cadillac, IMHO.

TR

Well guys, are we going to divide up the "preparedness" into sections as TS stated?:munchin

Generally I believe it's approximately 1-2 years, (based on when I last bought mine and the expiration date on the bottle) and they should be stored in a cool, dry place.

Meds, food, and batteries will keep well beyond their shelf life if refrigerated (but not necessarily if frozen).

Most will still have some effect remaining, but meds are a real tricky area.

TR

Speaking of meds. Isn't Tetracycline one of the meds that is a no-no after it expires? Something about kidney damage?

Just a bit off subject…

Just an observation, this is going to have to be reorganized in some form after we are done here, and maybe even available in a print form with a good index. If we wrap things up before I take off for selection and all that, I have a friend in the printing business that might help…. But this in not something to rush, and it may have to be something that we as a forum do much further down the line.

Additionally it could be a good source of income for both this forum and a worthy cause like the Warrior Foundation, or the like…

Just my 0.02

JPH

You will still find this all over the Internet and your family doc will use it as a scare tactic for not using drugs past their expiry date, but it's an urban legend. Forty years ago, there was exactly one case of irreversible kidney damage due to out-of-date tetracycline, and that was due to an "inert" ingredient that combined with the TC and caused the problem. The formulation was changed and the problem disappeared.

As TR said, most drugs are perfectly good long after their expiry date has passed. The Pentagon instituted a series of studies, and then a program called Shelf Life Extension Program (SLEP) that has saved tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars by dispensing drugs after their expiry. I think there's a database online somewhere (Google SLEP) detailing the results of the studies. You can look up individual drugs.

Note this extended life is not true across the board: nitroglycerin and other drugs lose potency very quickly. But most blood pressure pills, antibiotics, antivirals (incl. Tamiflu) can be nearly 100% potent ten years after expiry.

Amen. That's why I like Greenhat's tip regarding chiles in the rice. Dehydrated onions/green peppers/mushrooms, bullion, hot sauce, worsteshire sauce, spices, etc. would really make a difference. This is one place having a dehydrator and a vacuum sealer really shines. A tip though: if you dehydrate diced onions make sure you do it outside. Lesson learned.