A few weeks back I was straightening things up, bunker-wise, and was moving stuff around. One of the things I came across were a dozen #2.5-size cans of old AlpineAire food that I purchased back pre-Y2K. When I bought them they were already a couple years old…but they were being closed out by a local surplus store so I figured for one or two dollars a can…what the heck.

A few months back I opened one that consisted of crackers, peanut butter, and some hard candies. The candies were stale, the crackers decidedly so, and the peanut butter looked like something from the south end of a very sick northbound dog. Well, since I bought that stuff, back around ’99, I have significantly upgraded my long term food supplies. Seemed like it might be worth cracking open a couple of these and seeing how they fared.

I pulled two cans out of the bin. Both are #2.5 sized and have scored pull-top lids. ALthough I’m sure that they aren’t a risk factor, I prefer cans that do not have pre-scored lids. I have had occasions where one can has fallen and hit another right on the scoring and wound up compromising the integrity of the can. Anyway, here’s what I pulled out for this experiment:

I’d heard of apple flakes but had no idea what they were. If this package is anything to go by, it appears to be granulated apples. Silly me..I was thinking of, you know, flakes. Both products smelled okay and there were no signs of spoilage. On the other hand, I had no idea what this stuff looked like back when it was new so I may be just guessing at this point. Both packages had an oxygen absorber in them. The flakes made for a much denser amount of apples than the little dehydrated cubes. Both tasted ok, although a little bland. The little bits of apple were actually rather nice to just pop in the mouth and crunch on.

I took two teaspoonfuls of each of these and put them in a bowl with 1/3 cup of boiling water and let them sit for ten minutes. The results:

The apple flakes reconstituted into a paste that was pretty similar to applesauce but wasn’t terribly flavorful. It definitely would have benefited from a dose of sugar. The apple bits reconstituted nicely but were also a little bland. I think both of these, esp. the flakes, would have been excellent for use in something like some cream of wheat cereal or oatmeal…or perhaps in some sort of baking application.

Did the product last these last fifteen years well? Seems to. I have #10 cans of dehydrated apples from the LDS cannery (at a much better price, I might add) so I don’t mind sacrificing $5 worth of Clinton-era storage food for some empirical testing. AlpineAire, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t offer these little cans any more but the same packaging is available in the Augason Farms products which I’ll be posting a review on in a few weeks.

So, succinctly, although the “Lunch” tin of crackers, spread and candy did not last well over time, it appears that these two varieties of long-term fruit did pretty well. Although you could eat these on their own, it seems their best and most palatable application would have been as a complement to some cereal or porridge. I hvae a few other similar cans of product from this company laying around that I’ll wind up testing over the next few weeks as well. Fifteen years isnt much on storage life, but since most cans are rated for around 25-30 years it’s interesting to note which ones at least make it to the halfway mark.

As events in NYC point out, when the power goes down, the refrigerator becomes a petri dish, and Tony-&-Sal’s aren’t delivering any more chicken parms, it’s time to go with what you have in your cupboards.

While we store a decent amount of food, much of our long-term food supply is packed in #10 cans. These cans are great, but unless you can use up the contents before the open container goes bad you might wind up wasting food. I never really gave that much thought because in my mind a #10 can of chicken-and-rice would probably be consumed within three days or so…well within the threshold of safety. But lately I’ve been thinking that smaller sized cans would be useful…especially for handing out to friends or, more importantly, for creating ‘custom menu’ food packages.

Mountain House is obviously the benchmark for this sort of thing. The food is pretty tasty and should last for the rest of my life. Trouble is, it’s expensive, the menu is limited, and they really pissed me off with the screw-the-small-dealer program a few years back. I’ve been wanting to experiment more with the Augason Farms brand products. I am especially interested in their ‘everyday size‘ cans. These are cans that are much smaller than the #10 so you can use up the contents much more quickly. I decided to take advantage of a sale and order a bunch of stuff to try out and feed to the unsuspecting wife. Depending on what seems good (or not good) I’ll probably wind up ordering more to supplement ,round out, and add creativity to our long-term stored food supply.

First off, here’s the difference between the #10 can and the smaller ‘everyday size’ which, according to industry specs, looks to be a “#2.5″ size. Here’s a photo for size comparison. The Coke can is for scale.

l.-r.: #10 can, #2.5 can, Coke can

As you can see, the #2.5 size can might be a bit more practical in terms of ‘dinner for two’. Of course, some stuff is gonna be just fine if you open the #10 can and then put a plastic lid on it…rice, vegetables, etc. But some stuff will draw moisture like crazy and cake up (eggs, for instance). So it might be nice to have those in smaller ‘single serve’ cans.

I picked up some soup mix, egg mix, cereal, etc, etc, and will be trying them out over the next few weeks and reporting back on what I thought of them. While I’ll be trying these things ‘standalone’ I’ll also be incorporating other long-term foods into them to see how well they integrate…like adding some canned chicken to the chicken soup, for example. Or using the freeze-dried strawberries with some sugar and other ingredients to make syrup for the pancakes…that kinda thing. What’s nice is that the #2.5 cans give me a chance to try a product without having to spend the coin on the #10 and then find out I don’t like it.

I’m rather looking forward to trying this stuff out. They have daily specials on the website and also on their Facebook, so if this looks like stuff you might be interested in check those venues for sales.

Local LMI…..

Rosauers on Russell & South has the Augason Farms storage food on sale at 25% off. Selection is limited to only about a dozen different items, but thats still a good deal. Apparently it runs from 10/17 to 10/23.  A quick check at Augason Farms website shows these prices to be better (in some cases much better) than the price from the website.

My thanks to the fellow valley-dweller who emailed me this and brought it to my attention.

Unfortunately, production of HORMEL® Hash Singles has been discontinued. Our decision was difficult and we are sorry to disappoint you.

We hope you will continue to enjoy our other products that are available in your area.

Gina
Consumer Response Specialist

Alright, I’m not too upset. They still have the small single-serve pop-top cans so I guess that’s what I’ll be socking away in the bunker. Sure, I’m disappointed but, hey, life goes on.

Dammit.

So, I was thinking about post-apocalyptic menu planning and I was ruminating about breakfast. It is, as they say, the most important meal of the day. Now, while I can appreciate the nutritional and caloric benefits of grain-based diets I am not prepared to go through the apocalypse as a grazer. I need meat. So….what are some traditional breakfast meats that lend themselves to long-term storage? The most obvious is everyone’s favorite – canned bacon. Plenty of it out there and it’s definitely on my list. But, while I enjoy bacon as much as the next guy what I really like for meat at breakfast time is corned beef (or roast beef) hash. Fortunately, this is also easily available in cans. Here’s the problem – most of this stuff is available in the #303-size cans…which is around 15 oz. I might eat half of that at breakfast and if no one else is going to have any then half a can of hash winds up being wasted since, presumably, there’s no refrigeration in this apocalypse. Ok, maybe there’s a way around that. Sure enough. Hormel (who makes the hash that I rather like) does offer their product in the small pop-top ‘single serving’ size. Awesome! As I perused their website to see if they had the roast beef hash available in that small can as well, I came across this promotional photo:

As you can see, there’s the convenient single-serving pop-top can up front. Nice, right? But..wait..are those…???? Yup, single serve ‘retort pouches’ there on either side of this family portrait of dead animal flesh. So, now it becomes interesting. See, while the small cans are good I would really like to have some of the retort pouches as well…they’ll travel nicely, fit MRE heaters, and should be a bit lighter and perhaps more durable (freeze/thaw cycles) than the can.

And, of course, that’s when my internet shopping experience fell apart. I can not find any place carrying the bloody things. Now, I’ve got pretty good Google-fu skills…I can find an ex-girlfriend or my kindergarten teacher like that :::snaps fingers:::. But…I’m pulling nothing but zeroes in my search for this product. I suppose it’s possible that it was a limited-time offering or an experimental packaging that they never moved into mass production…but if it’s out there, I want it.

So, my friends….I’m going to continue searching but if any of you out there wanna take a swing at this and find me a US source for this stuff (I found one in Japan. Useless.) I would appreciate it. Leave a link in comments if you come up with anything.

ETA: Yes, I know I can contact the company. Yes, I did that. But Im an instant gratification kinda guy and who knows how long it takes them to answer their email.

Well, it isn’t like food prices are going down, right?

One of the local supermarkets has ben running some pretty good sales over the last week or so. Prices that were just too good for me to pass up. So, when they have Green Giant canned vegetables marked down to $0.39/can wouldn’t you stock up too?

Food prices are only going up, folks. And, if you think that isn’t the case because your favorite product is still the same price as it was six months ago, take a really good look at it….I’ll bet you it’s less product at the same price. In economics we call that ‘a price increase’.

While I certainly have food socked away for the zombie apocalypse, I also have food socked away to avoid getting screwed at the checkout counter. Don’t think it makes a difference? Try this experiment sometime….head down to your local grocery store and price a 1# bag of plain, white rice. Now head down to WalMart or CostCo and price a 25# or 50# bag of the same rice. Do a little math and come up with a price-per-pound. That difference that youre seeing is a pretty good representative sample of why it pays to buy in bulk, shop around, take advantage of coupons and read those annoying flyers in your Sunday paper.

$40 billion a month to buy distressed mortgage-backed securities and that money has gotta come from somewhere…and when that finally catches up to us you’re gonna see that thity-nine cents for a can of vegetables was a bargain compared to the price your going to pay later.