Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Weather here in Montana has finally warmed up enough that I feel its safe to move the tomato seedlings to the outdoors. One of the varieties of tomatoes is a Russian variety that’s supposed to be very hardy and able to handle less-than-warm environments…we’ll see how that works out. While the cukes and tomatoes are in the ground, I still need to get the peppers in. A buddy of mine was nice enough to drop off his rototiller for me to borrow so I’ve got no excuse for not getting out there and getting these things in the ground. Unfortunately, this area was at some point a giant glacial lake so theres no shortage of rocks and stones (is there a difference?) in the ground. Thus rototilling has a certain element of excitement and frustration to it. Still, it beats going at it with a pick and shovel.
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The folks at Mountain House have warned me that prices will be going up in July, so Im putting in an order this week to beat the increase. Some people disdain the freeze-dried stuff as ‘yuppie survival food’ but if you can find a better way to get a piece of chicken to last twentyfive years in a lightweight, highly portable form I’d like to hear about it. While the wheat-salt-sugar-bean-rice approach may keep you from starving it isn’t terribly flexible and I have no intention of spending the apocalypse eating whole wheat bread, wheat cereal, bulghur ‘burgers’, and wheat sprouts. Sure, if I had no choice…but I do have a choice and that choice includes chicken, beef, pork chops, lasagna, teriyaki, scrambled eggs and chicken ala king – without the need to rotate. Additionally, the pouch freeze-drieds (as opposed to the #10 cans) come in handy for bugout bags and car kits.
This isn’t to say that we don’t keep the usual drums of wheat, corn, rice, salt, sugar, etc. around…theyre an excellent and cheap way to keep from starving. The freezedrieds just give me a million more ways to prepare the ‘staples’ into something that won’t get boring.
If you’re smart, and I hope you are, youre food storage repertoire isn’t just any one solution but rather a mix…canned goods, bulk dried goods, freezedrieds, MRE’s, etc. Im the first to admit that freezedrieds are an expensive way to go but then Im not advocating them as the everyday solution for food storage…theyre more of a nice adjunct to the cheap stuff like rice, beans, wheat, etc. Personally, the backbone of my food storage is the bulk dried stuff (rice, corn, wheat) and canned goods. The freezedrieds come in handy for other reasons, such as high portability if I have to leave and long shelf life if I want to cahce something.
Anyway, big order going in to MH and Im hoping that they wont be too backordered these days.
