Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Oh great googly moogly….the stars must have lined up for me today. I was at a competition shoot, supporting the missus in her re-immersion into the world of ranked shooting, when one of the competitors, whome we know, said “Did you see Rosauers is selling #10 cans of freeze drieds?” Huh wha…? I could not get back from the range fast enough. Headed over to my local Rosauers supermarket and beheld this:

Prep-gasm.

Yeah, it was kinda like that. Thats a couple thousand or so #10 cans of various long-term storage food. Now, I know that there are other vendors than Mountain House…the guys as Thrive are cutting into their market somewhat. However, freeze drying is a huge capital investment since youre basically shoveling pallets of food into a pressure vessel and sublimating your way through a couple forms of being. Dehydrating is cheaper, although the results arent as good. This stuff is from these guys. Some interesting stuff…some freezedried, some dehydrated. Prices were very good though. More importantly, they had a few things that Mountain House does not normally carry such as butter powder, honey powder, and a few other things. Here’s what I wound up with and what they cost:

Banana Chips- 2.25# – $6.99
Butter Powder – 2.75# – $18.99
Scrambled Egg mix – 2.25# – $14.99
Honey powder – 3# – $8.99
Whole Egg Mix – 2.25# – $12.99

I’ll do the math later and see how it stacks up per ounce against the Mountain House stuff. The selection at the store was fairly small. The guy working there told me that when they try a new product line, and this was a big departure for them, they restrain themselves a bit from getting everything. In addition to what I listed there were several soup mixes, baking mixes, three different kinds of milk/milk substitute, and some other goodies. The company that makes this stuff has several other items Id be very interested in and Im going to check with the supermarket’s special order guy to see if he can maybe order in some things for me.

For you local LMI, this is a huge honkin’ deal. The prices are below the website prices and although I would probably stick to getting things like the lowfat milk from the Mormon cannery at a lower price, theres some very good stuff here (esp. the egg and butter mixes). I have no idea if this will be a regular item that is carried..I doubt it…but for now, while they have it in stock, if youre local to the area it’s the Rosauers on South and Reserve.

While I was content with what we had in long-term storage, there were a few gaps…most notably egg, cheese, butter, and similar products….this might be the big opportunity for me to fix that.