As I’ve posted before, about a zillion years ago there was a sale on oatmeal at the local Albertson’s. I went long on it and wound up with a five-gallon Gamma-sealed bucket full of vacuum-sealed packets of instant oatmeal. And there they sat. Quietly waiting. Until one day about ten years later when I decided to pull ’em out and get ’em into the rotation.
Well, that means that what came out of long-term storage must be replaced, no? As I was flipping through Costco’s little sales flyer I see that they have 52-packs of oatmeal on sale for $5.99. That comes out to about twelve cents per package of oatmeal. Being the curious sort, I checked the scale and the packages do weight the same. However, and this surprised me, the apple flavor oatmeal packages contain almost 25% less product than the brown sugar or cinnamon flavor packets. Interesting.
But the point is that in the course of around 12 years, the sale price of the oatmeal products has remained virtually unchanged. Which I found rather interesting. It also nice to see that my food storage program has been going on long enough that even somewhat-long-term stuff hasstarted getting rotated and replaced on a regular basis. Go me!
Anyway, these things will get packed a dozen to a bag and sealed up for the Deep Sleep. Oatmeal isnt anyone’s favorite food, but it is very difficult to argue against it’s convenience. Some boiling water, freeze dried fruit to mix in, and you’ve pretty much got a decent breakfast. In the Venezuela-of-the-future you could have oatmeal, fruit, eggs, bacon, and orange drink all out of a can you put away twenty years ago. Kinda comforting, that. Speaking of Venezuela…this was too good to not share:
Speaking of oatmeal, I’ve got 5 pounds of rolled oats I need to vacuum seal into one pound portions. Living in central Wisconsin, rather than getting my oats from the store I can ride my bicycle to a farm that sells their own oats. Which I love.
50lbs of bulk oats is $38 = 76 cents for a pound of oats. one pound of Oats are roughly 1750 calories. when things are skinny, you gonna wish you had 300-500lbs of Oats stored.
We fix it up the night before in a one Qt. Thermos. Three cups water and one cup oats is about right for the two of us. Pour boiling water over oats in Thermos, cap and shake well. Plenty hot in the morning. Goes good with raisins, and a little milk.
Late risers? Wrap your thermos in an old towel.
Is the Apple oatmeal 25% less by volume or by weight? I’d guess it’s by weight, which is easily explained by dehydrated apples being relatively light compared to the weight of the oats. How do the varieties compare in terms of calories?
Speaking of calories, the downside to instant oatmeal packets is that much of the caloric value is derived from sugar. Which is definitely better than no calories, but still not nearly as ideal as steel cut oats.
The plus side of instant oatmeal packets is that they’ll be great for barter purposes.
i prefer to stock long term, 25 plus year, foods and relax because it will outlive me.
” and relax because it will outlive me”
Wellllll……. maybe. In my ongoing battle with rats, I’m discovering that they really LIKE Mountain House, and yes it does sting when you find half a case of pouches all spoiled by rats.
I never had vermin for the previous 7 years. Now I’m killing them every other day.
Lots of things impact your preps besides just time…
nick
Had an issue with some 25 year old freeze dried food. Had ordered it from the old SI catalog of years back, prior to their change/move to Utah and becoming “Out n Back”. If I remember right, Bill Pier was the owner. Anyway, opened a can recently to check them out having read the blog about how well these items lasted, so opened the can of freeze dried Peaches. Soaked them in water for days with NO change. Wound up tossing the entire box of six cans. Then figured I better check the freeze dried Hash browns I had bought at the same time. They stunk so bad, my wife had me pitch them out. Did I get some that shouldn’t have been shipped? Possibly. Made a big impression on me. Don’t count on eating what you stored IF you don’t EAT what you store. Sticking to name brand items now and going through all the rest to see if they are any good.