Tag Archives: food

Video – How long could you survive in a supermarket

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If you remember the fast-zombie movie, 28 Days Later, there was a scene where the survivors find a supermarket and load up. One of the interesting things in the scene was that the irradiated produce held up much better than the non-irradiated. On a side note, irradiated produce is far more common in Europe than it is in the US because, it seems, we in the US have a knee-jerk reaction to the word ‘irradiated’. If you knew how much stuff in this country is sterilized through irradiation (esp. in the medical industry) I think you’dbe quite surprised.

Anyway, its a trope of apocalypse fiction that survivors either a) find supermarkets that are looted and beyond salvage or b) spared from looting and are treasure trove of unimaginable stores. Which raises an interesting question: if you had a supermarket all to yourself, how long would you be able to survive? Well, someone did the math:

I very much like the fact that they address the issue of food spoilage for the dairy and deli counters. But I think that if you hit the home canning aisle, and then the housewares aisle, you could at least get enough gear to water-bath can some of the produce. If they had a pressure canner on the rack in the home canning aisle you’d be freakin’ golden.

Realistically, I doubt getting locked inside a supermarket is an actual apocalypse thing. Even in post-apocalyptic fiction you’d have to do some pretty deus ex machina to contrive a logical reason for people to be locked in a supermarket (Stephen King’s “The Mist” not withstanding). More likely, you’d have survivors ‘own’ the supermarket and guard it as an extremely high-value resource…assuming they don’t start methodically taking the contents back to their stronghold.

But, if you were forced to stay in a supermarket, how long would you be able to keep from starving? TL;DR = 63 years.

I can’t think of any disaster that would preclude me from being able to otherwise source food for 63 years but…good to know that if I hit the local Safeway as the sole survivor of..whatever…I can cross ‘food’ off my list for the rest of my life.

Canned beef back at Costco

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I usually have an aversion to canned meats. Intellectually I know that the meat is, in fact, what it says it is on the label… yet, every single time I open a can of chicken, beef, or tuna, it smells like cat food. Years ago, I tried the Costco canned roast beef and, once you got it into a pan and heated up, it was delicious. I mean, really good. So I grabbed a bunch and, naturally, Costco stopped selling it. It has been, no lie, probably five or six years since I’ve seen canned roast beef at Costco.

Now, one thing I have noticed about other canned beef products is that virtually none of them are made-in-USA. Invariably they are from Brazil or Argentina or some other south American country. And while I’m sure (eyeroll) that their quality control standards are first rate, I think I’d rather stuff my face with American beef rather than something some gaucho carved up and processed through a semi-Third World processing plant.

Anyway…..

Up at Costco today and beheld this:

Let’s do some math.

4-12 oz. cans at 9.69 means each can is $2.42. Each can is 12 oz. so that comes out to $3.20~ per pound. Now, I know what you’re going to say – “But Commander, part of that 12 oz. is water weight from the broth its packaged in.” You are correct, sir. However, this is $3.20 per pound of cooked beef, whereas the pricing youre comparing your meat counter purchase to is for raw beef. We all agree that a quarter-pound burger patty ain’t 4 oz. once we’re done cooking it, right? So, to my way of thinking, I’m guessing that the post-cooked weight of the canned beef with its broth is probably pretty close to what the pre-cooked weight of the actual raw beef would be. So, I’m reasonably comfortable with saying its $3.20/#. With that said, $3.20/# is actually a decent deal these days.

But, even at a dollar a pound it’s no bargain if it tastes horrible enough that you won’t eat it. So, let’s cook up some rice, throw the contents of the can into a pan, heat it up, add in some soy sauce or chili paste, serve it over some rice, and see if it’s worth going long on.

So, lets grab a can of the Kirkland stuff and compare a few things. These cans are pull-tops whereas the Kirklands were not. I prefer non-pull-top because if that pre-scored seam on the can takes a hit from something it can let go pretty easily. But, this can be mitigated with proper packing and storage.

Opening the can and…….merciful Crom, it always looks like dog food. There was some congealed fat floating in there, which is good, and the meat appeared to not be heavy in the gristle or undesirable-parts department.

WHY!? WHY DOES IT ALWAYS LOOK LIKE DOG FOOD!?!?

Ok, I’ll be honest…I held my breath until it was in the pan and on the flame. Once it got some heat under it I added some chopped onion and soy sauce. Shoulda skipped the soy sauce. More on that later.

I ran it over high heat to make sure it was heated all the way through and to reduce some of the broth. There was a very strong ‘well done beef’ smell from the pan. I cooked up half a cup of rice and added the contents of the pan.

How was it? Good. But salty. The meat was wonderfully tender and this would go really nicely in a soup, stew, or bourguignon. As it was, just the rice, onions, beef, and soy sauce worked out just fine. A meal that you could do pretty easily and quickly in a power outage or shelter-in-place situation.

Comparing the nutritional label data between this and the Kirkland roast beef showed something interesting. The Kirkland is listed as four servings per can, this stuff says six. What that means is that when you figure that out as RDA per can, you get this:

Kirkland = 32% of your RDA of sodium, per can
Butterfield = 72% of your RDA of sodium, per can

So, yeah….it wasn’t just the soy sauce that made it taste salty. But, if you really think that when the end of the world gets here you need to watch your salt intake…well…clearly you’re priorities need some review. After a long day of sweating through your cammies as you hang looters and man roadblocks, stress over the mutant zombie biker gangs, and generally lead a pretty physical and stressful life….you’ll welcome that little bit of extra salt. But if it really, really matters to you…just cut the sodium in half. How? Eat half as much. Problem solved.

Another odd thing. look at those nutritional labels. Both of them show a serving size as being the same – 2 oz./56gram. And both cans are 12 oz. But the Kirkland says there are 4 servings per can, whereas the Butterfield says six. The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that the Kirkland numbers are net of any liquid. Or maybe it’s bad math. But if it really is true that both are the same 2 oz. per serving, once of them is packing 50% more sodium per serving than the other. You go figure it out.

Final verdict? Worth it. It comes out cheaper than the Kirkland stuff Costco was selling ten years ago. Texture and taste seem fine and it cooks up quite nicely. I approve of it enough that I went back to Costco and bought a case of it. (Because I’m sure as heck not gonna buy a case of something without trying it out first.) If you really wanna go nuts…a can of this stuff, a bottle of soy sauce or other seasoning), and a vacuum sealed bag of minute rice would store literally indefinitely in just about any environ and give you a hot meal that you could fix over a sterno stove.

So…an addition to the food stockpile. But a yummy enough one that keeping it rotated shouldn’t be a problem.
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For The WinCo

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Decided to cash out my CostCo rewards and see if maybe it wasn’t time to try a new venue…….

TL;Dr version: Winco: Emphasis on Win

The longer I identify and live my life as a survivalist (and, yeah, I’m gonna go with that over ‘prepper’) the more I am convinced that in 90% of the most likely emergencies I will face the most important things to have will be a) money (or money-like instruments) and b) food. To that end, I stockpile food and I sock away moneystuff. Winco will be my new go-to for food.

The Winco at the corner of South and Reserve opened up last week and a friend of mine recommended I check it out. Selection was broad and prices were very competitive, I was told. Okay, I go check it out. Ah…you had me at the food storage section:

Interestingly, those are not Gamma Seal lids on that top shelf but rather some sort of knockoff….so…lose a few points on that one. But, they have oxygen absorbers, which is nice. Also some fairly decent water storage containers.

Selection was quite good and prices were competitive with the local chain groceries, although noticeably absent were signs comparing their prices to Walmart and CostCo. However, the selection was much, much, much broader than CostCo and, for many things, the prices seemed better.

More importantly, for me, was the ability to buy cases of a product easily, and they also had a very large selection of ‘bulk’ items like pasta, rice, spice blends, etc.

Their ‘house brand’ canned goods seemed very reasonably priced but I need to try them before I commit to buying a case of something.

All in all, if you’re reasonably local to Missoula and youre the kinda guy who likes to stock up, this is a place you definitely need to go visit.

 

Soylent

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Remember my post about the quest for People Chow? Well, there is a product called ‘Soylent’ which is pretty much a nutrient-liquid that meets the specs I had mentioned. Think a person could live on it for a month? Find out.

I find these sorts of things interesting because, strictly from a logistical standpoint, this is quite a product. If something requires minimal prep, has a long shelf life, meets your nutritional requirements, and is reasonably palatable….well, that sounds like a candidate for survival bunkers and Mars missions.

Of course, we all know better than that. “Appetite fatigue” is a real thing. Don’t believe me? We are the only country in the world where “Theres nothing to eat” really means “Theres nothing I want to eat.” On the rest of the planet, “theres nothing to eat” really means that…theres nothing to eat.

I don’t want to ride out a long bout of unemployment, let alone an apocalypse, eating what amounts to some sort of protein powder as my breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

But it fascinates me that I can.

 

Shelf stable milk pouch

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I know, I know…when you think shelf-stable milk pouches you think of something like this. (Yeah, it’s cheap humour…I’m not above being low.) I was up at CostCo the other day and beheld this:

Basically, ‘juice boxes’ of whole milk. No refrigeration required. I’ve talked about this before…the folks at Parmalat built an entire empire on UHT pasteurized products. Although not available everywhere, Parmalot milk can be found on Amazon. Problem is, it is quite difficult to find anything smaller than 32 oz. Oh they  make it, yes…but just hard to find. Why would you want the smaller? Because in a grid-down situation you may not need all 32 oz of milk and without refrigeration it sure ain’t gonna keep safely terribly long.

The stuff I found at CostCo is available (also on Amazon) in 8 oz. servings. That’s more suitable for a bowl of breakfast cereal or mixing with your ‘instant breakfast’ powder.

Personally, I don’t really like milk…but several recipes I do like call for it, and corn flakes taste pretty weird without it. So, for me, someone who uses miniscule amounts of moo juice, these are handy sizes.

The more savvy amongst you may ask, “Zero, why not powdered milk?”. A valid question. The answer is….fat. Most powdered milke products are reduced fat. Skim, low-fat, 2%, whatever….it is not whole milk. And although I suppose someone can get used to it, powdered milk tastes lousy and low-fat powdered milk is even worse. See, fat is something that does not lend itself to long-term storage. As a result, whole milk powder, when you can find it, isn’t as long-term as a milk powder that has less fat. But…who wants to drink low fat milk? Ugh.

Now, it took me a while but I did eventually discover powdered whole milk and it is surprisingly not difficult to find. However, it is most definitely not low fat milk..in fact it has about 7(!!!) times the fat of whole milk. My experience is that it is very rich. Very. Like drinking melted ice cream. Using more water than perhaps is recommended might bring it down a notch closer to real whole milk, but it is far more palatable (to me) than that powdered low-fat crap.

So if your the type who like to drink milk, or you’ve got a houseful of kids who you think need to, and you want to have something for when refrigeration is no longer an option, you can head up to CostCo and satisfy your lactose cravings with some reasonably-portioned packages of shelf stable whole milk.

Worthy Repost Of The Day:

Canned goods

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“The people have spoken…and they must be punished.” Ed Koch, on losing the mayoral election. Say what you will, the man was awesomely quotable.
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I was digging around in the canned food storage and found this:

A can of soup whose ‘Best By’ date was ten years ago. Whaddya think? Sure…why not.

And then, upon opening the can and pouring the contents into a saucepan I discovered ‘why not’.

Once heated and served, even a canned chicken soup should have a certain yellow or golden color to parts of it. And it should smell good. This was…not. Everything was uniformly gray and exuded no smell whatsoever. I have a hyperacute sense of smell, so when I tell you something did not smell like it should have, you can take that to the bank m’friend. Nope, I didn’t taste it. Can wasn’t bulged, nothing looked amiss other than the color, but between the newsprint-gray color and lack of smell I decided that I’m not taking a bullet for food storage data gathering.

So, if youre keeping track, 10+ years on canned soup might be a bit excessive. You have been warned.

Remaindered meat trays

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Ah the meat tray. I’ve posted before about it. $20 for four trays of assorted dead animal flesh. A good way to get your animal protein for the next week or so, depending on how you cook and what your tastes are. As you also know, every other day or so I cruise the meat aisle at my grocer looking for the ‘remaindered’ meat….the stuff that is marked down 30% or 50% to sell immediately. Perfectly good stuff, but it needs to be used or frozen immediately. And then…on rare occasions…the two combine to create: the remaindered meat tray.

Normally $19.99….but knock off an additional 30% and now that deal looks pretty attractive. So…I’ll take ’em all. Why not? I’ve got a vacuum sealer and a freezer. So $14 each.

I literally have no room in the freezer now. Everything is repackaged, vacuum sealed, and ready to sleep until much later in 2021 (or beyond). Food security, baby.

Article – Stealing to survive: More Americans are shoplifting food as aid runs out during the pandemic

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Shoplifting is up markedly since the pandemic began in the spring and at higher levels than in past economic downturns, according to interviews with more than a dozen retailers, security experts and police departments across the country. But what’s distinctive about this trend, experts say, is what’s being taken — more staples like bread, pasta and baby formula.

If you read the article further, they talk about some unfortunate 21-yr old single mom who steals food from the supermarket. Further in the article we get this gem: “…gave up on local food banks because of the lines.” Here’s the part that gets me…she has no job, so it’s not like standing on line cuts into her busy schedule. What it does mean is that this person would rather steal than stand in line for free guilt-free food. Has no way to feed herself but can’t be bothered to stand in line when the food is offered free. :::SMH:::

Out of curiosity, I checked what a single person would get on food stamps (although they don’t call them that anymore). Assuming minimum wage, and if I did the math right, I’d get about $134 a month. Wanna hear the interesting thing? My current budget for groceries is less than that. I can, authoritatively, tell you that one person can exist quite satisfactorily on $134 in groceries per month. And not be a scarecrow. Heck, man…this is a country where you can go into most supermarkets and buy a completely cooked ready-to-eat chicken for $5-8 that will last you two days. And that doesn’t include whatever you scrounge with a little $20 lawnmowing gig, a $15 snow shoveling job, or just helping someone carry a sofa up three flights of stairs.

Heck, minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Discounting taxes (because, really, if all you earn is minimum wage you aren’t paying any federal taxes), all you have to do is work one hour a day to eat better than pretty much anywhere outside the developed world. Get together with another down-on-their-luck buddy, pool your $14.50, and you can both eat fairly well that day. But even on $7.25 a day, you’re not going to starve. At all. (Although it does require a bit of discipline and intelligence in that you need to know how to do basic cooking.)

I used to have a buddy who lived on a VA disability. He was always running out of money at the end of the month. His choice of food? He’d head to the supermarket and buy a meatloaf-and-mashed-potatoes dinner that was basically heat-and-eat. And for the price he paid for it he could have bought a sack of potatoes and enough ground beef to last him 3x longer than that one meal would. But, he didn’t think that way, and he claimed he didnt know how to cook. And as a result he was always behind the curve, borrowing money at the end of the month.  When resources are scarce, and your back is at the wall, you have to think and make careful decisions…not do whats easy.

This isn’t to say that hand-to-mouth living on food stamps is going to be a walk in the park. Nope, nope, nope…my point here is that the goal is to not be dependent on .gov to feed you in the first place. This is why, when you have an extra $20 in your pocket, you pick up a 25# bag of rice, a flat of canned vegetables, a box of oatmeal, an assortment of spices, or whatever else will store nicely in your kitchen cabinets for a couple years.

And this isn’t some class-warfare you-hate-the-poor attitude I’m evidencing. I don’t hate the poor, and I don’t resent the rich. I could very easily be either one, all depending on my actions. I have food socked away so that if, tomorrow, I had absolutely zero income I could still eat. I could probably go for a month or two with literally no change in my current diet. After that, it’s into the stored food and that would carry me for about a year or more.

I can totally see people hitting a hard stretch and, through no fault of their own, having to lean on some form of public welfare….but stealing food from a supermarket because you’d rather not be inconvenienced by standing in line at a food bank is not the same as ‘stealing to keep from going hungry’.

Lucky

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So as you know, the Preponomicon has a list of everything I’ve deemed worth keeping track of…mostly consumables – food, ammo, cleaning supplies, toiletries, etc. It lists what I have as well as what i need. So, literally the easiest thing for me to do is go down my grocery list of things to stockpile, order them up for pickup on WalMarts website, and just get it all done at once. So I did that. Scheduled a time to go there and pick it up and I got an email a few hours later saying, sorry, due to [whatever reason] they had to cancel the order but I could try reordering for a different day…and by the way here’s an online coupon for the inconvenience. Nice. So, tomorrow I’m picking up a stash of canned vegetables, coffee, and a few other things and when it’s all done I’ll have saved 50%. Lucky.

Say what you will about WalMart, it is pretty convenient for my preparedness needs. If I want to spend, say, $50 on items that are needed I can just run down my list, add it all to cart, and head down there to pick it up as they carry it out to my vehicle. No muss, no fuss.

What with this endless ‘second wave’ or ‘surge’ of Kung Flu cases (although, I wonder, are they really surging? Because I can very clearly see the definition of ‘new cases’ being manipulated to suit the political needs of whomever dispenses the information) it seems that the panic buying of earler this year may come back in fits and starts. Makes no difference to me, I’ve always tried to keep my house stocked like its the end of the world.

So, a thumbs up for simply opening up an Excel spreadsheet on one monitor, and a browser tab for WalMart grocery on the other monitor. It literally makes stockpiling as easy as ordering a pizza. Which reminds me, frozen pizza was a scarce item during the earlier panic buying…gotta add that to the list.

FIFO

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One of my guilty pleasures is that the local restaurant supply place sells frozen dumplings by the case. I toss em, frozen solid, into my steamer and in 15 minutes I have delicious, hot, Chinese(ish) dumplings. No muss, no fuss. Splash some tamari soy sauce on ’em and eat. About as labor-unintensive a meal as you can get.

Except, when I opened the cupboard I found my bottle of soy sauce with but a few dribbles in it. Solution? Trek to the basement, locate the five other bottles on the shelf, pull out the one with the oldest date, return to the kitchen, make a note to purchase more on my next grocery trip, and then have dinner.

I went to Wallywolrd the other day, picked up another couple bottles, wrote the purchase date on them with a Sharpie, and stuck ’em back in storage.

Thats what food rotation looks like. Nothing magical, mysterious, or tinfoil-hat about it. It’s that easy. And it is bloody convenient to not have to halt your meal plans because you need to run to the grocery for something. And it’s especially convenient to not have to run to the grocery when the streets are littered with bodies of the BLM/Antifa/ProudBoy/redneck battles that, I am told, we are all heading for as the looming second Civil War approaches. (Yeah, thats sarcasm….I’m wrong on a lot of things but I’m willing to bet that this time next year the lights are on, the water is running, the shelves are stocked, and it’s not Bosnia out there.)

In other interesting news, when I was at CostCo the other day I noticed that the limits had been removed from some items (notably the torpedo-shaped “chubs” of ground beef I’ve been purchasing) and reinstituted on others (toilet paper). Doesn’t really matter to me, though…I’ve gotten into the habit of buying certain items every weekend, religiously, so a limit of ‘one per trip’ doesn’t slow my roll. Matter of fact, I may have to dial it back a bit because the freezer is way full. Buying another freezer might make sense but for my household, one freezer full of meat is plenty for a good long while. Also, it seems that freezers are a bit hard to come by in some parts these days. Restless natives…….