Tag Archives: long term food

CostCo freeze dryer

Posted on by
9

Ok, that caught me completely by surprise:

$2295 from the manufacturers website

I know from what I’ve seen on the internet that the oil pump system is annoying, messy, and kind of a pain. The optional non-oil pump system is rather expensive but if you offset it with the savings from getting this at CostCo….well, that might make it worthwhile.

But…heres the other thing: CostCo has a very generous return policy. So, perhaps after a while you may decide this product isn’t for you. Head back to CostCo, hand it back, and get your money back.

Hmmm…I have a large amount of freeze drieds already, but this would be interesting to experiment with. And I know enough local LMI that perhaps we could ‘group buy’ it and shuttle it around to our respective locations for use.

Also, how big could the market for this really be at CostCo? Perhaps if I’m patient I’ll see it marked down l50%~ like the LifeStraws. Maybe get it for under $1000 in a couple months.

Hmmmmm.

Article – 2 California sisters in ICU with botulism amid outbreak traced to home-canned nopales

Posted on by
11

Initially, the first two people who felt sick after the party were diagnosed with vertigo and sent home from the hospital, said Sanchez. It was only after a full-scale investigation, which included examining the family’s trash and interviewing party attendees, that the botulism was traced back to the home-canned nopales.

Sanchez learned from the cook that she had canned the nopales herself in May. As the incident was confined to family members and the homemade food, health officials did not need to remove any nopales from grocery shelves.

In the same press briefing, interim health officer Dr. Rais Vohra warned community members about the risks of home-canned foods, noting that this practice is common in families looking to preserve tradition.

Home canning is not something you can just half-ass and do while youre watching videos on YouTube in your kitchen. You’ve absolutely got to pay attention because, just like reloading your own ammo, if you goof it up the whole thing gun blow up in your face.

I don’t have the full story on what happened here, but I’m guessing it was water bath canning and someone either didnt bring things up the proper temperature long enough, didnt clear out all the air bubbles in the liquid, or didn’t check the seals on the jar. Regardless, if you follow directions and inspect your finished product…perfectly safe.

Food poisoning is not something you want to screw around with. Aesop has a great post about it here if you want to read a detailed explanation of the misery that you’ll undergo…assuming you don’t just die.

Does that mean you shouldn’t ‘get into’ canning your own food? Of course not. Everything is dangerous if you do it wrong. Canning has been around for a couple hundred years and it has been done by people far stupider and with worse equipment than you and I. Just do your reading and pay attention.

My go-to resources on the subject:

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

Canning & Preserving For Dummies

Augason Vegetable Stew Mix

Posted on by

WinCo has restocked on the Augason Farms products.

I’m pretty well set on these products, but since it’s available and I’m always up for experimentation….lets crack one open and see what we get.

What you see in the picture above is two heaping tablespoons of this dehydrated vegetable mix. Its a bit heavy on the potatoes, but there’s a pretty fair representation of everything else in there as well. So, how to rehydrate? Well, let’s just go with the basic of using warm water and time.

I put in enough warm water to cover, and left to go to work.

After a little while, t hings start plumping up.

And when I returned to the house at the end of the day, this is what I saw.

Drained the remaining liquid and this is what remains. The thing that surprised me was just how small these things were cut. When Ii think stew, I think of reasonably hearty chunks of vegetables. Not here. No piece is larger than a thumbnail. This isn’t necessarily bad, it just means you should be aware of it.

I’m going to try mixing this up with a can of beef stock, some Keystone beef, and a few other dry ingredients and see what kind of beef soup or beef stew can be created out of entirely long-term foods. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Keystone Beef II

Posted on by

As you may recall, I earlier mentioned that my local WallyWorld had started carrying some Keystone meats. I’m not a huge fan of canned meats, but I’m even less a fan of going through any type of prolonged crisis having to forego meat.

I had tried the diced beef and found it quite good. Todays adventure is the ground beef. The biggest drawback I’ve heard regarding canned ground beef is that, since it is pressure cooked, the meat gets quite tender. So much so, in fact, that some people have mentioned the consistency of the ground beef as ‘mushy’…similar to the beef youd get at a Taco Bell.

One way to find out…..

I would definitely remove as much of the fat as possible before cooking. I went ahead and cooked it as-is out of the can and it created a lot of liquid.

I understand that in a survival situation ( a la ‘The Mandibles‘) you’d want that energy-rich fat, but it sure takes a while to cook off.

Consistency-wise I would not say it was ‘mushy’. It just wasnt firm and crumbly like most ground beef. What I did notice was that it had a much beefier flavor than normal ground beef. That can be good or bad depending on what youre planning on doing with this stuff, but for something like tacos (or taco sald) this would be a fine choice. Probably a go-to for sloppy joes as well. Didnt try it in a spaghetti sauce but the strong flavor might require you to adjust your seasoning in that particular entree.

For my needs, I’d combinethis with some salsa and cooked rice with maybe a lttle taco seasoning thrown in for a fast purely ‘storage food’ meal. Might also add some crushed tomatoes, peppers, onions, spices, rice, and go that route. Up to you, man…ground beef is just a sort of ‘basic building block’ to create a meal around. Sure, I can get protein from beans and rice just like the rest of the Third World, but why Third World it if you don’t have to?

As I’m sure someone will mention in comments, yes I know I can pressure can my own ground beef and save some money. Absolutely no doubt there….I have the skill and equipment. But there are times I prefer the resilience and durability of a can rather than the fragility of glass jars. Also, and this is a very -low-on-the-totem-pole consideration, if I ever need to trade or sell these to someone in Mad Max world the commercial product will be more attractive than the home-canned version.

 

YouTube videos re: canned meats and canned food

Posted on by

Following a link from ,Rawles’ SurvivalBlog led me to this channel.

There is no shortage of preparedness-minded folks sharing their opinions and experiences on things like guns. Thats easy, low-hanging fruit that is always good for views. But preparedness is about a lot more than boomtoys. And, if you think about it, while you don’t need to shoot something three times a day, we all usually eat three times a day. So….food is kind of a somewhat bigger deal than guns when it comes to preparedness. Its just not as sexy.

So, I’m perusing this fella’s YouTube channel and while I may not be interested in everything he has to say, or even agree with it, I gotta give him credit for doing the work.

Food taste is very subjective. What you think tastes great might not taste great to me, and vice-versa. But it’s still good to at least see the options that are out there and let someone else take the financial hit of opening a dozen different cans of food, dumping them on a plate, and taking video.

Freeze dried ice cream sandwiches

Posted on by

ETA: The Aborted Launch and Meteoric Rise of Astronaut Ice Cream

CostCo has been, as of late, carrying some Mountain House freeze dried meals in an ’emergency pack’. This is in addition to a couple other ‘survival bucket’ products that CostCo is carrying. Personally, I’d buy the MH product rather than the other survival food available at CostCo. At least the MH includes some minor degree of real meat…not TVP or ‘chicken flavor‘. (For example, these kits don’t offer ‘chicken soup’. No no no. They offer ‘Chicken flavored soup’ or ‘Beef flavored stew’. Because if you say ‘chicken soup’ then you better have some actual chicken in there or you could be construed as having misled the buyer.

Anyway…

In addition to the Mountain House emergency pack, I noticed that CostCo is also carrying these:

First off, you do not add hot (or cold) water to reconstitute this stuff. You simply eat it as is. I’ve had these before and many people have as well…theyre kind of a novelty in the world of survival food. Does it taste like ice cream? Well, yes. But it gets a bit gummy in your mouth. Still, its pretty cool and a nice treat.

Would I buy these? Nah. I mean, if you want something to hand out to impress your friends at a picnic, yeah. But its kinda expensive. Still, when you’re manning that roadblock after the fallout settles it might be a nice break from the MRE’s and Spam.

Price increase

Posted on by

About two months ago, back in July, I made a post about Winco having gotten in a bunch of Augason Farms products. Please pay attention to the butter powder: Twenty bucks a can for the butter powder. Hmm..okay, seems reasonable. Cut to today at Winco:

Thats about a 66% increase from what it was two months ago. Maybe the original posting was of a special promotional price. Or maybe that ‘transitory inflation’ has been busy. Or maybe Augason marked the MSRP up a whole bunch. Beats me. But here’s what I do know: if you had bought it back in July, your hundred bucks would have gotten you five cans. Today, you’d get three. Strike while the iron is hot, mi amigos y amigas, because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

ETA: Yes, I know I can get this stuff cheaper on Amazon. The point of the post was to illustrate that sometimes savage price hikes occur with absolutely zero warning.

Long-term food at WinCo

Posted on by

WinCo is at it again. For those of you who are local, or who are willing to make the drive into town, we are talking about the Winco at Reserve & South. They had the Augason Farms products again but his ime with something new…fake meat. They had ‘ground beef substitute’ which as we all know is code for TVP. Now, being a good survivalist as well as someone who reads food labels, i can tell you that TVP is a long-time staple of many preparedness-marketed foods. Real long-term-ready meat is not cheap. But TVP is. So when you roll up on a bucket of survival food and it mentions ‘hearty chili’ or somesuch, check that label. Odds are high that the beef you think is in that stew or chili is actually TVP.

Now, if TVP actually was indistinguishable from the real deal, I would be a supporter of it. But I have tried TVP and I have tried preparing it in a dozen different ways. I have never had an episode where I got a mouthful of it and thought it was indistinguishable from real meat. Maybe if you cook it up in enough taco seasoning and add enough salsa you might overlook it’s non-meat texture and favor but…no.

However….it is a great protein source that stores wll (but then again, so is rice & beans). Anyway, its there if you want it. They are also selling cans of beef stew vegetable blend, so get a can of the veggies, a can of the beef TVP, a gallon or two of water and you’ve got post-apocalyptic dinner in hand.

Whether you like TVP or not (and Im in the ‘not’ camp) you have to be practical and realize that for its intended use (keeping you from starving during the Bad Times) it’s actually a good product. However, its not for me and I’d rather simply store real meat..either canned or freeze-dried.

Anway, its up at WinCo and even if you’re not into the TVP, there’s still some other stuff up there worth picking up.

Video – WW2 US Navy ice cream

Posted on by

This is an interesing video. It discusses how during WW2 ice cream played a big part in troop morale and he efforts by the military, esp in the far-flung hot Pacific regions, to provide ice cream to the troops.

What makes this interesting is that the military ice cream is made from shelf-stable powdered ingredients…most notable eggs and milk. Now, I loves me some ice cream and the notion of not having to ride out the apocalypse without ice cream has an attraction. That said…..:

Obviously you’re going to need a particular amount of electricity to cool things in your ice cream maker, but often times it’s a lot easier to produce electricity than it is to produce milk and eggs. And I rather like the idea that, once you have the basic ingredients in long-term form, you can whip up some homemade ice cream whenever you want.

And befoe anyone mentions Mountain House’s freeze-died ice cream…it’s not that great. I’ve had it before and its just a bit gummy.

Video – 55-year-old freeze dried soup

Posted on by

We’re all familiar with Campbell’s Soup, right? Red and white can thats been around for a zillion years. You know the brand.

What I did not know was that for a few years, back in the sixties, they sold some of their soups in freeze dried form.

What we have here is a video of a couple guys opening up, reconstituting, and eating 55-year-old freeze dried soup. TL;DR – it was good.

This is unsurprising but still a good reminder that as long as the packaging is in good condition, freeze-drieds will pretty much last your lifetime. Does he nutritional value degrade? Probably. But I doubt it degrades to zero, which means that 55-year-old freeze drieds beats starving to death.

For those of you who missed it the first time, a Friend Of Gun Jesus did his own taste test on some old Mountain House and his results were pretty encouraging.

The point here is that if you include freeze drieds as part of your storage food program, and you protect the packaging from damage, your food should be just fine for pretty much the rest of your life.