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Prudent Food Storage Frequently Asked Questions, version 3.50 also available in pdf format or rtf format. This Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) file is concerned with those methods and techniques that are most useful to extending the nutritive and palatability shelf lives of foods suitable for use in food storage programs. In this compendium you will be taken through the ins and outs of how to put away your storage foods and have a reasonable expectation of getting something edible back out of the container when you finally use them. Also covered will be food spoilage -- how to recognize it and how to combat it. A resource list detailing where to find supplies and further information is included at the end.

Proposed Cache for a minimum of three days (72 hours) usage to allow time to get to primary resources with ability to be used for longer period if required. Access to water and alternative food sources should not be a problem in this geographical area. Note: All items stored in individual plastic bags. Cache serviced once a year to replace food/ammo/meds/batteries.

Caching Your Goods Of concern to many survivalists is long term storage of supplies in a safe location protected from both accidental exposure and those aggressively searching for your stash. For this reason, creating a cache (rhymes with stash) of items you believe you will need in a survival situation is a good plan for any serious survivalist.

Simplifying Food Storage Within 36 hours of any disaster, natural or manmade, national or regional, the shelves of our food stores will be bare. The availability of food is taken for granted, but it will not always be so. Some of us have seen this temporary scarcity before, but within a short time, food stores are re-supplied, and all is normal. If, however, there are major upheavals or disruptions of the delivery system, it will take considerably longer. During these chaotic periods prices will skyrocket for the limited foods locally available . . . if there are any.

Wheat Storage Plans : STORING WHEAT CORRECTLY: Dark hard winter, Spring, Dark Turkey Red and Montana White. Wheat is a dynamic grain with a wide range of uses– hence it is regarded as one of the most basic and essential food storage items by many experts, including James Talmadge Stevens, author of the family preparedness book Making the Best of the Basics.

Reasons Home-Canned Food Spoils Date: May 1989 (Revised April 1995) Source: University of Minnesota Time, energy and money are lost when food spoils. There are several reasons home-canned foods spoil. The most common ones are: failure to heat process the filled jars, processing by an incorrect method, processing for insufficient time, and failure of lids to seal.

Preparing An Emergency Food Supply A slow loader, but worth the wait. This is a document prepared by Elizabeth L. Andress, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Extension Food Safety Specialist, Department of Food and Nutrition at the University of Georgia. EXTENSIVE!

The Food Keeper Supermarkets today have an amazing array of fresh, frozen and prepared foods. Your store maintains rigid quality assurance and sanitation standards to make sure you always receive fresh, wholesome and safe food products. After selecting food items, though, it's up to you to take care of them properly. The Food Keeper contains valuable food safety and storage advice to help you maintain the freshness and quality of foods that you purchase.

Make a fully functional cold storage pit-mound and enjoy your garden’s production all winter A properly designed and well built root cellar is a marvel of appropriate technology. It soon returns its cost—and will ultimately return it many times over. However, in the beginning, the problem of the initial investment can be the main drawback to opting for a walk-in unit. Many of us, therefore, have for a time resorted, with varying degrees of success, to the traditional pit/mound storage.

7 Mistakes of food storage If you are going to store food, make sure that the food you store is adequate for the need you and your family anticipate. This may not be as easy as to achieve as many people think, because the facts are that most people make serious errors when storing food—errors that will come back to haunt them when the food they’ve stored is the only thing that stands between them and their empty, dissatisfied, bellies.

Here are some simple tips on how to store apples for a long, long time Almost any kind of apple will keep for three or four months, or even longer, if stored properly. It’s cheap and easy to do. All you need is newspaper, a box or basket, and apples. A root cellar is optional, but not necessary.

Food Storage Calculator on About.com (watch out for pop-ups)

Awesome Info from Stan & Holly Deyo - [email protected]; http://millennium-ark.net/

Storing Food.Nancy French, nutritionist and survival specialist, states "the average city (in America) has a food supply of only eight days." This is an amazing statement! As of January, 1998, Chuck Missler, Y2K expert, put the figures much less optimistically at only three days' supply in the grocery stores! In the case of panic purchasing, the three days' supply would rapidly disappear. The average home in America has less than a one week food supply. If your budget can withstand a little stretching, food storage planning would be a good idea.

Basic Food Storage Calculator Really cool online program! You input the number of members in your family/party and the number of months you need food for - then click on "calculate." In seconds, the chart displays how many pounds or gallons of the basics you would need to store and estimates the cost.

The Deyo Food Storage Planner program works in Excel for either Macintosh or Windows and is a straightforward, easy-to-use spreadsheet. You will also need the latest version of Unzip to decompress the program. All you need to do is fill in the number of family members and how many weeks you want to store; the worksheet will calculate the quantities needed.

Esther Dickey's 40 + 4 A food & storage plan apparently based on the Morman guidelines with some extras.

Kearny's Survival Food Plan Another food plan covers one year with bare essentials. These are suggested basics only. You can build, add to or alter to suit personal taste. Many folks want guidelines for "how much". That is the intention of this plan.

Mormon Table of 4 The most basic food plan is the Mormon Basic Four from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints'. You may want to use it as a starting point and build from there since it is the backbone of numerous other survival programs.

Mormon 52 Week List The Mormons also have more specific lists based on 52 week purchases or monthly purchases. Here you will find their official lists for each.

MREs and Heater Meals

Food Shelf Life Recommendations Grocery product shelf life is based upon the Manufacturer’s Date Packaged (DP) code. Manufacturers encode the Date Packaged somewhere on the product in a form unique to their internal procedures. My objective is to provide Date Packaged (DP) code keys for well-known products to assist your food purchasing and rotation efforts. Remember that these timeframes are the manufacturer’s recommendations for MAXIMUM freshness and nutrient value. Several vendors indicated their products are edible long beyond the published recommendation dates.

Cupboard Storage Chart at County Extension sites. Provides recommended maximum storage times/methods for: STAPLES, MIXES AND PACKAGED FOODS, CANNED AND DRIED FOODS, SPICES, HERBS, CONDIMENTS, AND EXTRACTS & OTHERS.

The North Dakota State University Extension Service page on Food Storage contains: Preserving Sunflower and Pumpkin Seeds and Popcorn, Care of Wild Game, Drying Food, On-the-Shelf Storage, and Storage of Fresh Fish, Meat and Poultry

Stored Food Pests FAQ This FAQ covers several major groups of Stored Product Pests; Insect pests, being beetles, weevils, and moths; Rodents; and Fungi. Download it!

Harvesting & Storing Potatoes The keeping quality of white ("Irish") potatoes (Solanum tuberosumL.) increases greatly if tubers are harvested after vines are killed by the first fall frost. Potatoes intended for long-term storage should not be harvested until the vines have been dead for at least ten to fourteen days. This permits the proper thickening of potato skins, which increases the length of time potatoes can be stored. Potatoes harvested too early easily `skin' during the harvesting and handling period and do not store well.

Shelf Stable Milk FAQ Gossner's Milk is excellent for traveling and can be used anywhere at any time. It is ideal for camping. Include shelf stable dairy products in your menus to add the nutrition in milk to your away from home activities. Try your favorite flavor to breakfast cereal, with a sack lunch, or as a delicious and healthy dinner beverage. Borden Shelf Stable Milk

Dealing w/Grain & Bean Weevils Several types of weevils, including the rice, granary, maize and bean/pea weevils, can be encountered in the home. They are all pests of whole grain foods such as nuts, beans, cereals, fruits and seeds.

A.T. Hagan’s Food Storage FAQ, compiled from misc.survivalism postings, is an excellent reference on all aspects of food storage. Slickly presented by Capt. Dave for a truly enjoyable & enlightening experience.

"Preparing the Survival Stash" (food) : From Capt. Dave's Survival Guide. The many links make this well thought out article a gold mine of information for anyone with the time and money to prepare a survival stash. Everyone should have a 72hr grab bag, but from there on, it's a matter of cash. If you can't afford to buy and hide a stash, you'd better review the hunting and foraging stuff on this site!!

Misc.Survivalism's Food Storage FAQs are chucked full of information invaluable to anyone interested in food storage, or using these foods. We give a generous thanks to Alan T. Hagan, the curator of the misc.survivalism food FAQs for permission to place them here. If you've never visited misc.survivalism, I encourage you to do so. You will be welcomed by lots of nice, rough cut, patriotic folks who are in the midst of a constantly raging battle of ideas that should be most useful to you. You can read the Food FAQs online here or download them in a 136K zip file.

Rec.Food.Preserving FAQ (v.4.07) Part1-6 (Aug 25 1999, 72Kb) Part2-6 (Aug 5 1999, 154Kb) Part3-6 (Aug 5 1999, 187Kb) Part4-6 (Aug 5 1999, 55Kb) Part5-6 (Aug 5 1999, 46Kb) Part6-6 (Aug 5 1999, 76Kb)

Food Storage Planner (FSP) is the easiest way to estimate, budget, and plan your food storage. Events in recent years (i.e., hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and the worldwide grain shortage) have borne out the wisdom in obtaining a year's supply of food and, where possible, fuel. But just how much is enough? And what should you store? FSP can help. I don’t know if it’s essential, but for a mere $15 charitable donation (on the HONOR system, no less) it seems like a good deal SSRsi note: I guess the honor system wasn't working so well. Now you can still download the trial version, but I don't think it is still fully functional - and the price has gone up to $39.95 ($29.95 if you pay within 72 hours of downloading).

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