How and Why to Store Survival Food

Why do we store food?  Zombie Apocalypse?   Not happening.  EMP?  Not likely.  Financial meltdown?  Sorry boys, I doubt that’ll ever come to be.  It’s fun to envision SHTF scenarios, and it’s fun to do things like store survival food in order to prepare for them.  But the likelihood of ANY of those things happening is just about nil.

However.  A month ago my mother in law moved to a town near me in Texas from Florida. It was not a survival situation.  But when they arrived, for about a week they weren’t completely unpacked; weren’t completely ‘open for business’, as I say.  They didn’t have time or energy to cook.  Eating out was an option, but would be expensive (as well as unhealthy).  But since I store food, I was able to take them meals.  It didn’t cost me any extra money, or really take any more time.  I simply heated up canned storage we had.  If you store what you eat and eat what you store, you can use preparedness food for more than just SHTF situations.

Think of it like this:  If you buy 25 years worth of MRE or dehydrated Mountain Man foods, that shouldn’t be the entirety of your food preparedness.  That’s more like a 401K or a life insurance policy.  You hope to never need it and if you have to use that survival food it’s not pleasant!  You need a ‘savings account’, for the more common emergencies.  We use our bank savings account if the air conditioner goes out.  Or if the car breaks down. The savings account is a short term solution.  In my lifetime (40 years), I can remember ZERO zombie apocalypses, ZERO EMP blackouts, ZERO financial system crashes leading to widespread rioting.  I can, however, remember floods, hurricanes, ice storms, and terrorist attacks that created regional public panics and made food hard to find, or hard to travel to acquire.  I’ve known people who had car accidents, and had to spend many days in the hospital.  During these time, nobody is going to eat MRE in place of home cooked meals.  More than likely they will eat out.  They’ll spend money in an already financially troubled time.  We need a food ‘savings account’.

‘Eat what you store and store what you eat.’  I can’t say this enough.  If you buy a bunch of crap that you’ve never had, never prepared, and expect to live off of it if things get rough you’re doing one thing:  WASTING MONEY.  Here’s a simple, and cheap way to start storing food that makes sense.

Food diary.  This one’s easy.  Put a pad of paper in the kitchen.  Write down everything you eat.  Simple as that.  If you eat or drink it, write it down.  (Added bonus:  you’ll probably stop eating certain crap once you see how much of it you eat!)

Anything on the list that stores easily, such as canned items, put a star by them.  When you go to the store for the week, pick a couple of items and buy double what you normally would.  If you normally eat 1 can of canned chili, buy 2.  Within a few weeks, you’ll have an inventory built up.  Pick another item and do the same thing with it.  Over time, you’ll have a stock of these items.  Canned meat such as chicken are good for this.  They work in lots of recipes.

Water is an easy one.  Do you or someone you know drink soda in 2 or 3 liter bottles?  How about fruit juice bottles?  Simply empty them out and clean them, and fill them with water.  It’s not glamorous, but it works.  You can get several dozen gallons of extra water this way.

Using these 3 simple steps, you’ll acquire an inventory of survival food.  It will last years if need be, but be usable as everyday food also.  Remember to use FIFO inventory management, and rotate as needed.

Bonus Tip:  We tend to make more food at meals than we need.  We have lots of leftovers.  Even though we do eat most of them, a lot would go to waste.  We bought a pressure cooker canner to save them.  Now after we make too much stew or chili, we put the leftovers in pint jars and can them.

Chicken or brisket too.  We can the meat in broth.  This stuff lasts for YEARS.  And if we need a quick meal, not necessarily due to devastating end of the world scenario, we can heat up a jar quickly.