I know the title sort of sounds like joke, but seriously, how are you planning on eatting all that food you're storing? Or alternatively, how can you eat food you manage to scrounge or hunt?

One thing that comes to mind for me is porridge. You can make a porridge out of any type of grain availible and you can put just about anything into it. You can make it salty with meat and vegetables or sweet with sugar and fruit. A recipe I found on a chinese cooking site is basically slowly simmer 1 part rice in 6 parts water, or simmer 1 part left over steamed rice in 4 parts water then add what ever you want to it. Benefits of this recipe are its simple to make(you don't even have to grind the grain to make flour), flexible ingredients, and it uses a cheap staple as the main ingredient. About a third of a cup of rice makes enough porridge for one person for breakfast or lunch.

So what ideas do people have?

Our food stocks consist mostly of rice, pasta, canned veggies, flour, sugar, salt, nuts, and lots of different seasoning. From these I can make assorted breads, stews and goulashes. Boiled rice, red beans, raisins, almonds and curry powder is yummy. Oatmeal, creamed corn and chili powder also is suprsingly edible.

The trick is to not get locked into "normal" recipies. You know what flavors you like, you know what foods have weak or strong flavors, you know what nutrients and calories you need. Start experimenting based on taste and see what you come up with. Eventually your family will stop asking what's in something and just eat it.

Sidenote: start experimenting well before you actually need to. Not every combination works...

-Blast

I'm not big on the whole chef thing, so I pretty much just rely on prepackaged food and canned goods, some spices and mushrooms and onions things along those lines for my emergency provisions. I try to keep it simple. If I'm in the type of situation that would call for me to hunker down in the storm shelter or just shelter in place I will have other things to worry about than fancy meals. If I was just sheltering in place and could still be in the main house I would think I would still be able to cook the way I would any other time, we always have alot of different ingredients to add to food in the house.


Shadow out !!!

Blast

How do you store your flour and sugar, is it prepackaged or do you do it yourself? And how long is it good for, how do you rotate?


Shadow out !!!

I'm a former chef, so that helps. I can get pretty creative with minimal ingredients. I also have a few cookbooks I'd rely on, my favorite being Craft of the Country Cook. Not sure of the author. Has some great old-style recipes along with other great info like how to build a root cellar, butchering wild animals, etc. Good stuff. Even before I became a prepper, I thought that this was the book I'd have with me if the balloon went up.

Shadow,

The flour and sugar is stored in big, heavy-duty plastic containers with wide screw-on lids. I'm not sure where DW got them. She has her "working container" in the pantry and her backup supply in several other containers in a big Rubbermaid tub under the stairs. As for rotation, DW is a big baker so she goes through flour/sugar pretty fast. In a normal week she'll make a triple-batch of pancakes, a dozen or more muffins, two dozen cookies, a platter of biscuts, two loaves of bread, dumplings, assorted gravies and sauces and a pizza crust from scratch. I think she goes through a 10-lb bag every month or so.

Hence my breakfasts/lunches of SlimFast.

Sugar stays good pretty much forever if kept dry and in the dark. She stores it the same way as the flour, a working conainer in the pantry and bulk storage under the stairs.

-Blast

A related question: Does anyone know of a way to bake bread with out an oven? I'm thinking about around a campfire (or coals). I'm thinking real leavened bread, not just bannock or fry bread.

1. Dutch oven
2. Reflector oven
3. Metal can buried in the coals

-Blast

Hi AROTC,

Some outdoor cooking techniques from Ray Mears including how to bake some bread,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TvE5jv4KPo

Wide mouth Nalgene polycarb bottles work great for sugar, salt and flour.

Didn't we have a thread like this about a year ago that ended with a lot of people wanted to know where I was bugging to? *laughs*