The ONLY reason I have Trioxane is due to the extreme heat it burns at. (So I can easier light wet/damp tender.) If you have not used it then you don't understand how hot it gets. It gets hotter than esbit and lights easier I have tested and compared. The trioxane caught my windscreen (al) on fire. (I have tested every product I could get my hands on and have a HUGE review that I need to post still.)

Thanks for the info about cliff bars i`ll have to get those again they taste great and I used to have boxes of them.

Art_in_FL- I have 3 cans of sardines The power bars are a first resort energy supplement like when we broke down and I needed a boost I don't think I`ll be adding any cans of soup, maybe some dried packets of potatoes you get at the supermarket due to the high carb content and super light weight (require water). Maybe 1 can of tuna and 2 packets of potatoes.

Great suggestions everyone!

I just threw 4 Vector cereal bars into my SAR vest. 4 bars = 1000 calories and lots of vitamins. They don't keep forever but long enough for me.

That plus some trail mix plus a can of smoked oysters is more than enough to keep me going for 24 hours if it comes to that.

Israeli customs won't let food into the country by mail. Does anyone here know of an MRE or Mainstay distributor abroad?

I would recommend rotating your food more often. I tend to pack stuff I'd eat anyway so as it gets older just replace it with new food and eat the old stuff for lunch one weekend. Otherwise, putting softer foods in Tupperware or packing canned foods sound like the most durable options. I carry my lunch in a larger tupperware container to keep it from getting crushed by my books, works like a charm and as long as things are packed well it doesn't add much in the way of bulk or weight. It doesn't have to be completely crush proof to protect your food, a Nalgene is probably over kill.

Have any of you ever tried a canning machine? It would seem to lend itself to the survivalist person and all kinds of things could be sealed up for future use.

I just did a search for “Home Canning Machine” and this web site came up in the search. But they want $1300.00 and I can’t find any mention of what new cans cost. The web site doesn’t have a lot of info on it.


http://www.cansealer.com/

Check out the Master model.
http://www.aaoobfoods.com/cansealers.htm#top

Wow, you can get a lot of pre-cooked / frozen food storage for 600-2400 those bad boys go for!

Check with your local LDS (Mormon) church before investing a lot of money. Because of the directive that all Mormon families should have a years' worth of food on hand, many of them collectively own sophisticated canning/sealing hardware. The second tenet of Mormonism (pardon my blasphemy, not religious) seems to be "make a profit," (hey, there's a reason their symbol is a beehive) so they wisely rent out the time that their assets sit unused. When I lived in Boise (LDS population second only to SLC) I also found a large reservoir of food storage knowledge that they were willing to share. Of course there is proselytizing attached to it, but Mormons are self-sufficient, intelligent and hard-working people who recognize and respect the same values in others.

I take the concept of a "BOB" as supplies to get you from where you are to where you need to be. Simple enough to get you to where you are out of danger and to your secondary location. Supplies should be available at this second location. For me, I carry Mountian House dehydrated foods. I have tried all of their offerings and have chosen the ones that taste good to me. I normally carry six meals (each meal is designed for two people)in my pack at all times. I can rotate these out every few months ad so far have had no problems. I use a JetBoil stove to heat the water and a Steripen purifier. So far, no problems and I'm set for 3 days or a little longer if I want to ration a bit.

Hmm, the oldest food in any of my packs presently is a half dozen Hoo-ah bars I absconded from Baghdad with. They are wrapped up together and bound tightly with nylon straps. The bars have deformed from the compression, but they otherwise cannot displace inside the straps, so they and their wrappers remain intact, despite being in my pack since mid-2005. I opened up the wad the other day and ate one of them. They are about the same as I remember them being.

Those Crystal light plastic cannisters I have would be pretty darned handy for food storage, in fact, that is what I have my Smuckers single serving peanut butter tubs loaded into. The lids are tight enough (not water tight on their own, but plenty secure) that a wrap of duct tape around the top and lid, and then a couple wraps longitudinally overlapped would fairly seal those cannisters, and they are just rigid enough they are not going to be incidentally squished (you'd have to do something like fall on or sit on your pack to compromise them, and even then they might be strong enough to resist if they are full and taped up).