I have rations for the road: (dry, MRE's, "C", "K", & "D") and I have rations for the home.
Living on the Gulf Coast, there is one dried food that I have finally started collecting: dried shrimp. It's good for making a gumbo over a camp stove. It's expensive: $5.65 for a quarter pound. I plan on collecting 2 liters worth.
When I go camping, I bake pumpkin bread in 1pd coffee cans and seal it with the plastic lid. This P-bread has dates and nuts. It lasts for days.
Does this ring bells for anyone else? What is in your local area that is useful for long-term storage with little or no work?
Share your info with the rest of us, Please!

Seems to me that dry shrimp will have a limited shelf life? I guess if you use it in daily cooking, you can just rotate your stores.

I started thinking that rice would be a good long-term food. Easy to store, only need water and a stove to cook. Goes good with just about anything. Anyone know what an average shelf life is for rice?

Vacume packed I think would be almost indefinate. We moved and found a bag of white rice still in the origional package that had to be at least a year old. One bachelor weekend I cooked it up and it tasted fine.

I go to Sam's Club. They have all kinds of bulk dry foods at reasonable prices for my area. I especially like their Garden Harvest rice mix. When I get it home I repackage it into serving size with a FoodSaver vacuum sealer. One hint though, with rice I've learned to double bag it and seal the second bag. Otherwise the rice pokes through the bag over time or with a lot of movement (in the trunk of the car for months or bumping up against other stuff in my ruck) and I've lost the vacuum. With dry food sealed for 1 1/2 years, I can't taste any difference from what I bought last week. I would guess that while the taste may be acceptable, the nutritional value probably goes down over time but I think that it should be good for at least 3 years.

Another suggestion is for meat. I buy beef roasts at Sam's and turn it into jerky in the oven at home. Most of the jerky I dry until it’s hard hard and then pound it with a hammer into a meal texture, (This is an old Cheyenne meat preservation technique although they didn’t have vacuum sealers.) then I vacuum seal serving sized portions in individual bags. When I cook it up, I mix the dried meat meal into the rice mix, add red pepper flakes to my taste, drop it all into boiling water, turn the heat down to let it simmer and when it’s done, umm good. Works pretty good with pasta and dry sauce ingredients or dried corn and mushrooms too.

Just thought I toss this in too.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&a...amp;btnG=Search

I just found out that the above link doesn't work as intended. Do a Google search on "canteen cup" receipies. good ideas.

Howdy all.

Was wondering, you all with the vacuum packers, how is the final product lasting? Are the bags standing up to time and storage. I recently bought one for this purpose and hoping what I vacuum seal will last.

Thanks.

We have and regularly use our vaccuum sealer (a foodsaver). We love it and yes it helps keep it fresher longer. It has been used with the mason jars to keep ground coffee fresh. I usually grind fresh every 2 days or so but when my father in law visits, he drinks this 1/2 caf or decaf stuff. Rather than throw out the unused portion, we seal it. It stays remarkably fresh.

Meats stay longer in the freezer and don't get freezer burn.

Mine has an automatic shutoff when maximum vacuum is achieved. I added a valve to the hose between the vacuum pump & the part where the bags go to cause the vacuum switch to shut off early. This enables me to vacuum pack squashable items without squeezing them flat.

I like the idea of the mason jar sealer. I need to acquire a set of those. What other suggestions are there for using the mason jar sealer? Seems like a good way to store bulk rice, flour, sugar, etc?

I wonder how long that seal will hold? I would think it could hold practically forever barring any type of mishandling.