Don't forget, peanut butter has a fairly short shelf life. If you look at the expiration date it is rarely a year out. Even sealed it has a tendency to go rancid over a fairly short period of time, certrainly not by the expiration date, but I would imaine 18-24 months. I stock a lot of pb... love it and it fits in the diet my doctor has me on. I store it in my spare fridge and keep 30-40lbs on hand. If you aren't going to cycle through it like a minature elephant though you might limit how much you store.

Buy what you eat as far as canned and dried goods go. Rice, pasta, canned soup.

I might shy away from MREs. My last experience with one was not pleasant.

Maybe MRE peanut butter packs???

My first thoughts are 72 hour...but we have enough in the house for that already.

My other main goal is the Long Term in 1-2 year supply.

In the past I preferred to get the Mountain House Packages...not the cans. Just so I can have a more controlled portion system, but that was before I had 4 kids. That was just when I had my wife and I.

With four kids and a spouse, buying mountain house in the cans might be cheaper than the individual packages. I would think that with six people you could go through a can before the food would spoil. There's just my wife and me in our household, we might not be able to get through the can fast enough (before spoilage or food boredom).

If you do go with MH foods, you might want to include them as part of your regular meal plan (perhaps 1 or 2 times per week). Then your family will be used to them and switching to Mountain House won't be an additional stressor during a disaster.

You also may want to look at buying beans, rice and noodles in bulk (say in 25 pound bags). You could then repackage these items into smaller vacuum sealed bags. If you toss in some freeze-dried vegetables with beans and rice, you'd end up with a simple meal that's nutritious.

The last recommendation that I can make is to store some general multi-vitamins. Your diet doesn't have to be perfect, but if thinking long term the multi-vitamins would cover scurvy and other diseases related to vitamin deficiences.

Best of luck. Let us know what your plans are, because I might want to borrow some ideas.

- Brian

ps - The word "toasters" also refers to the old cylons in "Battlestar Galactica" (1978 - 1979)

This site seems to have alot of info also:

http://survivalacres.com/

Yeah I know, alot of people think I got it from that.

I actually got it from a Terminator novel a few years ago.

Ok, look at this page:

http://survivalacres.com/mountainhouse/nutrition.html

Look at the Sodium content of the Mountain House food. Is this alot? I just don't know.

If a year or more is your goal, you might want to look here . Maybe not the most convenient, since just about everything comes in #10 cans, but I suspect (but have never compared) that it will be cheaper than Mountain House, or anything similar...

For something that can be stored forever, which is sounds like you want, you're going to have two choices:

The red wheat/dried corn/dried legume/beef jerky diet, packed in nitrogen or carbon dioxide.

Or

Elevated sodium content- it is a preservative and desiccant. But your dehydrated stuff isn't as bad some of the other options that don't last as long. So long as your seal is good, the mountain house cans supposedly last forever.