is there a place that has shelf life info .of every day foods at the store of different can an dry foods to put up .for bad times ? watched war of the worlds last knight ,scared the he-- out of me not the alliens but how easy it would be to get in a fix .NOT ME OR MINE ill be ready .

There is. I'll look for it and post it.
I believe it was the Mormon preparedness PDF.
-Todd

For long term prep you may wish to look at dehydrated food stuff, beens, some meats, things like that can last for decades (?).

BTW its not aliens you have to worry about. Its zombies. In that case just get to the nearest pub and wait it out.

I've never heard of zombies from space... I always thought that zombies are just are good friends and neighbors, but undead now and hungry for our brains. And a pub's not the place to wait it out.... dontcha think zombies want to wash down the brains with a cold beer.


And I know what you mean about War of the Worlds (the one with Tom Cruise)... he tells his son to pack up all the food in the house, and they end up with a small box of condiments.

My food storage in not too big yet, and all fits into well-packed rubbermaid containers, easy to throw in the truck and run.

The zombies will be made by something from space.

What you've never seen the classic 1980s British Space Vampire Zombies versus the SAS movie called ' Lifeforce '?

Wow, I had a version of the LDS preparedness booklet, I see now my version is outdated- I like this version, very thorough, if a little over the top, and it makes good suggestions as well as usable lists and time tables.

Most of the food (canned, packaged, whatever) has an expiration date on it. My recollection is that canned (not foil-packed) freeze-dried food has the longest shelf life.

The problem is, you really need to pay attention and rotate it out of storage and into consumption. You don't want to buy a bunch of 5-year shelf-life food and have the aliens hit 4 years later. You've only got a year's shelf-life left.

Food for thought (couldn't resist)-

I take canned soups to the office to have available if I can't get out for lunch, plus for other staff that may have forgotten to bring lunch, low on cash, etc.

I have always tried to be diligent in rotating and using canned food as I buy new, but I apparently missed some canned soups.

Yesterday I made a can of Campbell's Minestrone, and it wasn't until I was cleaning up that I noticed it had "expired" in 2005.

No ill effects. So, out of curiousity, I went on to campbell.com, their FAQ only refers to the date stamp as a "best if used by" date, and says the shelf life of unopened cans is 1-2 years. I'm sure that is just for indemnity reasons.

I noticed no quality issues, in texture or flavor.

Not that I recommend this- just relating the story.

> Yesterday I made a can of Campbell's Minestrone, and it wasn't until I was
> cleaning up that I noticed it had "expired" in 2005.

I'm sure we've all eaten expired food, knowingly and not. I've got some MRE substitutes that I've kept past the date and tried it along - I wasn't willing to eat it a year past the expiration date because of texture and flavor problems. Nice to know information for when we in the San Francisco Bay Area have our Big One, and that was the reason for the experiment.

I will also say it depends significantly on storage. I used to live in an apartment that had been converted by the owner from a two-story house to two apartments, and he ran the chimney from the oil burner in the basement through the kitchen pantry. In the winter, it got very hot in there, and canned goods did not last through the winter - some of them swelled up noticeably, and we threw them away unopened. If you're storing canned goods in a closed area in the hot summer sun, you may have more problems than if you store them in a cellar on the shady side of the house.

Campbell's soups have so much salt in them that they will probably last forever.

Sue

So will the corpse from all the salt

Interesting Biblical quotation at the LDS Prep Manual site: "The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it. Proverbs 27:12"

Looking at it from a slightly different angle, it could be referring to lost hikers that don't have the common sense to stop when they realize they're lost, but just keep going and get themselves into worse trouble.

Sue

This particular can of minestrone went from Tucson summer heat to New Mexico below zero winters to Pasadena >100 last summer.

So it definitely hit all of the extremes in a forgotton drawer of the RV.

I just found a can of ShurFine Cream Of Broccoli that "expired" in 2003, so after I try it, if you all never see my Buffalo again, remember me with fondness, please.

Ha Ha. While it might taste a bit worse for wear, I wouldn't be surprised if it was fine to eat in time need.

I have eaten C-rats that are 30 years old. Still okay.

...'course it wasn't CREAM of broccoli.

I just threw out several C-rats that I got in the late '70's, black stuff oozing from the cans...

Yes, nowadays C-rats are not considered edible nor are they sold as such.

...C-rats are not considered edible..."

I NEVER considered C's edible

OBG--i sort of had a taste for the eggs and chopped ham..
someplace around the house i have one of those little flat cans of peanut butter..i always ate the crackers dry and saved the peanut butter for a snack--

The black stuff only oozed from the "Ham and Mother F^(K&rS"... I mean Lima Beans. Dad had those things from the 60's and 70's and we were eating them and Dinty Moore on hunting trips in the 80's. I always thought the big thumb print was a good sign over "C". Love me some Dinty Moore.

Bonus was you could cook on the intake manifold of the truck. MRE's ya' got to be careful doing that.

Only if the bar is named after a firearms manufacturer...