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.

When I was a teen, my grandmother lived with us in an in-law unit on the property. We had about 20 fruit trees and a large garden. Each year she would put up excess fruits, veggies, and sauces. She would write the year on the lid with a Sharpie pen. During the winter, we would eat from this pantry, oldest food first. It was not uncommon to be eating food from three or four years back. Tasted fine, looked fine. About 2% of the jars would loose their seal, but the safety button would pop up and be noticed, and we would simply toss the contents onto the compost pile. Also the jars were stored in a cool, dark, and dry place.

We seal dried goods in the mason jars and I'd expect it to last 5+years. Rice, oatmeal,sugar.
We make our own granola and seal it up. No troubles with jars 2+years old.

Vacu sealer is a good investment.

I recently got a vacuum sealer from a thrift shop, with several rolls of the heavy bags, and what appears to be a thing that does fit right over a mason jar, but it came without instructions for the jar sealing.

Does anyone know of online instructions for this use?

Sue

Sue if it's the Tilia Food Saver their website www.tilia.com should have instructions or at least tell you how to contact them for the directions
BTW Shari (DW) and I love ours <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Mike

Susan,
If you have the 'sealer top' that fits over the mason jar....fill the jar and leave about 1/2 to 1 inch of space. Make sure the top of the jar is clean. Make sure the 'rubber' on the thin metal lid is clean too. Seat the thin metal lid onto the jar and place the 'sealer top' over the metal lid and 'press' down (until it feels as if it is seated completely). Attach the tube from the sealer to the top and turn it on. (For my machine...)When the vaccuum is complete, the machine turns off the suction (Idon't know if it will for yours). Remove the 'sealer top' and place one of the mason jar 'metal rings' over the vaccuum sealed metal lid. All should be complete. If you find that after turning on the machine, you don't seem to have any vaccuum sealing occurring but it is obviously attempting to apply suction.......try to "screw" the vaccuum sealing top down while the suction is on. This will help to seat the metal lid better.

Hope this helps.

I vaccumm pack almost everything in my / wife's BOB . Clothes, fire-starting "stuff" and yes food. I share a lot of your ideas, I personally pack complete meals in vaccumm bags. I have beans, jerky, dehydrated onion, salt pepper, boulion and mushrooms. I have similar with rice and chicken jerky, chicken and noodles and beef and noodles, etc... For breakfast, oatmeal with dehydrated apples, Rice with sugar and cinnamin. All vaccumm packed with my food saver. That is also the reason my BOB weighs so much! BTW I have tried the meals after a year and it was all as good as it could be with the limited items I had, but it filled up three adults and 1 child per meal. All I can say is I am a true advocate of a vaccumm sealer. Seal everything is my motto.

Here's one I just found today, dried figs. Their not exactly local, except there's a Mediterranian import shop and resturant I visit. They are 100-120 Cal for three figs and come 20-30 to a plastic wrapped package 4" in diameter and 1 1/4" high. Around 2000-3000 Cal a package and highly nutritious. They're high in sugar and carbs (not necessarily a bad thing) but also contain iron, calcium, potassium and fiber. They're also $2-3 a package. They store a month or so at room temperature or six months refrigerated. Think I'll start including them in my survival rations. Good for longish storage or for carrying in a wilderness kit.

actually, the dried shrimp stores well for a long period of time. It's great to add to soups, make a gumbo (takes a big handful), & goes into anything that is cooked in water for added flavor & nutrition. The big drawback is the price but I think 2 liters would/could be stretched out for awhile & be worth the cost.

Polished kernels last almost indefinitely provided you store it dry. The best before on my packages is usually at least two years in future. I had some that was about 3 years old and it was still good. Full kernel rice doesn´t last as long. It has fat in it that can go rancid after 6 to 12 month even when stored properly. HTH