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