Emergency Food Supply

[mrodgers]

I can't eat Mountain House for three months.

No, but every time you cook something you can toss a serving or two in the dehydrator, or cook double and put one batch in a dehydrator. Spagheti, soups, stews, so much you can dehydrate. 3 Mountain House meals will pay for a cheap dehydrator. What I've read is good for 6 months to a year on a shelf and indefinitely in a freezer. I have a weeks worth still left in the freezer for my camping this year.

I did that prepping for an 11 day camping trip. I've eaten plenty of Mountain House on weekend trips. I pulled 3 off the shelf and realized that was a cheap dehydrator so I bought one. The result in the middle of the woods around a campfire is I thought someone brought the whole kitchen and cooked dinner right then. I dried spaghetti with meat sauce and stuffed pepper soup. Both were just made 2 minutes ago in the kitchen quality. You just can't dehydrate milk products. I read that as I had steak, alfredo, and noodles going already. I tried to re-hydrate one and it did NOT work out.

 

[Jennasis]

Oh good, thank you so much for the teachings. I suppose that now would be a good time people would need an emergency 3 month supply of food then because chaos panic buying is exactly what is and has been going on for the last 3 weeks.

Because of false securities instead of grocery shopping when there's very few people in the stores, I now have to grocery shop with thousands of other people. Thank you social distancing.

Because of the panic of society, I now have to visit multiple stores to grocery shop. I wasn't one to do that. Now everything is empty and I need to visit 5 or 6 stores instead of 1.

This whole process of overstepping their authority and trampling on our freedoms makes no sense for the uselessness of keeping people away from each other. People are closer to other people more than ever.

Im talking about Walking Dead level of chaos. Right now people are panic buying. It hasn't decended into mass chaos...yet. There is still plenty food on the shelves and produce available.

 

[mrodgers]

Nobody waits until you have 1 roll of toilet paper left. There is a wide gap between running until you are down to the last one and stocking for 3 months. Honestly it's these types of posts, here and elsewhere, that want to just spread unnecessary fear. I mean, why stop at 3 months? Why not 6?

I do, or I use to. I ended up with 2 packages because I was at the store and thought I didn't have any and turns out I bought one last time. I know there are those people that study and take intricate details of things like this in their lives but I don't. I forgot I bought one over a week ago.

Since this whole panic thing with TP, I swapped out for a new roll on April 1 to see how long it takes to use. I'm about 1/4 to 1/3 through the roll. So extrapolated to 39 days for one role one person obviously with a range. Under normal circumstances, I figure I can pick some up sometime I'm out within 39 days once I am on the last roll.

Since I like experiments, I was use to Scotts from nearly 20 years of having a septic tank, so I was still on Scotts. I now have Scotts (that's what I accidentally bought extra) and now have a package of Angel Soft that I grabbed since that was the only thing available and because of the previous 2 weeks of no TP available. I'm on the Angel Soft (250 sheets) and will do the same with a roll of Scotts (1000 sheets) just to see what the difference is.

 

[TLSnell1981]

Im talking about Walking Dead level of chaos. Right now people are panic buying. It hasn't decended into mass chaos...yet. There is still plenty food on the shelves and produce available.

I'm really happy that I've never seen "Walking Dead."

 

[mrodgers]

As a PP stated -- thank you to all of you working in the grocery stores (along with the hospital/emergency workers) -- we appreciate your efforts to service the rest of us.

I guess what I don't understand mombrontrent is why people are still feeling the need to overbuy. The food seems to be making it to the stores, and there is plenty of supply. Or maybe they are not overbuying, and their family dynamic related to feeding their family has changed. Probably a bit of both, I guess. For me, my habits and my needing to feed the 4 of us in my family hasn't changed.

When I was married with 2 teenage daughters, we didn't go out to eat. We didn't cook boxed meals. Most of our lunch and dinners were real foods. We cooked every day (the occasional pizza or fast food/burgers at a restaurant when out and about for the day of course) and my wife and I had leftovers for lunch the next day. 6 meals per cook. The girls did soups and sandwiches, spaghetti, etc in a thermos at school. They didn't buy lunch often. We never bought lunch except the occasional order with coworkers.

We budgeted $250 per week. A week's worth of real foods is an incredible amount of food if you eat at home almost all the time. Add on toiletries and hygiene and that is a pretty full cart every week.

Now tack in the want to extend time between shopping and you have what looks like an outrageously piled cart of stuff. You need double the food, but at least it shouldn't increase the toiletries/hygiene unless you are a TP hoarder of course.

It's not really an overbuying problem. Now I think it is more of a most people ate lunch and often dinner out and now they are eating all at home problem on a most people ate out supply.

 

[mrodgers]

Hard to predict what the next disaster will be, but I agree, having a stockpile of CANNED food can't be a bad idea. I say canned because my wife's family in southeast Texas were without power for nearly 2 months after hurricane Rita. They were big believers in keeping a freezer full of food and they not only lost thousands of dollars of food, they ended up having to throw out the freezers too.

The benefit of time of year for my semi disaster season is the dead of winter with snow, blizzard, and ice storms. When power goes out, we leave the deep freeze for 2 days but unload the fridge and kitchen freezer and put it in coolers that are already in our 4° or whatever the outside temp is garage.

Unloading the deep freeze if too long (only did it once with a 5 day outage) was a pain. It was always almost overflowing packed with her dad's beef. He was up to butchering 3 and splitting it between 4 of us and kept butchering sooner and sooner.

 

[tvguy]

Nobody waits until you have 1 roll of toilet paper left. There is a wide gap between running until you are down to the last one and stocking for 3 months. Honestly it's these types of posts, here and elsewhere, that want to just spread unnecessary fear. I mean, why stop at 3 months? Why not 6?

We have a very dear friend and she has always bought the minimum of whatever she needs and waits until she needs it. She had a family of five and used to buy the TRIAL SIZE of dish soap, having to buy one weekly instead of buying a regular bottle that would last much longer She must not be alone since they not only sell TP in 96 packs, but as single rolls. Who buys just ONE roll?

 

[Lilsia]

I understand that but these are the times when we might actually rethink what we are doing as a society and what we can do to improve the planet for future generations. It usually takes something catastrophic for us to fundamentally change who we are as people and what we want the planet to look like after we are gone. If we don’t think about these things now and the impact they have when will we? not before it’s to late.

Yeah, the whole world going vegetarian is not going to happen. People like their meat and limited amounts of lean meats is a good source of protein. Meat eaters don't want others to force their vegetarian beliefs on them no more then vegetarians would want a meat eater to keep telling them that they should eat meat.

 

[Christine]

Yeah, the whole world going vegetarian is not going to happen. People like their meat and limited amounts of lean meats is a good source of protein. Meat eaters don't want others to force their vegetarian beliefs on them no more then vegetarians would want a meat eater to keep telling them that they should eat meat.

True. On top of that, it's not necessarily the factor that "meat is evil." Meat protein is some of the most effectively processed proteins for humans. The true issue is overconsumption of meat and factory farming. Quite another subject and the cause of great ills in society.

 

[bcla]

We have a very dear friend and she has always bought the minimum of whatever she needs and waits until she needs it. She had a family of five and used to buy the TRIAL SIZE of dish soap, having to buy one weekly instead of buying a regular bottle that would last much longer She must not be alone since they not only sell TP in 96 packs, but as single rolls. Who buys just ONE roll?

I've seen that. Certainly one can buy single (relatively large) rolls in dollar stores. I've gone shopping in some local markets where I saw single rolls for sale - typically institutional style.

There's a local market around me that's selling some items that I can tell came from Costco. They don't have any UPC codes, and some of them are marked as not being labeled for individual sale. I don't believe it's specifically illegal, but Costco puts that on their labels for a lot of items. It's not TP though since Costco hasn't had their supplier individually wrap rolls in years.

 

[Lynn CC]

No, but every time you cook something you can toss a serving or two in the dehydrator, or cook double and put one batch in a dehydrator. Spagheti, soups, stews, so much you can dehydrate. 3 Mountain House meals will pay for a cheap dehydrator. What I've read is good for 6 months to a year on a shelf and indefinitely in a freezer. I have a weeks worth still left in the freezer for my camping this year.

I did that prepping for an 11 day camping trip. I've eaten plenty of Mountain House on weekend trips. I pulled 3 off the shelf and realized that was a cheap dehydrator so I bought one. The result in the middle of the woods around a campfire is I thought someone brought the whole kitchen and cooked dinner right then. I dried spaghetti with meat sauce and stuffed pepper soup. Both were just made 2 minutes ago in the kitchen quality. You just can't dehydrate milk products. I read that as I had steak, alfredo, and noodles going already. I tried to re-hydrate one and it did NOT work out.

I was thinking about buying a dehydrator do you recommend a certain brand/Model?

 

[RamblingMad]

No, but every time you cook something you can toss a serving or two in the dehydrator, or cook double and put one batch in a dehydrator. Spagheti, soups, stews, so much you can dehydrate. 3 Mountain House meals will pay for a cheap dehydrator. What I've read is good for 6 months to a year on a shelf and indefinitely in a freezer. I have a weeks worth still left in the freezer for my camping this year.

I did that prepping for an 11 day camping trip. I've eaten plenty of Mountain House on weekend trips. I pulled 3 off the shelf and realized that was a cheap dehydrator so I bought one. The result in the middle of the woods around a campfire is I thought someone brought the whole kitchen and cooked dinner right then. I dried spaghetti with meat sauce and stuffed pepper soup. Both were just made 2 minutes ago in the kitchen quality. You just can't dehydrate milk products. I read that as I had steak, alfredo, and noodles going already. I tried to re-hydrate one and it did NOT work out.

I make my own. I also use some of Andrew Skurka’s backpacking recipes. And I love my dehydrator. I don’t use it as much as I should.

 

[HeatherC]

What does the dehydrated food taste like?

 

[tvguy]

I've seen that. Certainly one can buy single (relatively large) rolls in dollar stores. I've gone shopping in some local markets where I saw single rolls for sale - typically institutional style.

There's a local market around me that's selling some items that I can tell came from Costco. They don't have any UPC codes, and some of them are marked as not being labeled for individual sale. I don't believe it's specifically illegal, but Costco puts that on their labels for a lot of items. It's not TP though since Costco hasn't had their supplier individually wrap rolls in years.

Well a portion of Costco's marketing is to smaller stores who resell those items. The mini-market I buy lottery tickets at sells a major brand of dairy products in the pint jugs, but their pints of half and half are all Kirkland. The pints of milk, 2%, 1% , non-fat and chocolate milk are $2.50 each. The half and half is $1.99. Usually the higher the butter fat in milk, the higher the price

 

[AnnaS]

With texts and call distractions, I forgot to post a link regarding the possibility of shortage or if it's a demand issue. We might find out soon.

https://www.silive.com/coronavirus/...-processing-plant-closures-effect-supply.html

 

[chicagodisneyfan]

I have never stocked up on food - but could survive out of my cabinets for about two weeks.
We grocery shop ever 3 days for fresh meat, fruit and vegetables.
Now that the first few weeks are over, I have been able to find everything I need at the store.

 

[RamblingMad]

What does the dehydrated food taste like?

You don’t eat it dehydrated unless you’re making fruit roll ups.

Now, Mountain House is super salty, so if I don’t have time to meal plan for a weekend trip, I’ll bring one.

 

[AggieDizzer]

The ONLY reason that we would experience such shortages is if everyone begins panic buying again. There is plenty of food in the system if we manage our households appropriately. Your post is so infuriating...you read an article and paint the entire country with broad assumptions. Go hide out in your bunker and keep your opinions to yourself.

 

[tarheelmjfan]

The increased demand, due to people eating at home all the time & grocery stores not adjusting to that demand has created empty shelves. I thought it may be due to a shortage, until I see stories about managers claiming a 2 to 3 day meat supply disappearing in a few hours was due to hoarding. It's clear many of them simply can't see what's really happening. There are many people having to buy significantly more food from grocery stores now. We're purchasing about 70% more food per week than we did pre-Covid 19. We're not hoarding. We're eating it, because we're now feeding all of us strictly from home. We used to cook 3 or 4 nights a week & make breakfast on Saturday & Sunday. That was normally only for DH & me. DS is now eating all his meals here too. There are many more families like us. It's common sense that the grocery stores need to be ordering a whole lot more than they previously did. Blaming hoarding & being unwilling to adapt to different needs is inexcusable. If they simply can't get what they order, that's another story. They can't help that, but they should be trying instead of blaming customers for shortages in the stores.

 

[AggieDizzer]

When you have the OP talking about keeping a 3 MONTH food supply - that's hoarding.