So what is their to say about food? I seriously doubt I have to convince anyone that food only not number one because of the importance of water. We simply want live very long without each of these.
Our grandparents and forefathers were masters at preserving and storing food. In their day, they had to constantly for survival. Those days have been over for several decades now and consequently, we all (me included) have grown to taking food and water very much for granted. I may be luckier than most as I at least grew up on a large farm with very active grandparents and not only did I get to eat the delicious preserved farm bounty but got to witness the preservation of many foods. In other words, I grew up watching my grandparents can vegtables and put up jars of jellies in addition to loading up a deep freezer. My grandparents could have probably survived a year at any time on the food in their house.
So what do we do? Let's begin with the obvious. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to buy bags of rice and dried beans. These are easy to purchase (cheap) and easily stored. They also have a long shelf life. So I would recommend every grocery day buying a couple bags of rice and a few bags of dried beans. It can be tempting to buy large, bulk quantities and if you so choose, that will be fine but practicality of usability might make smaller quantities more appropriate. For myself, I have put back bags the size I would use for a single meal, for a few people.
After this comes canned goods. It would be tempting right here to try and convince the reader to learn to can vegetables, go to the store and buy mason jars, go to the farmers market and buy large quantities of produce and get to canning. If you are so inclined, dont let me hold you back. However, if you are like me and always seeking and easiter, softer way... Then buying cans of green beans, black eye peas, english peas, carrots, potatos, and then like makes a lot of sense. You can put a lot of these up and they have a very long shelf life.
What about meat? Whether you like it or not, it may pay off to put back lots of cans of spam, vienna sausages, canned chicken, canned ham, potted meat, things like that. Also, you may want to put back a lot of cans of chili, stew, and even spagetti. Think long term through many meals. Your going to get tired of eating any one thing. Add as much variety here as you possibly can.
Next comes dried milk. Get boxes of dried milk and put back. Sugar, salt and pepper. Learn how to bake bread and put back some flour, corn meal, etc. These items can be likely to attract bugs so think about containers that are air tight and sealed. Think non perishables and long term storage. In all these items, over the months ahead you can rotate your oldest stuff with fresh bought items and occasionally use some of your stock. This alone will give you ideas of what you might need should we get into those days, which I am almost positive we are.
If you have a basement or back porch and space for a freezer, it may be one of the best purchases you can make. Don't overstock a freezer, should we have a catastrophy we will probably not have electricity either but from the point of electrical power loss for several days, what had been frozen will still be good and you could get your first week or so with "fresh from the freezer" items!
Use your time well right now. Search the internet and learn how to can, put up jellies, cheese, bake bread. Our next subject will be seed and gardening! This will be a vital subject and complicated so get a pen and paper.
