Just in Case (6 page)

SURVIVAL MEAL KITS

It is possible to purchase complete meal kits that are supposed to meet all of the nutritional and caloric needs of one person for a full year or for a family of four for three months. These kits are made up of freezedried and dehydrated foods and/or meals ready to eat (MREs), and they are quite expensive, costing several thousands of dollars. Freezedried and dehydrated foods require significant water for preparation, and it must be boiling. I found many of the dehydrated meals to be extraordinarily salty. One serving of beef stew had 1,270 milligrams of sodium, half of the recommended daily amount. On the other hand, they have a shelf life of seven-plus years, and they are very light, which is a real bonus if you have to carry them for any distance.

MREs were designed by the military to provided sustenance to service people under the harsh conditions of the battlefield. They offer a full range of entrees, accompanied by, among other options, a side dish, crackers or bread, jelly and peanut butter, a drink mix, dessert, eating utensils, a wet wipe, and some hard candy.

I don’t think that these meal kits are practical for most families. Canned foods work just as well in most cases. Canned foods have an undeserved bad reputation in many circles. Many consider them less nutritious and too salty, but there is much to recommend canned foods. They are readily available, can be purchased for approximately half the cost of dehydrated foods or MREs, and come in a variety of nutritious options that store easily and are familiar to most palates.

I first looked at what we were eating every day. I then thought about which of those foods would work in storage and what could serve as a substitution if a food did not store well. I divided my list into categories and entered everything into my preparedness notebook. I thought about how I normally shop and how I could buy extra to store without straining my budget. By referring to my notebook, I was able to purchase several items from each category every week. I was also able to take advantage of sales to stock up on staples and canned goods. Slowly my in-home grocery store started to take shape.

To get in the habit, and to keep my stored foods rotating and therefore fresh, I cooked using storage foods several times a week. Not everything was a success. Some dehydrated meals were too salty for our tastes and some too bland, but I learned from my mistakes and soon had a repertoire of meals that I could make from my supplies, that met our nutritional needs, and that we enjoyed eating. We had plenty of options for meeting our needs for protein, fats, vitamins, minerals, and fiber. I would not claim that eating exclusively from storage is the healthiest or most interesting diet on the planet, but it is adequate for the two- to threemonth period I prepare for, and it is probably as good a diet as many people eat on a regular basis.

KEEPING INVENTORY

The easiest way to keep track of what foods you have and what foods you need is to keep an inventory in your preparedness notebook. Sometimes an item takes up a full page in my notebook. For example, after keeping track of my family’s apple use for a month, I realized we ate a lot of apples. My kids prefer dried apples to almost any other snack. We go through at least two jars of applesauce each week and also enjoy apple butter and jelly and apple pie. My page devoted to apples looks like this. I write everything but the numbers in pen. I write the numbers in pencil so that I can erase and update them when I shop. A quick glance before I shop lets me know whether I need to add any sort of apples to my shopping list.

SAVINGS START AT HOME

It makes sense to grow, gather, can, dehydrate, and otherwise preserve all the food you can yourself. My goal is to grow and preserve as close to one year’s supply as possible of garden and wild produce, such as tomato sauce, jams, applesauce, and vegetables. I’m not there yet, but I get closer each year. You can save a lot of money if you buy or harvest produce in season and learn to preserve it yourself. And if you grow the food yourself or purchase it from a local grower, you’ll know just how it was grown (with or without pesticides, for example) and you’ll be supporting your local economy.

The previous list is designed to inventory our apple supplies for a threemonth period. The numbers shown here, for example, let me know that I need to purchase applesauce and dried apples. Since these are items that I would prefer to make myself, they also let me know that I should plan to make more applesauce and dried apples in the coming fall than I did previously, since last year’s production hasn’t lasted the whole year. This means I’ll also need more canning jars and lids this coming fall. I will add that increase to the page I dedicate to canning supplies in my preparedness notebook. Canning supplies are generally available only in summer and fall, unless I special-order them. Therefore, I’ll have to be diligent about getting them in July, when the supply is good.

On my notebook pages I sometimes add notes about brands we didn’t like or recipes using an item that worked particularly well. I also note next to each item what I paid for it, generally as the price per ounce. That gives me a record of what an average price is, and if I see a remarkable sale, I can take advantage of it. I never run out of necessities, I never pay more than I should, and I could manage without a trip to the market for nearly six months.

One note: I know people who have acquired all of a particular item for storage in one big buy, then gone on to purchase all they might need of another food. I would not recommend this method of acquisition. If the crisis you are preparing for happens next month, you might have all of the dehydrated potatoes or peanut butter you are likely to need but not any powdered milk or oil. I think it wiser to fill in your stock on a week-by-week basis. The exception to this would be if you ran across an extraordinary sale on something and got enough to last several months at once. My co-op, for example, just had a sale on rolled oats, and I bought six months’ worth because the bargain was too good to pass up.

WHAT TO STOCK

As you head out on your first preparedness shopping trip, have a goal in mind. Your preparedness notebook, divided into categories such as the ones that follow, will provide you with a jumping-off place and keep you organized. Now ask the question that must be at the forefront of all crisis planning: If a disaster hit tomorrow, what must-have goods would I need to see me through the next few weeks with no power and no help from the outside?

BASIC BAKING SUPPLIES