Old Project Avalon Forum (ARCHIVE) - View Single Post - Useful ideas from other sites. Post here please.

pilgrim · 09-13-2008, 12:20 PM

Okay, here is an example below.

A SIMPLE BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO FOOD STORAGE
By Danielle Graham

Hello everyone:

Whether you are building your very first basic food storage program or updating your current inventory, this simple beginner's guide to food storage can help make your planning and labor easier.

Remember, people have been storing food since the beginnings of civilizations. However, since our current societies no longer maintain public granaries, it is up to each of us to wisely store foods for such times that either interruptions in distribution or crop failures leave us without the abundance of foodstuffs we have grown accustomed. Fortunately, our current technology and knowledge archives provide us with ample tools and the information necessary to make this responsibility easy to understand and implement.
The process of storing foods is quite simple, requiring good planning, a moderate budget and a constant-cool location for storage. Following these simple guidelines below can help eliminate the frustration of what may seem, at first, to be a daunting task. Yet, the goal of providing ample food stores for yourself and your family is easily attainable, and ultimately, a deeply satisfying experience. Once you have your food storage preparations under way, you will know a level of inner confidence and security that no 'world event' can take from you.

The wise basic food storage plan.

The wise food storage plan takes into consideration the possibility of dramatic changes from our current lifestyle and insures that our nutritional requirements are met no matter how much our physical activity increases or decreases.

Currently, we live quite comfortably: Cars, buses, trains and planes that carry us from location to location, and, markets, grocery stores and restaurants in which to satisfy our hunger. However, if we were suddenly required to walk or bicycle long distances, grow and prepare our own food, build and maintain our own homes, fields and crops, our gross nutritional requirements would increase exponentially.

By the same token, if we found ourselves in circumstances in which our physical activities were severely curtailed, our gross caloric requirements would decrease, but our bodies' need for vital nutrients would not: The nutritional requirements would shift from calorie rich foods to nutritionally dense foods with significantly fewer calorie requirements.

Thus, even during beginning planning for a basic storage plan, it is important to account for this wide range of possibilities when creating our food storage lists. The guidelines provided below do take into consideration the wide range of potentials and these basic recommendations are offered accordingly.

What basic foods should be stored?

The best foods to begin with for your storage are the foods that store the longest, are the easiest to store, and provide the best and broadest range of nutrition, : Whole grains, beans and whole seeds, salt, sweeteners, and spices. These foods form the foundation of all long-term food storage plans. These foods require the least monitoring and rotation, are the least expensive and provide for both the broad nutritional requirements as well as dense nutritional requirements.

There are many levels of important foods to include in your food storage plans, however for the purposes of offering a good basic guideline, we will focus on only these basic foods in this simple Beginner's Guide.

How much basic food should be stored?

To answer this question, ask yourself: How many people do you want to store food and for how many years? I call this people/years.
Let's say you are a family of five - 2 adults and 3 children. (Always consider children the same as adults for the purposes of this calculation.) And, you want to store enough basic food supplies for 2 years. Multiply 5 people by 2 years and you have 10 people/years.

Use this formula to multiply the recommended amounts below by the above 10 people/years to get the number for the bulk amounts you should acquire.
Grains: 300 lbs per person, per year
Beans: 100 lbs per person, per year
Sweeteners: at least 50 lbs per person, per year
Salt: at least 10 lbs per person, per year
Spices: at least 2 lbs per person, per year

Therefore, based on the calculation for the family of 5 for 2 years, multiply the amounts above by 10:
Grains: 300 x 10 = 3,000 lbs
Beans: 100 x 10 = 1,000 lbs
Sweeteners: 50 x 10 = 500 lbs
Salt: 10 x 10 = 100 lbs
Spices: 2 x 10 = 20 lbs
Now, this 2+ tons of dry food may seem like an overwhelming huge quantity, however, this is a very manageable amount of food that can easily be packed, stacked and stored away.
As well, the quantities may seem out of touch with your current dietary regime, but the high amounts of sweeteners and salt take into consideration elevated nutritional requirements during demanding physical activities.

How are these basic foods stored?
These basic foods are packed into buckets, and in the case of the grains and beans, with nitrogen. Heavy food-grade food storage pails with a food-grade gasket lid come in 3 sizes for the purposes of storing and accessing bulk foods: 3.5 gallon, 5 gallon and 6 gallon.

Although utilizing 6 gallon buckets is the most cost efficient, please consider the weight of these buckets before deciding on the bucket sizes. I rarely recommend 6 gallon buckets, preferring instead the 5 gallon and the 3.5 gallon sizes.
6 gallon buckets generally hold 43 to 48 lbs of food for a total weight of about 50 lbs. each
5 gallon buckets generally hold 30 to 33 lbs of food for a total weight of about 35 lbs. each
3.5 gallon buckets generally hold 25 lbs of food for a total weight of about 27 lbs. each
With the recommended 5 and 3.5 gallon buckets, each 100# of bulk grain or beans would fit into three 5 gallon bucket or four 3.5 gallon buckets. These weights are easier to manage, carry and utilize by putting less stress on the physical body over time.
Oxygen is forced out from around the grains and beans with nitrogen, protecting these foods from common, nesting insects. A slow flow regulator should be used with the nitrogen tank to slowly release the nitrogen from the bottom of the bucket upwards, displacing the oxygen as the nitrogen rises. Though many other packing options exist, this packing technique is the most effective and least expensive option for preserving food long term.

Why buy bulk food and pack the foods yourself?
There are 2 main reasons to pack your own storage foods: First and foremost, putting your own energy into the foods you are storing for the potential use of your family and yourself adds value to these foods by simply putting your own mind and consciousness into the foods.

Secondly, by packing your own food storage, you will have the opportunity to inspect the quality of the foods. How do these foods look and feel? This knowledge can add value when your utilization of the foods later on.

Highest recommended foods for long term bulk storage:
Recommended grains: hard red spring wheat, hard white wheat, soft pastry wheat, unhulled buckwheat, hulled barley, rye, quinoa, kamut, spelt, oat groats.
Millet, rice, rolled oats, cracked grains, etc., have a significantly shorter shelf life and should not be chosen for long term storage. They can be regularly rotated into any food storage plan.

Recommended beans: adzuki, green lentils, black beans, garbanzo, soybeans, whole green pea, mung beans. These beans perform the best, are the most diverse, are easiest to sprout and have the highest usable protein.
Recommended sweeteners: honey, molasses, maple syrup, white and/or brown sugar, depending on taste and budget.
Recommended salt: Redmond real salt is mineral rich. Salt is one of our most important and necessary minerals. There is no such thing as too much salt for food storage.
Recommended spices: allspice, cloves, cinnamon, peppers, cumin, nutmeg, chilies, cardamom, curry, ginger, paprika, peppercorns, vanilla bean.
Summary:
Remember, these recommendations are for basic, long-term storage, utilizing foods that have demonstrated to be the hardiest and best foods for storage over time. However, your own food storage plan will certainly contain many more foods than these.
Be sure to include foods you are familiar with, but be careful to respect their shelf life. Additionally, items like freeze-dried meal packets, although expensive, offer the benefit of a quickly prepared and hardy meal, quite valuable during stressful situations.
Comfort foods have an important place in any food storage program. Be sure to include your favorites like chocolate, sauces, liquors, wine, coffee, tea, powered milk, meat, etc.
I hope this simple outline will be of value during your preparations.

Resources:
Bulk Organic Foods: Yelm Food Co-op - 404 1st Street South, Yelm, WA (360) 894-8151
Buckets: Ryco Packaging - Kent, WA (253) 872-0858
Nitrogen: Airgas or Pacific Welding, Olympia, WA
Pre-packaged Food Storage:
Happy Hovel Foods: info@happyhovelfoods.com
Healthy Harvest: annecassidy@fairpoint.net
Survival Center: info@survivalcenter.com
Danielle Graham was the founder of Good FoodStuffs, then the largest bulk organic foods wholesale warehouse on the west coast, (1989-1991). She is currently the founder and executive director of NW Frontier Research Institute, an independent, non-profit, international scientific research lab exploring the fundamental implications of natural human potential. Danielle is also science editor, co-content editor, and 'Future Science' columnist for the new SuperConsciousness magazine, as well as co-founder of the new, soon-to-be-premiered business, Living with Nature, offering superior and storable nutritional products.

She's a wee bit of a yapper, God bless her, I know, but she provides some useful tips.

Tom.

09-13-2008, 12:20 PM	#2
pilgrim Avalon Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Belfast. Ireland Posts: 129	Re: Useful ideas from other sites. Post here please. Okay, here is an example below. A SIMPLE BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO FOOD STORAGE By Danielle Graham Hello everyone: Whether you are building your very first basic food storage program or updating your current inventory, this simple beginner's guide to food storage can help make your planning and labor easier. Remember, people have been storing food since the beginnings of civilizations. However, since our current societies no longer maintain public granaries, it is up to each of us to wisely store foods for such times that either interruptions in distribution or crop failures leave us without the abundance of foodstuffs we have grown accustomed. Fortunately, our current technology and knowledge archives provide us with ample tools and the information necessary to make this responsibility easy to understand and implement. The process of storing foods is quite simple, requiring good planning, a moderate budget and a constant-cool location for storage. Following these simple guidelines below can help eliminate the frustration of what may seem, at first, to be a daunting task. Yet, the goal of providing ample food stores for yourself and your family is easily attainable, and ultimately, a deeply satisfying experience. Once you have your food storage preparations under way, you will know a level of inner confidence and security that no 'world event' can take from you. The wise basic food storage plan. The wise food storage plan takes into consideration the possibility of dramatic changes from our current lifestyle and insures that our nutritional requirements are met no matter how much our physical activity increases or decreases. Currently, we live quite comfortably: Cars, buses, trains and planes that carry us from location to location, and, markets, grocery stores and restaurants in which to satisfy our hunger. However, if we were suddenly required to walk or bicycle long distances, grow and prepare our own food, build and maintain our own homes, fields and crops, our gross nutritional requirements would increase exponentially. By the same token, if we found ourselves in circumstances in which our physical activities were severely curtailed, our gross caloric requirements would decrease, but our bodies' need for vital nutrients would not: The nutritional requirements would shift from calorie rich foods to nutritionally dense foods with significantly fewer calorie requirements. Thus, even during beginning planning for a basic storage plan, it is important to account for this wide range of possibilities when creating our food storage lists. The guidelines provided below do take into consideration the wide range of potentials and these basic recommendations are offered accordingly. What basic foods should be stored? The best foods to begin with for your storage are the foods that store the longest, are the easiest to store, and provide the best and broadest range of nutrition, : Whole grains, beans and whole seeds, salt, sweeteners, and spices. These foods form the foundation of all long-term food storage plans. These foods require the least monitoring and rotation, are the least expensive and provide for both the broad nutritional requirements as well as dense nutritional requirements. There are many levels of important foods to include in your food storage plans, however for the purposes of offering a good basic guideline, we will focus on only these basic foods in this simple Beginner's Guide. How much basic food should be stored? To answer this question, ask yourself: How many people do you want to store food and for how many years? I call this people/years. Let's say you are a family of five - 2 adults and 3 children. (Always consider children the same as adults for the purposes of this calculation.) And, you want to store enough basic food supplies for 2 years. Multiply 5 people by 2 years and you have 10 people/years. Use this formula to multiply the recommended amounts below by the above 10 people/years to get the number for the bulk amounts you should acquire. Grains: 300 lbs per person, per year Beans: 100 lbs per person, per year Sweeteners: at least 50 lbs per person, per year Salt: at least 10 lbs per person, per year Spices: at least 2 lbs per person, per year Therefore, based on the calculation for the family of 5 for 2 years, multiply the amounts above by 10: Grains: 300 x 10 = 3,000 lbs Beans: 100 x 10 = 1,000 lbs Sweeteners: 50 x 10 = 500 lbs Salt: 10 x 10 = 100 lbs Spices: 2 x 10 = 20 lbs Now, this 2+ tons of dry food may seem like an overwhelming huge quantity, however, this is a very manageable amount of food that can easily be packed, stacked and stored away. As well, the quantities may seem out of touch with your current dietary regime, but the high amounts of sweeteners and salt take into consideration elevated nutritional requirements during demanding physical activities. How are these basic foods stored? These basic foods are packed into buckets, and in the case of the grains and beans, with nitrogen. Heavy food-grade food storage pails with a food-grade gasket lid come in 3 sizes for the purposes of storing and accessing bulk foods: 3.5 gallon, 5 gallon and 6 gallon. Although utilizing 6 gallon buckets is the most cost efficient, please consider the weight of these buckets before deciding on the bucket sizes. I rarely recommend 6 gallon buckets, preferring instead the 5 gallon and the 3.5 gallon sizes. 6 gallon buckets generally hold 43 to 48 lbs of food for a total weight of about 50 lbs. each 5 gallon buckets generally hold 30 to 33 lbs of food for a total weight of about 35 lbs. each 3.5 gallon buckets generally hold 25 lbs of food for a total weight of about 27 lbs. each With the recommended 5 and 3.5 gallon buckets, each 100# of bulk grain or beans would fit into three 5 gallon bucket or four 3.5 gallon buckets. These weights are easier to manage, carry and utilize by putting less stress on the physical body over time. Oxygen is forced out from around the grains and beans with nitrogen, protecting these foods from common, nesting insects. A slow flow regulator should be used with the nitrogen tank to slowly release the nitrogen from the bottom of the bucket upwards, displacing the oxygen as the nitrogen rises. Though many other packing options exist, this packing technique is the most effective and least expensive option for preserving food long term. Why buy bulk food and pack the foods yourself? There are 2 main reasons to pack your own storage foods: First and foremost, putting your own energy into the foods you are storing for the potential use of your family and yourself adds value to these foods by simply putting your own mind and consciousness into the foods. Secondly, by packing your own food storage, you will have the opportunity to inspect the quality of the foods. How do these foods look and feel? This knowledge can add value when your utilization of the foods later on. Highest recommended foods for long term bulk storage: Recommended grains: hard red spring wheat, hard white wheat, soft pastry wheat, unhulled buckwheat, hulled barley, rye, quinoa, kamut, spelt, oat groats. Millet, rice, rolled oats, cracked grains, etc., have a significantly shorter shelf life and should not be chosen for long term storage. They can be regularly rotated into any food storage plan. Recommended beans: adzuki, green lentils, black beans, garbanzo, soybeans, whole green pea, mung beans. These beans perform the best, are the most diverse, are easiest to sprout and have the highest usable protein. Recommended sweeteners: honey, molasses, maple syrup, white and/or brown sugar, depending on taste and budget. Recommended salt: Redmond real salt is mineral rich. Salt is one of our most important and necessary minerals. There is no such thing as too much salt for food storage. Recommended spices: allspice, cloves, cinnamon, peppers, cumin, nutmeg, chilies, cardamom, curry, ginger, paprika, peppercorns, vanilla bean. Summary: Remember, these recommendations are for basic, long-term storage, utilizing foods that have demonstrated to be the hardiest and best foods for storage over time. However, your own food storage plan will certainly contain many more foods than these. Be sure to include foods you are familiar with, but be careful to respect their shelf life. Additionally, items like freeze-dried meal packets, although expensive, offer the benefit of a quickly prepared and hardy meal, quite valuable during stressful situations. Comfort foods have an important place in any food storage program. Be sure to include your favorites like chocolate, sauces, liquors, wine, coffee, tea, powered milk, meat, etc. I hope this simple outline will be of value during your preparations. Resources: Bulk Organic Foods: Yelm Food Co-op - 404 1st Street South, Yelm, WA (360) 894-8151 Buckets: Ryco Packaging - Kent, WA (253) 872-0858 Nitrogen: Airgas or Pacific Welding, Olympia, WA Pre-packaged Food Storage: Happy Hovel Foods: info@happyhovelfoods.com Healthy Harvest: annecassidy@fairpoint.net Survival Center: info@survivalcenter.com Danielle Graham was the founder of Good FoodStuffs, then the largest bulk organic foods wholesale warehouse on the west coast, (1989-1991). She is currently the founder and executive director of NW Frontier Research Institute, an independent, non-profit, international scientific research lab exploring the fundamental implications of natural human potential. Danielle is also science editor, co-content editor, and 'Future Science' columnist for the new SuperConsciousness magazine, as well as co-founder of the new, soon-to-be-premiered business, Living with Nature, offering superior and storable nutritional products. She's a wee bit of a yapper, God bless her, I know, but she provides some useful tips. Tom.