I had to visit the store yesterday afternoon, and I was surprised by how picked over some of the shelves looked. You could certainly tell that it was the end of a long weekend without 100% of the usually scheduled deliveries, which is kind of scary.
A common theme in a lot of TEOTWAWKI fiction is how quickly shelves will empty at the grocery stores...and it's easier to believe on days like today. This was just a normal holiday weekend, with no special driver for intense shopping, and a lot of items were noticeably lacking. For the most part it was 'fresh things'....dairy and bread...but the frozen items were picked down to about 50% also.
Just an interesting real world reminder of why it pays to stock up...and that we are just 3 meals away from a revolution.
I need to figure out meats. Sure, the freezer, but that's limited to an less-than-catastrophic event. Canning, but... bad heart makes it difficult to walk and think together, without.. guidance. Doing good to be on my own, most guys like me are in nursing homes, hospitals, or graves... Still, I need to figure this out. MRE's, but they are just a tad pricey. Hmm, figure out how to get my mom to help can meats. I CAN work, short spells for several weeks, just need... help. Tons of canned tuna and chicken stored (decent stash anyway) but that will get old fast. The rest of the food storage for short term, and some long term, is going as fast as my green can carry it.
ReplyDeleteBut, yeah, it... does get spooky when you see how fast and hard stocks fall for almost no real reason. Stores have so little, if any, reserves.
Meat would be a luxury during an extended crisis; I wouldn't waste too many resources trying to preserve it. As a protein source, nuts are more compact and store better.
ReplyDeleteI think it's most important to think in terms of complete protien. Beans and rice, pasta with beans and beans and nuts will form a complete protien. Protien is essential for many body processes. Our body can make 12 amino acids (the building blocks of protien) but 9 we can't make and those 9 amino acids are the 'essential' amino acids. All animal meats are complete proteins other sources of complete proteins are off the top of my head: Soy, buckwheat and quinoa. TVP or Textured Vegetable Protien is also a complete protein getting it's protien source via soy. I believe storing rice and beans and beans and grains is the best way to store complete protein from a price point. TVP tends to be expensive and while convient isn't something I'd store in large bulk when first starting a food pantry. Nuts while compact have a shorter shelf life then beans and rice. You're looking at about 6mos for nuts from what I've read maybe it could be extended out to a year vs rice and beans which when stored properly have a multi year if not multi decade shelf life. A quick home made MRE that doesn't take a long time to cook would be lentils with some pasta and sauce. Lentils don't require soaking like other beans. They can be cooked at the sametime as the pasta. I think most important is to store what you eat now and to rotate it into everyday living.~ Mrs. Greg
ReplyDeleteOh, I know. Truly. I have some beans and rice stored, but actually living on that (which too I have actually tried) tests the metal of any beefeater. Lentils I just sort of found out about, so will begin storing and using those. Oh, and to help the storage life of beans, and to make wheat storage functional, a serious mill is needed. Ugh... But I do have milk stored, and fats (only fat that stores relatively long is unprocessed coconut, usually organic which I don't appreciate but there it is).
ReplyDeleteI'm not a total dud, or totally ignorant. But meats are more than a luxury for me... Maybe the bad heart just wants/needs meat? (my heart has been pumping at 20-30% for the last 25 years, they misdiagnosed it as depression, on the good side I outlived the doctor that did that and he was only four years older than me and I shouldn't have made it ten years, let alone 25. :p )
The whole 'Beans and Rice ARE a complete protien' is a frequent battle around my house. I have told my wife that's fine for when we can't find any meat...but not while I can still buy meat at the grocery store.
ReplyDeleteLentils are something we are using more frequently, and almost how you talked about using them...my wife loves to throw them in spaghetti sauce as a stretcher/thickener.