Prepping – Three Weeks Without Food

BOOM! It happens. The meteor hits, or the fungus zombies arise, or civil unrest causes a loss of infrastructure. Whatever the emergency, the S sure has HTF. It’s time to break out the bug out bag or the get home bag, or check on your emergency stash of stuff. Yep, all there.

My question is, do you know what to do with that stash?

I am constantly amazed at the number of people who “prep for the end of the world” but have absolutely no knowledge on how to use the items they put away. A prime example of this was from a few years ago, when we were making regular trips down to the LDS Cannery (back when it *was* a cannery… stupid FDA) to pick things up. The LDS, while not my idea of a religion, has some great ideas about preparing for the worst. They make it easy for their members to put up food for the end of the world. They have convenient kits, each designed for a specific number of people (usually two parents and two kids) for a specific length of time (a month, generally speaking). Each kit includes things like powdered milk and eggs, wheat berries, oats, canned proteins, beans, etc. Each LDS family dutifully purchases two years worth of these supplies over time. And then those supplies just sit there.

The last trip there, we watched a new couple picking up their first box of goods. We struck up conversation, because we were all standing around waiting for things and that’s what you do. Nice couple, working on having kids. Devout. Polite. Not uneducated. But in the process of chatting, I discovered that they didn’t have a wheat mill. They didn’t know how to cook dry beans. They had no idea what to do with dried eggs. They had no real understanding of what to do with the items in their emergency box.

My family stores ground wheat in “small amounts” (for me a “small amount” is a 25lb bag, separated into smaller bags that are sealed, frozen for 72 hours, then put away in a cool, dry, dark place) and wheat berries in larger amounts (though also separated into bags or cans and frozen for 72 hours… it kills off any bugs). I go through a 25lb bag of wheat in a short enough time that it doesn’t go off, because I bake weekly, and sometimes more often than that. The wheat berries are a long-term storage solution, because they don’t go off. They’re shelf stable for 20+ years. We have a hand powered mill (that can be hooked up to a bicycle or generator if we really want to make it easier, though we never do), and we use it to grind wheat berries, barley, and other grains to make wheat for baking. Mostly I do that for historic demos, but sometimes just for fun. We only grind what we plan to use, because “ground at home” wheat will not last as long as the store-bought stuff, as it still has all its oils and the germ in place.

If you don’t have a mill, you can still eat wheat berries. You can cook them up in a similar manner to rice or beans, and they’re quite tasty. To my way of thinking, it’s not a great use of the wheat berries, and bread is a better choice. On the other hand, sometimes you get really bored with rice and beans, and cooked wheat berries makes a nutty, filling option. I know how to cook wheat berries, because we tested out all of our stuff ages ago. I know how to make bread with fresh ground flour (and no, it is NOT the same as with store bought… not at all). I know how to cook wheat berries into a delicious pilaf. I know how to sprout wheat berries and then dry them and grind them into flour to create a flour that’s got usable protein in it. If you don’t know how to do all those things, you should learn, or not bother storing those items.

Have you ever cooked dry beans before? Are beans a regular part of your diet? Trust me when I say you want to be doing those things now. Our bodies do not adjust easily from “high animal protein” to “more vegetable protein” and there will be discomfort. You want to make that switch when there’s power, flushing toilets, and air freshener. Really. Get your body used to all sorts of foods now, rather than later. Maybe you only do beans once a week, but DO IT. And learn how, because cooking beans from a dried state is nothing like cooking them from a canned state. There’s soaking, rinsing, soaking again, using things like salt and baking soda to “leach out the farts,” and lots of other stuff to educate yourself about.

The bottom line is, if you don’t know how to use something, there’s no point in storing it. This goes for all things, but triply so for food items! Having lots of food that you cannot eat is going to be a torture that drives you mad, if the SHTF. Along with that, remember to pack a can opener, for heavens’ sake. I like to make bins of food that I can yank up out of storage. Each bin has a variety of foods in it, including protein, carbs, and fats. Each bin also has a bit of ammo in it, and a P38 can opener. I picked up a bag of them at one point, and started dropping them into each of the bins, knowing that if I had to “grab and go,” I’d end up with at least one can opener.

Some people like to store each bin with a separate kind of food. I used to do that. And then we inadvertently had some practice when there was job loss and we had to dig into our stores to keep food on the table. That is, after all, the reason that we prep! During that “practice” I discovered that I hated lugging up a dozen boxes to get enough different items to create a meal. So I revamped the entire system so that no matter which box I grabbed, it would have everything I needed to make food.

This is why we practice! Learning during an emergency is just not going to happen, and if you’re forced into it because of lack of preparation, you’ll be very sorry. I had that bit of practice, learned about a difficulty, and changed up how I did things. Problem solved, long before it was an actual problem. It’s much easier to fix things when they’re a mere inconvenience, than later, when they’re a full blown problem. You can’t possibly know what’s going to be a problem if you never practice.

When the kids were little, we used to do drills. The power would get turned off at the main circuit, and we’d suddenly be without electricity. Most of the people at home had no idea if it was real or a drill. It didn’t matter. We all pulled together, enjoyed the down time, and learned skills as a group. It brought us together as a family, and united us into a team. I’m proud of that. Without that practice, our kids might have been disturbed during a real power outage. As it was, the times we really did lose power (often in the winter, because of course it was winter) they knew just what to do. Perishables went into a cooler out in the snow. If the power was out for more than 24 hours, we’d make an outside freezer (because it’s winter, and it’s cold and frozen, so the gods have provided us with a giant freezer, y’know?). The oil lamps came out, and our solar lights (largely for the kids at that time, as I didn’t like the idea of littles having candles in their room), and the candles. The wood stove was always running anyhow, but we kicked it up a notch to keep the majority of the house warm. The kids pulled out the Jiffy Pop popcorn (which was a treat ONLY for power outages at the time) and would pop it over the wood stove. We’d sit and drink tea, eat popcorn, start soup, relax, read together, cuddle together.

I know I harp on a LOT about practicing, but it’s really important. That practicing of skills is probably more important than buying stuff to store. You do not actually have something if you cannot use it. So go forth and practice!