Food Storage and Prepping

Have you stored some food for winter?

What is your favorite food to store?

Mine is oats.
Oats – A Must-Have Pantry Staple | The Provident Prepper

 

At different times of my life, I have had different amounts and types of food stored.

Never mind Covid or politics or anything like that, the temperatures in my area are about to nosedive and I would rather take long walks now than when it is colder. Most everything is expensive and picked over the week, but I expect some better food shopping opportunities to arise the week after Thanksgiving, and I am hoping that I will be able to take advantage of them.

 

For those that are building some storage, what did you lay up this week, and what are your plans for the coming week?

Early in the week, before the pre-Thanksgiving flier, I was able to buy some name-brand canned goods for just 49 cents a can! I could only buy what I could carry home 2 miles though. I made two trips, but both those trips required carrying things I needed immediately, too, so my ability to take advantage of this sale was limited.

I was able to get 4 cans of Progresso Lentil soup for 89 cents each! And I bought a bag of frozen spinach to add to the soup to stretch it and make it more nutritious.

The dollar store has shelf-stable milk for $1 a carton. I think I have about 8 of them now. Two mile haul in the other direction, so my collection grows only about twice as fast as I drink it.

At the top of my wishlist is more oats and canned ravioli. And 5-10 pounds of whole wheat flour but no more: it spoils too quickly.

 

The prices came back down and the temperature are mild: I am trying to take advantage of the opportunities being offered.

Today, I got three dry mixes of falafel on the clearance rack, and a small jug of molasses at a Cosco-like store. Most of the other things that I bought were for immediate use and the holidays.

On Friday, I got a stash of tuna in the clearance area. The clearance area is overflowing right now, with things that are neither dated or crushed. Maybe they are just no longer planned to be in inventory and the shelf space is needed. I am choosing carefully. This store is 2 miles away, so round trip is a 4 mile walk, but I am trying to get there every other day. Hunters walk at least 4 miles to hunt a deer, right? LOL.

Last Thursday I got 10 more cans of my favorite pea soup on sale. I had to buy 10 to get the sale price and was happy to get 10. It is bacon flavored. Some of us, here, love bacon!!! LOL.

I noticed that the Cosco-like store is out of large bags of regular white flour, in every brand. All they have is corn flour and frying mix and specialty things, and a few small bags of wheat flours among the empty shelves. But another store had their generic brand of small bags on sale and well stocked.

 

The prices all zipped right back up and the temperatures dropped. Our library is close-by and is going to close until at least January. Today, I am going to try and grab some books before that happens, instead of stocking up on food. I can keep them until they reopen.

 

Actually, I did: The Encyclopedia of Country Living. LOL.

I managed to carry home 9 full seasons of TV on DVD and 24 books, including that monster ECL. I wasn't sure I was going to make it at one point, but I did.

 

Cooking beans takes water and good water. It is not efficient for me to cook beans right now. The tap water is very very mineral heavy, and similar to unsweetened Gatorade: the beans stay rock hard, and after washing the dishes, I can scrape white crystals off them when they are dry. In small amounts, the water is safe to consume IF the person does not have dietary restrictions and IF the pipes are not interacting with the minerals; but even for those people, it is not healthy as the ONLY source of water. The people behind the gates all have expensive home filtering systems.

Those of us outside the gates have running unfiltered water in our homes, supplemented by drinking water from water mills and water vending machines. It is 30-35 cents to refill a gallon jug. I tried drinking the tap water and got sick. My neighbors either laughed or just looked really sad and told me not to drink it. The poorest and foolish among us know not to drink the water. The poorest don't get the e-mails promising the water is safe with a picture of a child drinking water. LOL.

Our water heaters are old and tiny and tucked into kitchen cabinets that have then been painted shut. They heat about 5-7 gallons of water before the water starts to run cold again.

The people in the more rural areas have no running water at all, and are miles away from a water mill or vending machine. Every time I carry water home or use what I do have running through the pipes, I never forget that I could have none of this. I am nothing but grateful when so close to having less.

So, I buy the pea soup and beans in cans, knowing no other efficient method to consume legumes.

And I do more research about lack of water, here in the USA and abroad. I didn't know what I know now. I had no idea what is going on.

 

It takes Reverse Osmosis to even start on this water. I spent a lot of time researching this and gave up. If you don't do it right, you are just wasting your money.

The water is not as full of minerals as sea water, but thinking about sea water gives you the idea of how useless a Brita would be.

I have learned a lot about water, since I got here. Water access is becoming a passion of mine.

 

Yes, I bought a large pressure cooker recently. I think it is made in China to be sold in Mexico. LOL. Shopping here is interesting. We are not having a toilet paper shortage: ours is just from Korea.

I can cook a whole chicken or a package of pork or stew meat and some vegetables, just by bringing the food to pressure and leaving it there for 15 minutes and leaving the pot undisturbed for an hour. That costs me just pennies in cooking fuel.

I have been meaning to try beans with just the tap water to see what happens. But I am such a tiny person, that doesn't need much fuel to maintain myself. The most efficient things for me alone are sometimes different than if even one more person were with me.

I am at some elevation, but the water does not boil at all, even though it should boil at a lower temperature. For liquid water to convert to a gas, the impurities must burn off first. There is no readily available information online about cooking here. I am having to break down the issues and research them individually. The people with the ability and desire to blog, are the people behind the gates with water filters: none of what they post about cupcakes applies to my world out here. I sometimes feel like I am in a scifi novel, with them on a space station, and me here on the ground at the mining station.

And then we have Covid. Before Covid, those bloggers had a world that put on pause, then partially opened back up, and is not being slammed shut. They ate a lot of fancy and 24/7 take-out before. The new blog posts are about being in shock and waiting, not adapting. Maybe that will change, now. People seem to think this is going to be another pause, but ... having come from an area that stopped entirely last spring and never got the chance to re-open, I am on hyper-alert to the things that look like long-term full-stop.

I was the only one in the library hoarding books and DVDs. I was even able to get a book on using Zoom.