Food - if you had to, how long could you last

iksentrik said:
Not sure I qualify to post, I live in a room and board situation. I hate to cook, and I'm not real fond of eating either, I do however keep a 2 week supply of meal replacement on hand, so if the lady of the house went on holiday I guess I got 2 weeks.
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Ha ha, my language partner, who lives with his father, told me his father cooks breakfast every morning. Now his father is going on an extended vacation, so my friend is stocking up on granola and muesli.
 

The emergency preparedness gang said to have a go-bag and enough water for 3 days. I didn't have a car. That's a lot of water for li'l ol' me to carry on foot.

Now I have a car. So I put a 24 of water in the car. Then I had to bring the water indoors because of freezing temperatures.

I had Costco packages of toilet paper and paper towels near a bathroom window. Some guy saw this and said if there was ever a flood, the paper would swell up. I thought if there was a flood, swollen paper would be the least of my worries.

Seems to me there's only so much one can do.
 

It's almost impossible for us to buy large amounts of water here.. more than say 5 litres at a time.. the supermarkets just don't stock it in huge quantities, the average size is 2 litre bottles.. which is what most supermarkets stock..

However our tap water is very good here, so I fill up some 5 litre bottles with tap water in case of a plumbing catastrophe.. and we can't have water for a day or 2. I don't know how long water should last, but if I haven't used it in a year I pour it out and refill with fresh
 
Sunny said:
Probably about 2 months. I was planning a trip to Costco this week, but didn't make it. If that had been included, probably add another month.
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Goodness actually that's given me food for thought.. no pun intended.. I think I better get going to Costco very soon before it will be impossible to shop during the whole of November due to the massive queues..
 
Eating exactly what I want to eat, I could last 4 days. I suppose I could last a few weeks longer eating meals that were not what I wanted. After that I could subsist for however long a small bag of flour would last. Oh wait, I forgot about the vending machines downstairs here at the hotel, I could go several days living on chips and candy! (assuming nobody else at the hotel had the same idea)
 
hollydolly said:
Frozen tomatoes ?.. I'm not sure if I've ever seen frozen tomatoes..
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Yeah, just toss them in a freezer bag and then into the freezer. You can then thaw them and use in sauce or chili. For bigger tomatoes, run the frozen tomato under hot water the the skin is easily removed. For small tomatoes like my grape tomatoes, I thaw them in tomato juice and then blend them skins and all.
 
Maybe a week with pleasant meals. Another month of boring meals.

If part of the problem is lack of electricity, then I’m really in trouble. Now that we’ve sold the RV, there’s no other source for cooking. Dried beans and macaroni are useless. We don’t have a BBQ. No electricity also means everything in the freezer would be melting.

When our roads were destroyed last year, the store shelves were emptied really quickly. People were hoarding.
 
I read a long time ago that you should store what you eat & eat what you store. This also allows you to rotate your food.

Shelf stored foods last longer than the "Best By" or "Use By" dates if you haven't kept them in extreme heat or cold. I believe these are put on by the manufacturers to make people think they are automatically bad & you need to buy new. They weren't on can goods when we were kids.

Meat will last in a freezer properly wrapped to keep air from it for a year or longer. I just used the last of my deer that was in plastic shrink-wrapped from 2 years ago & it still tasted like the day we got it.

Home canning will last me 2 years. I buy bulk food & store in canning jars sealing them with my Seal-A-Meal. I put freeze-dried fruit in jars w/oxygen absorbers (instead of canning/freezing) & use them for desserts. I love to cook from scratch & try to stay away from most processed foods.
 
NorthernLight said:
The emergency preparedness gang said to have a go-bag and enough water for 3 days. I didn't have a car. That's a lot of water for li'l ol' me to carry on foot.

Now I have a car. So I put a 24 of water in the car. Then I had to bring the water indoors because of freezing temperatures.

I had Costco packages of toilet paper and paper towels near a bathroom window. Some guy saw this and said if there was ever a flood, the paper would swell up. I thought if there was a flood, swollen paper would be the least of my worries.

Seems to me there's only so much one can do.
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I have a "go bag," only it's a bag with two changes of clothes and my toiletry bag. That's what we also called it in the military.
 
Jules said:
Maybe a week with pleasant meals. Another month of boring meals.

If part of the problem is lack of electricity, then I’m really in trouble. Now that we’ve sold the RV, there’s no other source for cooking. Dried beans and macaroni are useless. We don’t have a BBQ. No electricity also means everything in the freezer would be melting.

When our roads were destroyed last year, the store shelves were emptied really quickly. People were hoarding.
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yep most of us would be in deep doo-doo if we had no electricity...however even given that.. if I had no Gas ( I have a gas stove).. and no electricity and all my frozen and chilled food went bad .. I still have enough dried and canned food to last probably a good 2 weeks.. cooking on an open fire
 
I lived for six years without a refrigerator and I got used to it. Then had five years with a solar one. I still stored foods that didn't have to be refrigerated since the solar refrigerator did not have a freezer. Now after the four years of living here with a regular refrigerator/freezer I have been storing meats in the freezer. I used to can them. They did taste better canned but now my life is different and this is what I do.

If I lived in my own house somewhere, I would still have a solar refrigerator and a solar freezer (separate units). And a gas stove without any electrical hook up to it at all. I have been studying urban homesteading and prepping online the last couple of days. Though it is harder for someone in an apartment and especially one that has no outdoor area to speak of. As much as I loved canning, I find it too hard to do now due to my mobility issues. It is a lot of work but was always so worth it.
 
My neighbor used to freeze her fruits & veggies (potatoes in the basement) from the summer. I was planning on doing more of that instead of canning, but then we lost power for a week & decided against it. She had several freezers, but still lost the food in one that her family relied on even with her generator.

I could lose my freezer meat in a long-term power outage, but I wouldn't lose everything. It would mean rushing to cook & can some of the meat before it was lost, but since we have gas it would give me a chance. I'm always looking for ways to store everything for longer periods of time.

I just come from a family who canned, did their own butchering, hunted, grew & put food by. I listened to family when they talked about the depression & war rationing & how they handled it. Putting food up isn't unusual to me & I hope I passed this on to my kid. A lot of people in my area do the same thing or are learning to do it. We also go to the bulk food store over large grocery stores for the freshest pantry products & better prices, especially on organic.
 
I could go a long time but there would be two problems:

1) Defending it when other people get hungry.
2) Would I want to live after the stuffing hits the fan.

Seriously, were so dependent on the system nowadays any kind of major disaster would be catastrophic - think of the Aztecs. For example, if a solar flare took out our electric grid it could be months or years to repair.

I’m not to concerned about it anymore except for surviving a weather event. In our last ice-storm everybody borrowed my firewood while I was Florida.
 
When my husband was alive, we were heavy into prepping, particularly for the year 2000 (remember that?) - we had one years' supply of everything, including water. Then we saw that we didn't need it and gave a lot to our food bank. Then the 2012 fiasco started us prepping again in 2011. Another year's worth of food. He passed in 2013 and I was left with all this food, etc. So I gave a lot of it away. Will never prep again! Will just take one day at a time and if God wants me to go, then so be it. Too much stress. So now, I just buy what I need for a week's worth. I do have staples like peanut butter, sardines, tuna, canned beans, and salmon that last for a long time that I could always fall back on if needed.

Edited: Forgot to tell you about the olive oil - we had a big case of organic virgin olive oil in 1 liter bottles. They last a LONG time if stored in the dark cool place. I was still using some recently (since 2013). I do the smell/taste test first, and out of all the bottles maybe (30) one was rancid.
 
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Other than eggs about a year. Don’t partake of many vegetables so the frozen and our garden veggies we have could last that long. I don't drink milk products.
 

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