Tag: Food Storage
50 lbs of white powder
I know what you thought. Laid in my second 50 lbs. bag of flour this afternoon. We did a Costco run this past weekend and bought quite a few preps to store up on. Flour, big 2 lbs. blocks of yeast, powdered milk, oatmeal, honey, and some dry paper goods. Our goal with the food storage items is to keep enough items on hand in the event that we are unable to find a store open or everyday items have been cleared out of a store. Or if we just can’t make it out of the house.
We have been baking a bit more hence the flour. WF and I could bunker up for a couple of weeks and not really need to go shopping and still get by. We don’t have a lot of prepared food anyway so this is just a natural extension of our daily living. We have started a FIFO rule, (first in first out) using our food stores as we need them and replacing as we make our runs to Costco or where ever we are shopping. Along with the FIFO rule, we are also trying to do the 2 for 1 rule. If we use 1 item of our stores, we replace that item and add one more of the same. Kind of like a saving account. Take 1 out and put 2 in.
The measuring cup weighs 4 oz. and when filled to the top it comes out to 20 oz. So five cups equal a pound.My overly protective guard dog in the background. She could careless.
Each bag is sucked flat with the vacuum sealer, labeled and put into a 5 gallon Homer bucket with a seal-able lid.
Food Prep and Storage
WF and I did a SAM’s run this weekend and walked out $400 lighter. We don’t feel we bought anything frivolous and did buy a ton of preps. Batteries, paper products, etc.
A few of the items we bought were 25 lbs. bags of rice, sugar and flour. This is our first adventure in attempting to do semi long term storage. We already purchased a vacuum sealer last year and this was the weekend for the sealer to earn its keep.
The dry goods was our biggest project. After doing a bit of reading we bypassed the food grade buckets in loo of vacuum sealing and putting the food packages (rice, flour, sugar) into Homer buckets.
These are new buckets and each of the lids each have a rubber seal.
We split the 25 lbs. bags into 5-7 lbs. vacuum sealed bags and placed into their own bucket.
Each bucket held 25 lbs. and we were able to use just one bucket for each product.
I was disappointed in the vacuum sealer. After a few bags the sealer would stop “sucking” and I had to let the unit sit and cool before attempting another. It added a considerable amount of time to our process. So I think we will be looking for another unit.
We are not sure how long the food will store, and we also didn’t add any oxygen absorbers in the bucket themselves. So we will see what the end result will be. As we progress in our storage we will learn what to do and what not to do. Overall we will be using the dry goods as needed and replacing as necessary. Overall we are not starting off looking for 10 year storage of the products.
Will keep you posted.
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