Have you ever wondered if you could live off your food stores for a few weeks? You know you can do it, but are there any holes in your plan? Is there something vital missing that you haven’t thought of? Maybe there’s something you’d reeeealy like to have post TEOTWAWKI, but because you’ve never done a food audit you don’t know about it.
Well, I’m going to take the plunge and starting Monday I’m only going to eat what I have in my food stores. No eating out, no stopping at the store for a quick bite to eat, just eating what I have stored in my freezer and pantry. Mrs Jarhead isn’t on board with me on this trip, so I’m flying solo.
I have given myself a few allowances though. First, I can go the farms here in my neighborhood and buy fresh eggs, vegetables and fruit using the money I have standing by in case of emergency. (All will be replenished later.) The reason for this is that post TEOTWAWKI I figure that I’ll be able to get these things because of the relationships I’ve developed with my neighbors. No free rides mind you, but a willingness to sell me things they have on hand. Once the money runs out I’ll be reduced to bartering, but even then it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve got crazy experience running a shovel, chain saw, axe, or anything else they may have a need for that requires a strong back and a willingness to work my tail off.
The food audit ends on Halloween. That’s three weeks to see how my preps work out for me and one day to get to a store to stock up on some items I might need in that time. (Mustard and more flour being foremost in my mind.)
The really interesting thing will be seeing how my Weight Watchers diet plan will fare while I do this. Preps are mostly calorie dense by nature, so it should be an interesting challenge to see how the portion control goes. At Weight Watchers you can eat whatever you want, but you pay a point price for it. You are allotted a certain amount of points every day and everything you eat has a point value assigned to it. Most fruits and vegetables are “free”, meaning you don’t get hit with points for eating them, making them a popular choice. On the other hand a single McDonalds meal might cost you fifteen or twenty points or more for a single sit down meal. I’m allotted 34 points per day, so that’s a big hit for one meal.
Anyway, it’s an interesting challenge and I’m curious to see how I make out and what kinds of things I can learn from this experience.
I’m sure some of you there live off their preps all the time, but this will be something new for me.
If anybody out there has ever done an audit like this I’d like to hear about it. If you have ideas or advice I’m all ears!
-Jarhead Survivor
The Food Audit
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I’ve done mini-audits like this in the past, but nothing lasting more than a week! I’m anxious to see how you do.
We would use our tests to use canned food and other items approaching or just past their expiration dates, and mostly only tested our 72-hour kits. I’d set aside a week from work and then surprise my family by announcing an “emergency camp out”. The kids loved it, but the (ex) wife wasn’t really thrilled after the first time.
I learned a couple tests in that I needed to pack more diapers, and to keep them up-to-date with the kids’ sizes. I tried to stuff a 1-year old into newborn diapers and it didn’t work too well. I was happy I had duck-tape on hand. 🙂
I also realized that there were certain items I’d never considered bringing that we suddenly missed. Garlic was one of them. Olive oil was another. It would have also been nice to have a full-size pot to cook in (instead of individual mess-kits).
There were a lot of items we didn’t need. The stepson didn’t like most of the snacks we had along. The brilliant cheap kids-toys we packed (to keep kids occupied if we had to evacuate somewhere) held their attention for about three minutes. I was on a special diet for some medical issues and couldn’t eat most of the food and snacks we had (I needed veggies and grains with low sodium, and very few long-shelf-life items meet those requirements).
For our last round of tests I wanted to try cooking with local plants and animals (slowly introducing them into our diet), but my ex didn’t want to eat squirrel and thought my weed-garden was an excuse to not do yard-work, so it’s yet to happen.
Great idea. But if you really want to simulate a TSHTF situation you should probably include two more things. One, assume that you have no public utilities (water & electric). Try cooking without electric & only use bottled or stored water. If you have a spring or well, only use alternative energy (no electric) to pump it. Second, assume that your neighbors are gone. Either they died or someone took over their crops & you are not known by them. Assume the worst. Only rely on what you have in the house or what you produce in your own garden.
I agree that this would be a much realistic SHTF scenario, but since it involves Mrs Jarhead and a new baby I won’t be going that route, as much as I’d like to.
Two years ago we had a power outage for three days and we got through that with no problem. I’ve got a pond across the street, two water barrels, a bunch of fresh water, and a Royal Berkey Water filter, so I’m 100% certain that water is not an issue for me. Also, I have four big propane tanks and a whole pile of little ones for my camp stoves, so that’s not an issue for the time that I’ve indicated either.
I’m also looking out the window as I write this at five apple trees, so fresh apples for the next few weeks aren’t an issue either.
My main focus here is the food and what I may be lacking in my diet after the “fun” foods are gone and all I’ve got left are the bread that I make and whatever I have stored in the pantry. I’ll put up an abbreviated report of what I eat at the end and how I was feeling if anybody is interested.
Jarhead,
How do you like the Berkey Water Filter? Does the water taste as good as bottled water?
They sound good but would rather hear from an end user not the manufacturer.
Joe hit the nail on the head. It won’t be that realistic unless you have to prepare/cook with no electricity and running water. I’ll go ahead and tell you it’s a pain in the butt unless you’re set up for it. After a few days, you’ll learn shortcuts on how to save time, how to store left overs, etc etc. When you’ve got to go to work and have a huge list of chores to do, it begins to shift your dietary choices and you’ll start relying more on the quick options in your pantry if you don’t have the discipline to put in the effort to cook a square meal.
Preparing a meal plan for yourself helps a ton. You know what you have to do in advance, so you can set yourself up and your can make better decisions on how to utilize your stores.
Nice. I’m interested to hear what you learn going through this exercise, Jarhead.
Laura and I have talked about going through a mini-ordeal ourself. We’ve been thinking about doing a 3-day weekend where we have no electricity, public utilities, etc. No going to the store. No doing anything that requires a modern day convenience.
It seems that life is busy and we haven’t actually gotten around to doing it yet. But we’d both like to do it. Just to see where the holes are in our preparations.
As we read your experiences, maybe that’ll motivate us to make it a higher priority.
Joe
Coincidentally, I started the same exercise last week and I’m just starting my second week of eating only food from my preps. Usually, food from my preps represents about 10 to 30 per cent of my regular diet anyway, but for a couple of weeks it’s 100 %. The one item I miss most is real butter, so I’ve ordered five 12 oz. cans of butter from Emergency Essentials. The reviews say that it’s very close to real butter and has a 2 year shelf life. Right now it’s on sale there.
One of the reasons I chose to do this exercise now was that several emergency food suppliers have been running good sales lately (Nitro-Pak, Emergency Essentials has one going on now) and I need to make room. In addition, some of the freeze-dried food I bought right after 9/11 was in pouches and it’s time to use them up. At that time, I was still living in the city and the pouches offered portability and variety in a compact form. These pouches have a best used date of October 2006. Even 5 years past the best used by date the food is delicious and has not lost any of its good taste. My food has been stored at an average temperature of about 50 degrees – at least since I have been out of the city since 2003.
I have also included food from my garden in my two week exercise. Cooked rice, baked beans and home ground wheat bread are part of my diet during these two weeks as they usually are.
I already practiced these preps without power for 5 days after Hurricane Irene. Lots of lessons were learned from that storm and it was a great opportunity see if all my preps worked under real circumstances.
l bought the gallon size bottle of popcorn butter and several pkgs of Molly Mcbutter. I’ve tried both in mashed potatoes and other things.Not bad and it takes very little to get the flavor.
We actually tried that earlier this year. Turned off the main breaker & used only the power from our hydro/solar arrangement. Our water is from a gravity-fed spring. Did it for seven days. Never actually noticed the difference, except we didn’t use the washer/dryer, and having to heat bath water over the fire told me I should be thinking about solar domestic water heating. Food was the least of the problems.
Not so different than how I live right now. I go to the store about once a week for veggies and meat. Half time (maybe more) I don’t need much other than a few fresh veggies.
I don’t really have “preps” I just have a larger than average back stock things like rice, beans, oatmeal, sugar, flour, spices and such and some dried and freeze dried fruits & veggies, which I use on occasion now.
Being single and not having kids makes this so much simpler.
I have been a planner in every area of my life for a very long time & keep it simple.
Food – I plan breakfasts, lunches & dinners usually a month in advance. I have everything catagorized & on a rotation schedule in 2 pantries. I’ve done it so long that I don’t have to think about it much anymore. The same holds true for clothing, car maintenance, cleaning, travel etc. When I pack for a trip I always start at the shoes & work my way up.
I don’t obssess about it, I just hate chaos that can be prevented so, I plan ahead. My mother did this while I was growing up and told me that she did it because it saved her time. It made sense to me & she was never flustered even when it came to big family trips or holiday dinners.
At some point in the future, I plan to build a simple root cellar like they used in the 1900’s. I owned a house once built in the 20’s that had a pantry that was vented from the crawl space under the house, which was always cool & then vented through to the attic. They had heavy screen shelves for the vegies to rest on for storage. there was a constant flow of cool air. I hate to say it but it was a pretty cool set-up.
Once you develop a routine things become fairly mindless & it will give you much more time in the day.
I had a huge pet bill and had to live on my preps for about 2 months. I did fairly well but I missed not having Ritz crackers. I had frozen butter but I’ve started canning my own butter and bacon.
Good luck! and plan your meals ahead of time will really help
I have done a three week experiment using my preps. Since I have a whole house generator and plenty of propane, I did not go so far as to turn off the power but I did try to consume mostly items that needed minimal or no cooking.
Before starting, I stocked up on milk as well as carrots, potatoes, apples and oranges which have a long shelf life. I did run out of milk which was hard on me since I make a large coffee latte every morning. The fruit was okay but I would have preferred more variety.
Since that time (which was in July), I have much more stored away so a second run of three or four weeks living on preps should be even easier.
Does anyone have any first hand recommendations for a dried milk product? The stuff from the grocery store is pretty vile.
— Gaye
Gaye – I have been using non-fat dry milk for about 40 years. To some extent, you have to get used to it. Later, once you’ve become accustomed to the NFD milk, drinking regular milk tastes very chalky and you’ll prefer the instant milk.
There are two varieties that I have in my preps. One is a “standard” non-fat dry milk that takes more of an effort to mix. I refrigerate this milk for a day before using it. This milk tastes better the next day. The other variety is fortified non-fat milk and is easier to mix. Personally, I think this variety tastes better and I’ll drink it the same day I mix it. Both varieties can be purchased through Emergency Essentials and they’ve just come out with a smaller #2 1/2 can of instant NF milk that you can try for less than the cost of a #10 can.
I have to agree with Presager Buddy, powdered milk is an acquired taste -in the truest sense but you can get used to it to the point where the traditional milk actually tastes worse.
Gaye, my son had a problem with the flavor of dehydrated Carnation milk and, having learned a few things from Mom while growing up, I made a change in how I prepared it.
My normal preparation was as per the label… Mom said she always added more powder than suggested and used warm water to begin the mix, then add cold water to bring the desired liquid level. Refrigerating the bottle overnight, we kids couldn’t tell the difference between ‘instant’ and ‘store bought’.
Then there was the fresh milk we got from Gramma… I don’t care what you do, nothing tastes so good as fresh whole milk.
JSW
I have powered butter milk in the cupboard, works great for baking soda bread, biscuits, and the like. But, once you open a container yo need to use it up in about a month or so or it gets rock solid.
Jarhead…there is a dude in the California mountains who decided to try something similar…that is to pack in some food and stay in his cabin for 31 days without going out to town. The first link takes you to Ryo Chijjwa’s blog where he explains Project 31.
http://laptopandarifle.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/food-for-a-month/
The second link takes you to day 1 of his journal and from there you can navigate forward.
http://laptopandarifle.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/d-1-final-preparations/
Awesome! Can’t wait to read through this.
Jarhead,
Try keeping tabs -accurately, on how much you spend eating out – it may shock you. It should include all snacks, drinks & coffee you purchase from wherever. Statistically, Americans spend on average 30% of their disposable income on eating out, which is why you see so many fast food places everywhere. Disposable income are those are dollars left over after the essentials – mortgage/rent, utilities, insurances, auto etc.
When I changed my diet to more whole foods, which meant 98% of restaurants were out of bounds for me, I was astonished how much money was left over. I won’t tell you what my savings was because it’s too darn embarrassing.
Jason – I actually did this about six or seven years ago now (where does the time go?) when I was working on getting out of debt. I went crazy with keeping receipts for everything and tracking it in a spreadsheet and you’re right – it was pretty amazing. I did this for five years while working to free myself from the banks, so these days I know exactly where my money goes. Excellent point.
Wasn’t in Ben Franklin who coined (ha, ha) the phrase – watch the pennies & the dollars take care of themselves?
A BIG congratulations for the extensive effort you did in getting out of debt – that is a huge, worthwhile committment. I wonder what’s harder, resisting the cultural spending mindset or trying to stretch a dollar?
What is funny is getting out of debt seems almost unAmerican!!
I know there are some who’re going to laugh at this, but what the hell, hey?
I was seriously considering a breakdown on Y2K… and prepared accordingly.
It’s now 11 years later.
I’m still living on those preps.
Oh, sure- I’m getting fresh meat from the butcher still, and the garden has provided many of the veggies I eat (very few in variety), and I fish and hunt almost to my heart’s content. Too, I still buy milk in plastic bottles (they work well for maple sap gathering, among other things), and I still buy ammo and replacement preps.
But the thing is, it can be done and not at all uncomfortably. Just be sure to eat what you store and store what you eat. Or, in our case, replace what you eat.
Have fun during your experiment, Jarhead- and be sure to let us know how it develops. Too, don’t forget to have fun- that’s the best part.
JSW
Holy SHTF Batman, you must have been really prepped for Y2K!!