A Cabin Full of Food

[GeneW]

When one figures how much food they need stored, I don't know how they figured that.

Most of that stuff is pure bullcrap disingenuous misleading marketing fluff figuring.

I'll tell ya this, the best you can do is count the number of calories you have stored and need to store. I think realistically you need something like 1 million calories stored for each person for 12 months.

A spread sheet of your inventory (and yeah, you need to keep an inventory) along with calorie content is mandatory, IMO.

You go buy that 30 day plastic pail and a normal healthy person would gobble that down in a week or less.

Calorie count, fat count, SODIUM COUNT too, and other such info.

I could go on and on, but you should chew on this information for awhile (no pun intended) to get the idea straight and understood. To me, this is critical.

 

[THAT Gurl]

When one figures how much food they need stored, I don't know how they figured that.

Most of that stuff is pure bullcrap disingenuous misleading marketing fluff figuring.

I'll tell ya this, the best you can do is count the number of calories you have stored and need to store. I think realistically you need something like 1 million calories stored for each person for 12 months.

A spread sheet of your inventory (and yeah, you need to keep an inventory) along with calorie content is mandatory, IMO.

You go buy that 30 day plastic pail and a normal healthy person would gobble that down in a week or less.

Calorie count, fat count, SODIUM COUNT too, and other such info.

I could go on and on, but you should chew on this information for awhile (no pun intended) to get the idea straight and understood. To me, this is critical.

I don't disagree with you one bit. "Regular" food -- the stuff you eat every day -- stores much better than most people these days realize. Those buckets are junk. You'd be better off buying a super-sized box of Snickers from Sam's and storing that.

I can't tell anyone else what to do -- just tell them what I have seen and done.

Last night I watched the owner of this store take an entire shopping cart full of boxes of sweets, bakery items -- basically the junk food Americans think they can't live without -- and mark it ALL up. I don't know the new and improved price -- I don't typically buy that stuff (I eat the other junk food ) so I didn't really look. I can already tell you it will not affect sales of those items one bit -- at first. Eventually the price of the healthier stuff is gonna rise some more too.

I wish I had paid attention to prices when I first started 8-9 months ago so I could report back with better info than "best as I can recall" but I'm one of those folks who doesn't generally focus on the bad (like rising prices). Especially if it is a necessity (like food ... Or gas ...).

BUT ... Generally speaking ... ALL of the other cashiers and I have noticed that in the last 6 to 8 months alone prices overall have risen enough that people who tend to just stop by and get whatever for dinner every evening or two spend around a $20 bill now. $25 if they buy any kind of meat from the meat counter. Six to 8 months ago it was $8-10. And folks who shop every couple of weeks or once a month (you know them. They are the people with a basket FULL of stuff and even more food/drinks piled on the little rack on the bottom of their cart that you HATE getting behind when only one lane is open lol) used to spend $150 each time we saw them. Now it's more like $200-275.

There was a woman who came in last night near closing time. She said she was looking for a specific kind of cereal that her pregnant girlfriend -- yes you read that right -- was craving and we were THE FIFTH STORE she had been to looking for it. She had just finished a 10-hour shift at wherever she worked but she "had" to find this cereal for her girlfriend. We had it -- but it was crazy expensive if you ask me -- and she bought several boxes of it "just to be safe" lol. There are SO MANY THINGS WRONG with this scenario ... Lol ... My unemployed, pregnant girlfriend could have gotten her lazy ass off the sofa and gotten her own cereal, for starters. And WHO is so picky they go to 5 stores looking for some kind of breakfast cereal?!?!?!? Americans are about to be in for a real rude awakening, IMHO.

It's gonna be an interesting winter -- in more ways than one ...

 

[Timmy59]

Got the 2 books mentioned above and 1 more on fermentation. Gotta make sure mama is happy so my belly is too.

 

[cowadle]

just get yourself"the white trash cookbook" you'll be surprized

 

[HFS]

I don't disagree with you one bit. "Regular" food -- the stuff you eat every day -- stores much better than most people these days realize. Those buckets are junk. You'd be better off buying a super-sized box of Snickers from Sam's and storing that.

I can't tell anyone else what to do -- just tell them what I have seen and done.

Last night I watched the owner of this store take an entire shopping cart full of boxes of sweets, bakery items -- basically the junk food Americans think they can't live without -- and mark it ALL up. I don't know the new and improved price -- I don't typically buy that stuff (I eat the other junk food ) so I didn't really look. I can already tell you it will not affect sales of those items one bit -- at first. Eventually the price of the healthier stuff is gonna rise some more too.

I wish I had paid attention to prices when I first started 8-9 months ago so I could report back with better info than "best as I can recall" but I'm one of those folks who doesn't generally focus on the bad (like rising prices). Especially if it is a necessity (like food ... Or gas ...).

BUT ... Generally speaking ... ALL of the other cashiers and I have noticed that in the last 6 to 8 months alone prices overall have risen enough that people who tend to just stop by and get whatever for dinner every evening or two spend around a $20 bill now. $25 if they buy any kind of meat from the meat counter. Six to 8 months ago it was $8-10. And folks who shop every couple of weeks or once a month (you know them. They are the people with a basket FULL of stuff and even more food/drinks piled on the little rack on the bottom of their cart that you HATE getting behind when only one lane is open lol) used to spend $150 each time we saw them. Now it's more like $200-275.

There was a woman who came in last night near closing time. She said she was looking for a specific kind of cereal that her pregnant girlfriend -- yes you read that right -- was craving and we were THE FIFTH STORE she had been to looking for it. She had just finished a 10-hour shift at wherever she worked but she "had" to find this cereal for her girlfriend. We had it -- but it was crazy expensive if you ask me -- and she bought several boxes of it "just to be safe" lol. There are SO MANY THINGS WRONG with this scenario ... Lol ... My unemployed, pregnant girlfriend could have gotten her lazy ass off the sofa and gotten her own cereal, for starters. And WHO is so picky they go to 5 stores looking for some kind of breakfast cereal?!?!?!? Americans are about to be in for a real rude awakening, IMHO.

It's gonna be an interesting winter -- in more ways than one ...

Yeah it's liable to be a winter of discontent, especially if it's a cold one across the country.

 

[Timmy59]

I have that one too! (Complete nerd here! I spend my evenings with my nose in some kinda book ALL the time. Used to bug Grumpy. Now I think he's grateful -- cuz I only want control of the remote when Yellowstone or House of the Dragon is on. )

Books are like gold.
Haven't stuck my nose in the cabin of food but I have been enjoying the encyclopedia of country living that support dev recommended. Good book, I started in chapter 3 as I have the need to be a better plant parent.. It is CHOCK full of recipes. I was reading up on corn in chapter 3 and it's followed up by making tamales. I lika good tamale. I'll 2nd this book as a valuable resource.

 

[cowadle]

grandma always said...... if ya got tomatoes you better can them up cause next year you may not have any. she would say the same thing for pickles,apples,green beans etc etc. the only thing she wouldn't can was pumpkin cause thats all she had to eat one winter.

 

[Timmy59]

In memory of grandma.

Hog butcher.

 

[cowadle]

i have scraped a few hogs. something i would try now would be to use a tankless water heater to scald with and just scrape as you go rolling the hog as you go. i remember that we would get the water just right and put the hog in the hot scalding water and the water would flash cool making some tough to get the hair off. sometimes we would just dip the scalding water and pour over a small area and the scrape that spot,but that was a PIA.

 

[GeneW]

I detest the word "prepper".

I'll try to keep this short, I can easily go on for pages and pages.

My parents were born in 1912 & 1916. They went through the Great Depression as very young adults, and then they went through WW2 as a young married couple with their 1st child born just before Pearl Harbor.

As the years went by they went through economic depressions and other things, things that we have not experienced since. Since, that's a key word and concept to understand.

Having said all that, while growing up it was drummed into my head to always live conservatively, save money every month, find a side job, stay out of debt, only finance homes, etc etc etc..

A big garden was a yearly event, and pressure canning into mason jars was very important, as well as buying canned goods and stocking them in the clean dry basement.

For years we've thought, as a Society, that those years were behind us. We've been foolish as a Society, for many examples and reasons. All you have to do is look around the world and see hundreds and hundreds of millions of people with lack of food, safe and comfortable housing, good medical care and freedom.

I know people, right now, who have maybe a few days of food at home. They eat out a lot and only buy what they want for a few days stock. Foolish!

If anything, the events since covid started should be clear to any observant clear thinking attentive and critical thinking person to realize that we are really just a step away from SHTF of one type or another.

Get out of credit card debt and stash money away. Have AT LEAST one month food supply on hand, and at least a few days of water at hand at all times. It's easy, it really is. Make a commitment of time and money, and of learning and education.