Stocking the Emergency Pantry

Heather, we really need to can butter like said above. (and meat chunks too.) I must learn how to do this. I have a ton of new jars still.

We don't have an emergency pantry but with these uncertain times with the economy and job security I feel the need to have one. It's what our tax return is going to be used for. I like the idea of going to bakeries for their used buckets.

Our emergency pantry usually consists of rice, dry and canned beans, peanut butter, sardines and tuna, some canned soups, fruit, and vegetables. We have camp stoves and extra fuel. We also have an earth stove which will heat the house, at least for a couple of days, and can be used to heat food. We never have a lot of wood for it because we only burn it in emergencies since it triggers my alergies. Periodically we stock up on jugs of water, and have some empties that can be filled quickly in an emergency. We also have an emergency bucket by the door ready to grab. It has some first aid things, an emergency crank radio, a crank flashlight, rope, and some other things in case we have to leave the house in a real hurry.

I'm preparing for the impending zombie apocalypse. That failing, we have plenty of tornados in this area every year. I've not done good with my pantry, but it is difficult due to the size of our pantry, and we have the 2 extra adults we are feeding currently. That said, I will think a little harder on this. My mom and I have been talking about canning spaghetti sauce. Looks like we might have to do that now.

Any suggestions on what to keep in a pantry - especially for a vegetarian? I grew up in earthquake ville and we just keep canned food and water for three days. I have no idea what a real pantry should have!

We live in Florida and went through 2 hurricanes in 2004 which made us realize how unprepared we were to deal with a disaster in a warm climate. Right now I have enough dehydrated food for one hot meal a day for 2 people for 3 months. We have 72 hour backpacks and am building a year pantry that we will rotate though and maintain. We ordered a sampler package of the dehydrated food first to make sure it was something we really eat. One thing we learned in 2004 is don't boil water for coffee while you're grilling meat, turkey flavored coffee is the worst!

Don't forget to plan for your pet food too.

Well I have to chime in to say that almost my entire emergency pantry is local, as in from my back yard local, but I realize that is not realistic for everyone. I think a Fearless Friday in the near future should be canned meat. Canned stew meat is one of my favorite "go to" meals. The meat is tender and juicy. We can venison every year, but I image it would work the same with beef stew meat. It is a great way to tenderize that cheap and sometimes tough cuts of meat.

I started storing food almost a year ago, and I will definitely be looking into canning meat - I have not tried that yet, but all of my other canning experiences have gone well, including my most recent experiment - canned butter! It is actually very fast to do - melt the butter in the microwave while your jars are sterilizing, fill the hot jars, cap, process as you would jelly, and allow to cool until you can pick the jars up without burning yourself. Then dunk the jars into an icewater bath. Spend the next 15 minutes or so periodically picking up the jars and shaking them - butter separates when heated, and this will help re-homogenize it as it cools. The goal is to have smooth butter again when set. Worked like a charm. Pickled eggs and fish are next on my list.

Remember to have a good stock of oil, sugar, salt and baking soda. You may be surprised how quickly you go through these things. When planning for a longer-term emergency, store some Vitamin C and a source of iodine...fresh produce and seafood will go away and scurvy and thyroid trouble are no fun. If you have room, consider storing EXTRA coffee, tea, bulk spices, oil, sugar, and salt, and also toilet paper, soap, and Vodka - relatively cheap to buy, these things can become valuable trade goods.

Realize while planning your emergency food pantry that many dry bulk foods come into your home already contaminated with eggs from bugs that will hatch later and spoil your stored food. There are two ways to deal with it, one foolproof and the other not, but better than nothing. The method for the squeamish is to freeze your bulk food for a minimum of 36 hours. This may kill the eggs, but does not always do so -- it only takes two surviving eggs to contaminate your entire supply. The other method requires diatomaceous earth (DE) to mix with your dry stored food and scatter liberally around your food storage area. You can rinse the food to remove the DE before cooking. DE is a mechanical irritant, not toxic, and is not harmful to humans in the residual amounts present after rinsing (in fact, some people use it occasionally in larger amounts for bowel health...I have not tried this, but know one who swears by it). It also will kill bugs dead. Wear a good quality and well-fitting dust mask when handling DE, as it can do a number on your lungs if inhaled (imagine inhaling fine pieces of glass, which DE pretty much is). If you intend to store more than six months worth of food, you need to use DE.

In addition to prescriptions and basic first-aid supplies, spend some time on building a list of other basic supplies, too...basic toiletries, cleaning products, toilet paper, feminine hygiene, etc. The easy way to do this is to locate pads of paper around the house for a week, and every time you pick up something, consider how it would impact you to NOT have that thing "ever again" - and what you would do instead. Write down your "necessities." Be creative, for example, one cleaning product can do multiple jobs, the dishwasher won't work without power, so diswasher soap would be redundant, etc. Taking the time to live a week "as if" - operating only out of your stores - is also an eye-opener. Good preparedness!

As a Floridian who has been through numerous hurricanes, tropical storms, etc (even one which devistated the community - Hurricane Charley, I lived where it hit landfall). My husband and I definately have an emergency food supply....probably larger than most as my husband is also a survivor enthousiast (sp?). Robert Neville would be delighted to find our house! haha

Thanks for this post. The post and the comments above give me some things to think about and plan with for an emergency. I have, you know, food in the pantry, but I haven't intentionally built it up for this purpose. It certainly wouldn't be a balanced diet as is--mostly pasta, tomatoes and tomato sauce, milk, and some beans.

I've always kept a well stocked pantry -- not as an emergency solution, but because I never know what I'll want to cook/eat in advance. I admire those of you who can plan a week's worth of menus and then stick to the plan. I go to the store and find the specials and plan. My pantry is where I keep all the ingredients for the items that I love and find myself falling back on over and over. But the side benefit is a well stocked pantry. My children used to complain, "There's nothing to eat...!" and of course there was. However, it just required cooking which they did not wish to do at the time. My pantry staples always include cans of black beans, red beans, rice, pasta, canned tomatoes, mushrooms, olives and ingredients to use when baking.

There have been a few times when the supply has "saved" me; like when I was a young mother and ran out of money before I ran out of week.

I've never canned meat, but do know it is easily done. My country mother in law always canned vegetable beef soup made with the vegetables she raised as well as beef from her cows. In addition she canned beef chuncks too. She taught me lots about canning, preserving and drying as did both of my grandmothers and mother.

My son hunts and keeps his family in venison all year. Their freezer is stocked to last and they have a large generator to run the fridge should they have a power outage.

Canning is a romantic concept, but in reality it is laborious work. I used to can every summer with all the women. I also canned my own figs, pears and made lots of jams and jellies. I love standing back and admiring my handiwork, but it used to be very hot work in an un-airconditioned kitchen. When my mother-in-law passed away, we were all discussing how to divvy up her canned goods as well as her freezer contents. She had so many cakes and pies already baked and in the freezer. She was a model of an incredible woman who never knew an idle moment or an unproductive day. She was a paragon who left us all better for having known her.

I have a friend who's husband lost his job and they lived off their emergency store for three months - eliminating their grocery bill almost completely until he was able to find a new job. Having a store of food built up is just a wise move all-around.

For meat, we raise our own for the most part and have a large deep freeze. We can store a year's supply of meat easily in a mid-sized chest freezer which we keep in the laundry room. For emergencies we have a generator and enough extra gasoline to keep the freezer cold enough in an emergency to last quite a while.

My mother-in-law cans eggs in vinegar - she called them "pickled eggs" - and that would serve as a great source of protein and nutrients. Eggs purchased locally from grass-fed, free-range chickens would be much higher in nutrients than the typical store-bought egg (my husband calls them plastic-mass-produced eggs) and would be another way to store locally purchased foods in an emergency food pantry.

Angela <><

yes ma'am. We do have an emergency pantry stock and one mother of a generator, too!
You know, for the hurricanes that keep heading towards the gulf.
Lots of canned foods, which last forevah when we don't have to use them ;-)
GREAT post, Heather!

As an NC'er all too familiar with ice storms, we have an emergency garage "pantry" of things that can cooked on a gas grill when there's an ice storm and 2-3 days of no power. (We have a garage, not all that common in the South.) This 'pantry' includes several canned goods and a REGULAR can opener (which is what I use most of the time), decent instant coffee (but I use a French press so all I really need to do is boil water) and we're usually fairly stocked in the garage freezer with grill-able meat and fish (once the power goes out, we grill a lot of it). We also keep a full extra tank of grill gas and at the end of the summer, buy lots of grill toys & tools that make all of the above easier to deal with. Specifics include things like: canned veggies (hate 'em, but have 'em), instant starch food (anything you can microwave for 1 minute can also be grilled) and all bread toasts on a grill.

We've had ice-storm parties where the neighbors bring "meat that must be grilled" and because it's generally cold outside, a cooler can keep it (with defrosting ice packs) for 1-2 days. (And of course, a lot of dry and canned dog food for the pooches).

We learned this the hard way about 30 years ago when we moved down South and although we haven't had an incident in a while, it's useful to keep around. Each year, we donate the unexpired canned goods that we don't really want to a food pantry and re-stock during a sale or a Costco trip. It helps to have a hubby who is grill-master incarnated and loves his grill. But I made him type out the directions for turning it on and off safely because I'm not very mechanical and rarely use the grill myself.

The movie that came to mind for me is "I am Legend" with Will Smith. As a survivor of zombie apocalypse he ate a lot of canned food and often broke into abandoned apartments to look for food. He used the pantry principle, only it was other pantries.

Seriously, I am a big proponent of emergency pantries but I don't see how you could do that with local food. If someone wants an local emergency pantry, they'd pretty much have to can the food themselves, and even then it would be fruit/veg rather than protein. I believe it's possible to home can sausage or similar but you'd be flirting with botulism.