There is nothing new in food storage; indeed it has been the natural way for millennia. It is our artificial modern system which allows instant supply and demand. With a mere three day supply of food in the stores at any one time, one can see the risks here should snow blizzards or other disasters strike.

This section is being constructed to contain lists of products that can be stored long term, a list of suppliers, local where possible, and instructions about storage. It is hoped to link to the nearest key suppliers who have such products available.

Meanwhile, one of the best foods for long-term stocking is rice in sacks. In Ireland and particularly in Wexford this could have a storing life of up to 20 years. White rice, more commonly known as polished rice, is a main food source for over half of the world’s population. It is versatile and has a high caloric value and long shelf life.

One Chinese family, two adults and an 8 year old, living in Wexford, which buys sacks of rice, uses a half pound a day for all three. This may not seem like much but one almost magical attribute of rice is how it expands upon being boiled. If we accept this as being reasonable for three adults, whose sizes vary, each adult will require 60 lbs per year.

Sacks of white rice are available from Chinese stores in both Dublin and Bray. A nearer source to South Wexford is Spice World on the quays in Waterford. At the time of writing a 20kg sack of white rice there was 32 Euros, while a 25kg one in Bray was only 26 Euros.

If an average meal per person is one third of a half pound of white rice(8ozs), which is 2.7ozs per day, one needs to purchase 60 lbs per person per year. 1 kilo equals approximately 2.2 pounds so one 25kg sack of rice weighs 55lbs. Thus, a little over one sack per annum, costing 26 Euros, is required per person.

There appears to be a conflict between this figure and the around double that required by spaghetti and other general grains below, so until this figure is checked through third party experience assume one to two sacks of rice per person per year. If you have experience of how much rice is required, please contact us.

Apart from being a basic or staple food, rice has the added attribute of stretching or swelling other foods that may be short in supply. See Stretch your meals by adding rice.

Here you will find information on buying and storing bulk rice.

Pasta, and particularly spaghetti, appears to be the easiest and most practical food to store after rice. Spaghetti with a listed shelf life of up to 3 years can be purchased in small sealed plastic bags, each containing 500 grams. If an average person consumes 6 ounces or 150g per meal per day, 28 packs will last 156 days for one and 78 days for 2 people. 72 packs, not a huge volume, will do one person for a year.

A third practical or basic food that can be stocked in quantity is dried beans, available in large Euroean supermarkets and Asian stores in see-through 1kg bags. The recommended shelf life is slightly less than that for pasta but is about a year. What is of special interest is that eack cheap 1KG bag produces ten servings, which makes it ideal for adding to rice.

Apart from rice, pasta and beans, one year’s supply of basic food for each adult could be made up of:

Men on left, Women centre, Children (ages 1-7) on right

Grains 150 125 60 lbs
Wheat 200 150 60-100 lbs
Milk 60 60 80 lbs
Sweeteners 65 60 40 lbs
Salt 5-10 5-10 2-5 lbs
Fruits 25-30 25-30 15 lbs
Vegetables 40-45 40-45 15-25 lbs
Broths 5 5 2.5 lbs
Yeast 2 2 1 lbs
Oil 2 gal 2 gal 1 gal

Courtesy Survival Acres. See link below.

These are fine for calories but may not be for all calcium or vitamins A, C, B12, and E. Vitamins A and C can be obtained from one’s home grown vegetables or canned and bottled fruits and certain fruit drinks. For Vitamin B12 one needs meat. Vitamin E can be obtained from fats and oils and from nuts such as sunflower seeds and almonds. Calcium can be obtained from dairy products mainly, including powdered milk, hot cocoa and dried milk products.

Canned products have marked shelf lives of up to three years but what is published about canned food suggests that, although it will lose some nutrients over time, it is good to eat for up to one's lifetime. Cans of sardines, for example, carry best before dates of three years, but should last much longer. As we are talking about interim stocking here, cans are an obvious option. They also have excellent storage attributes as they cannot be affected by light or moisture or suffer attack from insects or rodents. If one is growing one's own vegetables, the cans to stock will likely contain meat and fish. Unless one can find a source of large catering types, their small size will mean a large number of cans per year per person, so bulk buying could be difficult.

There are some valuable vegetable products that one will not be able to grow, such as beans in tomato sauce and corn, so cans are a good source for these.

On the assumption that one will not eat meat or fish every day, here is a suggested six month stocking of canned food for two people, assuming each can feeds two per meal (over Winter say):

60 cans of meat
60 cans of fish
60 cans of red beans
60 cans of corn

Any more suggestions?

What cans to stock

A major constraint in stocking canned food is the limited range of meats, fish and vegetables available in cans. As one will be mixing whatever one has stored of these with a staple, some planning for recipes that will not become too boring could be useful in the choice of what to purchase. A recipe that one could plan for is that where the can contents are mixed with rice. An ideal dish is a Risotto as it can be made from rice mixed with meat, fish or vegetables. With this in mind, some way of storing or finding products that will make the risotto creamier must be found, such as juice from the cans and chopped herbs from one’s all year round herb garden and/or chopped vegetables. If during an emergency butter is available all the better. This dish also suggests that an ideal vegegable to use in a Rissoto is beans, white, brown, kidney or whatever, which come in cans. Moving to that other staple, spaghetti, an ideal canned vegetable to have on hand is tomatoes, so when stocking remember tomatoes also.

Beans, like rice and pasta, can also be stored indefinitely in dry bulk form, but are hard to find thus in some countries.

Products for breakfast

While unlike in the US it is difficult to find grain based products in the UK and Ireland capable of some storage, there is an exception and happily it fills the gap left by the other products here as it can be used for breakfasts. Most supermarkets carry a range of breakfast cereals, solidly composed of grain, the more sophisticated with nuts and fruit added, not talking here about cornflakes or other children's cereals, but the packs of concentrated cereals, including some that make porridge. These have shelf lives, marked on the packs, of up to one year ahead.

A couple who eat such cereal with milk five out of seven days a week will find each pack lasting about three weeks for both of them, so 17 packs should last one year. Where they are stored in sheds, care needs be taken to put them in plastic or wooden boxes as they can attract rodents. This is also where cans of dried milk come into play. Advice on a typical dried milk can is that the contents should be used after opening in six weeks, so this gives some guide as to how many cans might be required for a year.

After breakfast cereal, the cups of tea (see below) call out for bread, toast or equivalent. It may have to be the last as the first have no shelf life. The closest substitute appears to be dried cracker-type bread, such as Ryvita. Two slices of Ryvita for example for both breakfast and lunch for two people daily will amount to around 100 packs of 17 slices each. At this stage also, the need for containers, either plastic or wooden becomes pressing as one is facing both volume and rodent-vulnerable products. Cans will appear even more attractive but one will not easily find canned bread or biscuits. Peanut butter, with a shelf life of at least six months can replace ordinary butter. A breakfast item with a good shelf life of up to a year or more is marmalade or plain jam, which is of course a preserve. Spread thinly it makes the dry bread biscuits tastier. When you try to provide for lunch also you learn what huge volumes are required even for just two persons for one year. Another intriguing long shelf life alternative to bread is to purchase a few Christmas puddings each year as these have a shelf life of up to two years.

Soup

There are two choices - cans or packages of powdered soup, the first with an indefinite shelf life, the second with one of at least a year. The packs may be cheaper because they provide about a third more in volume once water is added and they take up less storage space, but they do require protection from rodents.

Salami and other smoked meats

A variation from cans of fish, such as sardines, for lunch are slices of salami and similar smoked meats. These have a suggested shelf life of about six months, so one could fit them in to whatever lunch inventory one plans, say small snacks of fish, meat or vegetables with dried bread or biscuits.

Eggs

Weekend breakfasts can be made more exciting with eggs, which can also provide a change from canned fish and meat for lunch. The traditional source is powdered eggs, also known as dried eggs, available from supermarkets. These are dehydrated eggs and were commonly used during the Second World War. The shelf life is reputed to be as long as 5 to 10 years. They can be used for baking or to make scrambled eggs and omelettes. A more expensive alternative, taking up more storage space, are pickled eggs.

Coffee

Coffee has not been yet mentioned simply because the author has not yet got around to examining it, but, in addition to tea, a year's supply of which is easy to store in around seven large tea bag boxes, one can also use Bovril for lunch occasionally as it also has a shelf life of several months.

Note of caution. Sadly, should there be a crisis, it will be wise not to reveal to anyone outside of immediate family that one has stored food thus because in the desperate period that will come with an economic collapse, food will become a vital currency to be stolen, if necessary through violence. Only when self-sufficiency has reached the stage where a large portion of the population is engaged in it will this danger abate.

Rapid emergency action

Some may not want to wait for a year of more until a reasonable stock has been built up, while others may feel that they cannot afford to delay as a crisis may be imminent. Emergency food, advertised as lasting up to 25 years, can be bought from outlets such as Mountain House in the US or its partner, Emergency Food Storage, in the UK, the latter of which delivers to some other European countries. You can purchase supplies from three months to a year or more. This is an expensive solution as the food needs to be paid for in one go. (In the US: http://www.mountainhouse.com/. In the UK: http://www.emergencyfoodstorage.co.uk/.

And for buying over a longer period, there is a huge list of what can be purchased and stored and the conditions required at Survival Acres.

All of what is recommended above, except for the emergency supplies, can be purchased in local stores.

Go to Growing food

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