One of my goals is to continue to inspire
and encourage more people to begin or increase their vegetable gardening as a
way to support their food supply. I
advocate a return to self-sufficiency through gardening, as it is a rewarding
and delicious way to promote good health by ensuring a healthier food source
introduced into the food supply chain for your family.
As my garden has grown, so has the knowledge
I’ve accumulated through trial and error, research in gardening, insect
control, composting, soil testing, canning and economics.
Ultimately, as my garden expanded so did my
need and desire to develop a comprehensive food storage planning system. After many investigations of different food
storage planning sources, I developed my own system that takes into
account things like growing seasons, shelf life, nutritional balance, and
an informed shopping list, just to name a few.
I want to share all the following
information in hopes that it will be helpful to you, because I know how it has
enriched my own family’s health, well-being and nutritional security.
But
that’s not the only reason.
Have you noticed changes in the world and
in your own life over the past 5-10 years?
Regardless of the debate about the causes, it’s pretty obvious that:* The climate is changing;
* Growing seasons and zones are changing;
* The incidence of weather-related and other natural disasters has increased;
* Globalization has shifted economies to being more interdependent than ever;
* We inhabit a new cyber culture that is convenient and unlimited yet not without risks to our personal information; and,
* Governmental instability and regional disharmony is widespread.
For these and other unpredictable reasons,
events occurring anywhere in the world can now impact our lives more
immediately than ever before, sometimes in ways we cannot imagine. As a result, effective management of a household
in this day and age must include, at a minimum, a realistic assessment and a
plan for how to handle an interruption of goods and services, regardless of the
cause.
Consider this: Trucking companies haul food
and, in many places in the U.S.A., they deliver almost every day. Imagine if there was a lengthy truck driver
strike. Many of us here have the
erroneous idea that supermarkets have a warehouse in the back with gigantic
shelves of stocked items. In reality,
grocery stores do not stock more than a 3-day supply on their shelves. Much of the stock is put on the shelves by the actual truck drivers, not store employees. When the shelves are empty, they remain empty
until the trucks come in. How prepared
would you be for such an occurrence?
Let
me take a moment to point out to all the readers, that I have nothing to sell, and I do not allow advertising of
any kind on my blog, now or ever. I
promote no products and receive no items for free or at a reduced cost to provide a
review either.
All sources of nutritional intake
information I have found out there refer to a recommended calorie amount that
we should have each day. I was building
my food pantry storage for almost two years using the wrong criteria as a
tracking tool. Only recently have I
switched to relying on my own method of tracking food best-by dates for the
five main food groups. My method
calculates the length of time my balanced food supply will sustain a variable
number of adults. My old method of
tracking my food storage was simply monitoring the total calories of all the
food I had stored. Then I began studying
the impact of best-by dates. I decided
that since these dates were so important, THEY are what I should be
tracking.
For those of you that are not familiar with
the term "#10 can", it refers to the size of a large steel can that
may hold things such as emergency freeze-dried foods or dehydrated foods. They are commercially available through many
online emergency food supply distributors.
You may even find them locally available in some big box stores, large sporting
goods stores or restaurant supply houses.
Theoretically, if there was a disaster and
you needed food, you would probably use what #10 canned food you had available
to make it through the hard times. This
seemed like the wrong approach to me. I
asked myself, why would you access your expensive long term food supply for
short duration emergencies of a month or even two months? If you had a supply of normal grocery store
food, you could bridge the gap between an emergency and a recovery. I set out to plan to do just that with The Balanced Nutrition Best-By Date Tracking
System.
What if you lived in Boston and were one of
the citizens required to recently “shelter in” for over 24 hours after the
Marathon bombing? If you hadn’t yet
shopped that week, would your food pantry have enough to tide you over? What if you happened to have 20 guests over
for a Marathon party and had to “shelter in” with them indefinitely?
Most of us can handle short-lived
situations. But it’s important to
remember that just because the news media stop reporting on the aftermath of
storms like Hurricane Sandy does not mean that all is back to normal. It more often means that people are
reorienting themselves to a new normal.
Many people are still living in FEMA trailers months after Hurricane
Sandy hit the east coast.
Most people believe that when a natural
disaster or a doomsday-type event occurs, FEMA will be right there to install
their quick-deploy FEMA Camps. They
think that FEMA will be giving them food and shelter along with all the
comforts of home, and things will get back to normal pretty quickly. People will find out too late that their
complete trust in a top-heavy bureaucratic agency has been misguided. People need to be, and should be prepared to
take care of their own selves. One group
of people that ensures their own survival through events of this magnitude will
be the Preppers. They weren't born
Preppers. They became Preppers after realizing the value of having the wisdom and
foresight to be prepared for disasters of any type and from any source.
I
realize that this reads somewhat like a documentary about what led me to
develop The Balanced Nutrition Best-By
Date Tracking System. Using this
method of tracking food best-by dates gives our family peace of mind knowing
that we are prepared to survive the pressure of an economic collapse, any
natural disaster or even widespread civil unrest. Interruption of the food supply chain is possible
through an almost endless list of causes.
Some are complex, some are simple.
Any breakdown in the overall transportation system can have a dramatic
effect on the quantity of food found on grocery store shelves. Societal norms indicate that most people
aren't interested in knowing how to prepare for a catastrophe such as a
hurricane or earthquake. Even fewer
people care enough to prepare for a more far-reaching event such as the
collapse of the monetary system, or even the dreaded attack of the Zombies. There is even the possibility of effects
consisting of longer duration such as those resulting from an electromagnetic
pulse or EMP, whether it is caused by a solar flare or a man-made weapon. There can be a crisis that can have major
economic effects, such as an outbreak of civil unrest that leads to localized
marshal law; failure of the regional electrical grid; contamination of the
area's water supply; government overreach into our lives or several other SHTF
events.
Now, some people don't care for listening to talk show hosts like Alex Jones because of their style of delivery on several of these topics. However, if you get past their delivery style and search out the substance of the information from other reliable and responsible sources, you will find their information was actually quite accurate. That is why they are so passionate about getting the truth out there. The lies being fed to the American public through the main stream media are beyond astronomical. Think of your family before an unexpected event impacts your lives. Please prepare your balanced food pantry storage for yourself and your family while you can, before food becomes unavailable on the grocery store shelves. Make sure that you have plenty of raw honey and purified drinking water in your food storage to go along with your beans and rice.
In the past two years or so I have searched
YouTube and the rest of the internet to gain more knowledge about having
emergency food storage for my family. During that time, I have watched videos on
several dozen YouTube channels on food storage and food prepping and read
hundreds of comments pertaining to those videos. I have also watched several episodes of
National Geographic's Doomsday Preppers, a show which I feel mocks people's
foresight and wisdom to put up food for emergencies, be they natural or
man-made. The show portrays people with
foresight as tinfoil hat-wearing fanatics.
In addition, ordinary people don't have $100,000 for having a bunker installed
in the ground and then stocked with $50,000 of freeze dried foods.
I also studied the quality and content of
information people say they have to share with others pertaining to emergency
preps. Unfortunately, a few people out
there try to come across as wanting to help others, but ultimately, they are
just another business franchise trying to get your money by psyching you up
about doom and gloom and then selling you the product they're hawking. However, there are also many more out there
with sincere hearts trying to do good and help people to organize their
emergency storage of food and other necessary items so their families will be
safer and more comfortable for when an event takes place. I applaud their efforts and commitment. I believe that being prepared for any
emergency situation is a very good thing.
History continues to show us, time and time again, that it is wise for
everyone to have food stored to provide for continuity of nutrition to replace
expended energy necessary to overcome adverse events.
The Balanced
Nutrition Best-By Date Tracking System that I have created is the only one
available. This Excel spreadsheet is not a template. This is a standalone individual document that
you will tailor to suite your own family's needs. There will be no other to match it
exactly.
Now, you always hear that you should have
from three month's to a year's supply of food storage. So just like most people, I thought I should
find out what to prep with and I too, started buying some long shelf life food
in #10 cans. After buying a few items of
the typical dehydrated and freeze-dried products, I began realizing that there
was a huge date gap between using normal grocery items and the transition to
consumption of long term storage food in the #10 cans. That helped prompt me to develop my
practical prepping spreadsheets.
The important thing is, using my food storage
spreadsheet method will allow you to monitor your normal grocery store food
storage as an active pantry controlled by best-by date monitoring. This way, you can accumulate a year's worth
or more of emergency-use food that consists entirely of foods you use every
day. There would be no need for storing
large quantities of food in #10 cans until after you build your one year
food supply. Using my method, you wouldn't
need ANY #10 cans to have your year's worth of a nutritionally balanced food
supply, which makes accomplishing it that much more financially possible.
Having said that, I DO believe in having
several #10 cans of long-term food products for your family's protection in
case of a food shortage. I'm not against
having them or the 5 gallon Mylar bag buckets of food because of the nutritional
security they provide for your family. I
believe in tapping into those supplies only after you have exhausted your year
supply of normal grocery store food. It
would be interesting to see how a long-term cache of #10 cans and 5 gallon buckets would last
using my way of tracking, and to see if the entire cache proved to be
nutritionally balanced. It would be easy
to calculate the number of servings in each container, then apply it to my food
spreadsheets under each food group to see how long the balanced meals would
last.
At this point, I realized how critical it
was to have a nutritionally balanced food storage system. I went to MyPlate.gov to see what the
nutritional recommendations were. While
they gave you the number of servings of each of the five main food groups that
you should have each day, they did not tell you the number of calories for each
serving. Consequently, I developed my
own criteria using their 3,000 calorie recommended intake as my benchmark.
I started my food preps almost three years
ago by purchasing some #10 cans of oatmeal and also some rice from the LDS
Online Store. I have less than a dozen
cases in total. I felt those would be
helpful to extend whatever else I could assemble towards having a food storage
pantry. Both oatmeal and rice are good
meal extenders and are important to have in one's food supplies. A combination of beans and rice makes up a
perfect protein, requiring no meat.
I also do home canning to supplement my
food storage. I have a little over 200
quarts of home-canned vegetables and fruits at this writing. While I feel that home canning while vegetables
are readily available is a great asset to food storage, the shelf life becomes
an important issue to recognize. I
myself have no qualms about eating my own canned food that is up to three years
old. Of course, I look at each jar and
make sure the top pops the vacuum when I open it, then I smell the product, but
I do that regardless of the age of it. I
haven't had any bad ones yet, but I always check to be safe.
While I am a strong advocate of home
canning, I also believe in adding to my food supplies with store-bought canned
goods and a few long term food storage items as well. At this point I decided against a large
long-term storage consisting of hundreds of various entrees in #10 cans. I admit that I do have 200 pounds of rice
stored in canning jars and one-gallon Mylar bags along with oxygen absorbers
because I expect to be feeding many members of my family should we experience a
natural or man-made event. I also do
canning dry foods of all types. I have
come to believe that a food supply from a variety of sources will be the most
advantageous to have for preparation of near-normal meals.
There is good canned food in grocery stores
that has best-by dates in excess of three years. Most canned or boxed food for cooking has at
least a year of shelf life. That means
that it is possible to build your food storage from "normal" food and
over a reasonable time, accumulate a year's worth if you use my spreadsheet to
monitor the Best-By Dates. Think that
will cost a lot of money? Check out the
price of a #10 can of freeze-dried or dehydrated food and you will see that
accumulating the "normal" food from grocery store shelves is much,
much cheaper and you will accumulate a year's worth much faster. After you get two or three months of canned
and boxed goods stored, you can go for storing some dry foods such as beans,
rice, pasta or lentils in canning jars or Mylar bags, both methods using oxygen
absorbers (O2a) except for those with bulk sugar and salt in them. I have put up the following items in quart
canning jars with O2a's inside: pinto beans, navy beans, dark red kidney beans,
light red kidney beans, black-eyed peas, garbanzo beans, black beans and white
enriched rice. My pure cane sugar, dark
brown sugar and light brown sugar do not have O2a's in them as they will cause
sugar and salt to solidify. I also keep
several of these items in regular size cans from the grocery store. I believe redundancy can be a lifesaver in a
catastrophic event, as well as just sometimes making it easier to just pull out
a can of beans for quick use rather than use the soaking process for preparing
dried beans.
Some people think it is a good idea to
track the costs of your food supply items in order to see what effect inflation
plays in food storage. I completely
disagree with doing that. I think it is
pointless and serves no real purpose other than to prove that food prices are
going up, a fact that we all already know.
Not that I am well off and can afford everything I want, because I'm not
and I can't, but a person has absolutely no ability to control the effect of
inflation on their food storage. What
alternative do you have? Not buy
it? Then what do you do for food? I think it is more practical to grit your
teeth and buy it at the price the store is asking, then at least you can feed
your family. Everything is getting to be
more costly. That is a fact. What alternatives are there? You can drive to another store and get the
same food item for $0.07 cheaper per can, but theoretically, you just used a
quarter gallon of gas at $3.55 a gallon.
Since you had to drive farther to get to that store, you will also have
to drive back, which doubles the extra gas consumption to half a gallon. That's potentially at least $1.77 in gas
alone, let alone your time invested in that trip plus standing in a check-out
line twice. I suspect that most people
won't be buying over ten cans of a particular product at a time, so the food
cost savings is $0.70, and the extra gas cost you $1.07 more than that, which
means you potentially wasted that amount of money going the extra mile as it
were.
The above scenario is what I believe to be
a typical shopping experience when trying to build up your food supplies
without considering what would be the best
way to do it. Some people think that
couponing is the way to go because of the savings reported on TV shows and YouTube channels. I
believe the stores that allow that to be filmed are doing it for free publicity
and as a general rule, almost all
stores have stopped allowing extreme
couponing to take place. When you watch
a video segment, do you see any other people in the background that are as
excited as the ones that are being filmed?
Of course not. It's free
advertising for the store! You can see
the ad signs in the aisles as well as the brand of products being
purchased. You can easily tell what
store they're filming the show in. No
matter where you shop, take a few minutes to read your grocery store's rules on
couponing and see how restrictive they have become in response to extreme
couponing. It's reality. They simply aren't going to allow themselves
to lose. Having said that, if you
actually do still have a store that does
do that with coupons, shop fast before
they change their rules!
Another interesting aspect of food prepping
is the categories of food that people track, such as grains, fats and oils,
legumes, sugars, milk and cooking essentials.
Not meaning to diminish the value of that for them, if that's their
preference it's fine, but it just doesn't work for me. Of all the sites that I viewed for methods of
food tracking, none seemed to be the right fit for me. I saw that many sites used spreadsheet lists
already offered by other sites, yet they would lead you to believe the list was
"theirs," when in reality it was a copy of other people's work. Some even create documents in MS Excel and
then try to sell them at low cost.
That's a bad deal in my book. If
you can use their document effectively, then you already have the ability to
create your own spreadsheets. It's not rocket science.
Of all the sites that I have reviewed, most
people did not try to claim the work of others. Most gave due recognition to the fact that
theirs was a modification of other's work that was available through YouTube or
Google Searches. That's fine with me
because I, too, have scoured the Internet for methods to track food
supplies. I began with spreadsheet data
comprised of some very complex MS Excel spreadsheet formulas from others online
for determining the length of time a food supply will last. I dismissed those and developed new
spreadsheet criteria of my own. My
spreadsheet is in a format that provides all of the data I wanted. The result is my own original work that I
used to create The Balanced Nutrition
Best-By Date Tracking System, not found anywhere else.
Standardized
Adult Caloric Intake Calculations
|
Food Group
|
Total Calories On Hand
|
Calories Per Adult per Day
|
Number of Adults
|
Total Adult Calories per
Day Required
|
Days of Food Supply
|
Months of Food Supply
|
|
Fruits
|
39,785
|
560
|
6
|
3,358
|
11.85
|
0.4
|
|
Vegetables
|
110,782
|
464
|
6
|
2,785
|
39.78
|
1.3
|
|
Protein
|
369,435
|
485
|
6
|
2,913
|
126.83
|
4.2
|
|
Grains
|
554,415
|
629
|
6
|
3,774
|
146.90
|
4.9
|
|
Dairy
|
7,360
|
720
|
6
|
4,320
|
1.70
|
0.1
|
|
|
1,081,777
|
2,858
|
|
|
|
|
I was determined to have a well-balanced food supply that affords me and my family the opportunity to select from many food items in order to prepare meals from our supplies comprised of the five main food groups as published at MyPlate.gov. That way, meals won't be boring when disaster strikes. Many people think that nothing will ever happen to disrupt food delivery to the grocery stores. We need to plan ahead for bad situations so that we're less vulnerable to them.
In my humble opinion, it is not a good
choice to use the grand total of calories stored as the basis of how long a
food supply will last. I think that is a
nutritionally dangerous method, yet that is exactly how I did it before
developing my current method. The main
goal for my endeavor was to closely identify what the adult caloric intake per
day should be for each of the five food groups based on the recommendations
found on the MyPlate.gov website. Since
the specific information I sought was not available on the internet, I made it
my goal to develop my own criteria. The
numbers were critical in order to have a "live" document that
automatically compiles data from the inventory of each of the five food groups
in my spreadsheets and calculates the number of months that each group in my
food supply will last. I have quite
successfully accomplished that goal.
Having done that, I can now monitor my
caloric inventory and know that I have a well balanced food supply on
hand. One thing that was brought to
light by this experience is the fact that I needed to increase my own fruit and
vegetable inventories by more than three times their current caloric value to
achieve a balanced food supply. Simply
monitoring the total calories I had stored completely masked the
situation. The calories of proteins and
grains far surpassed those of fruits and vegetables that I had in my
supply. I suspect that most people
who store food for emergencies of any type would find this to be the case for
their own food storage if they currently only track total caloric value. Their actual storage could be drastically
unbalanced nutritionally, as mine was, until I acquired more of the foods
needed to balance it. My food storage
shortfall would not have been discovered at all had I not undertaken this
mathematical calorie quest.
Application
of the guidelines published in MyPlate.gov for a 3,000-calorie diet against the
foods I had in my food groups at that time allowed me to develop a 2,858 daily
caloric requirement based on the five food groups.
I took the caloric value of one serving and
divided that into the total calories I had on hand for each particular food
group to find the average daily recommended calorie intake for those
groups. The simple math results are as
follows:
1. The average caloric value in the 17 different
items we had for daily fruit servings with a total caloric value of 9,515 was
560.
2. The average caloric value in the 43 different
items we had for daily vegetable servings with a total caloric value of 19,956
was 464.
3. The average caloric value in the 77 different
items we had for daily protein servings with a total caloric value of 37,383
was 485.
4. The average caloric value in the 54 different
items we had for daily grain servings with a total caloric value of 33,967 was
629.
5. The average caloric value in 1 daily dairy
serving with a total caloric value of 720 is 720. Dairy is a challenging group to prepare for
due to short shelf life issues.
When considering all the above information,
the 142-calorie variance between the published guidelines for a 3,000-calorie
diet and my actual results is quite insignificant. Furthermore, my basic food group
calorie calculations do not include foods such as vegetable oils, mayonnaise,
salad dressings, butter, olive oil, jams and jellies, etc., so these foods will
all accent the caloric intake.
My emergency food storage calculation chart
that I showed in a preceding paragraph is right on the mark for computing my
food storage needs. Specifically, the
number of months a food supply will last using a balanced diet of 2,858
calories per adult per day. The goal
should be to have the numbers in the "Months of Food Supply" column
all about the same. The smallest number
in that column will indicate a balanced food supply for the shortest length of
time. After that point, you can run into
nutrition problems. When my calculations
for the daily adult caloric intake from each of the five food groups is
compared against the Government's dietary recommendations at MyPlate.gov, my
results equate to 95.3% of the Government's total caloric recommendations for a
3,000-calorie daily intake. For
compliance with a simple recommendation, that's close enough for me!
Consequently, the "Months of Food
Supply" column will show when I
need to purchase more food for a particular food group in order to maintain the
balance for the number of months my stored food will last. The numbers in the column for "Months of
Food Supply" on hand should be relatively close to being equal. The closer, the better, and the longer the
better. Remember, your food supply is
only balanced for the shortest amount of time shown. One of the benefits of my method is that it
shows the food groups that need additional supplies to balance the entire supply.
I chose to only calculate active adult
caloric needs because they will be greatest and we will probably be doing more
physical labor as a result of whatever event takes place. I count each child as a grown adult. That provides a small source of back-up
calories for unforeseen events, such as visitors or assisting a neighbor in
your community, both of which would have to be of very short duration unless
you plan ahead of time to support them for an extended period.
I have not found a good way to put a copy
of this spreadsheet online for people to download it directly for their own
use. Google Docs is definitely not the
solution for accomplishing that. For me
it was a miserable, tedious mess that corrupted the data when it was uploaded
in there, so I'm not using it.
A copy of my spreadsheet is available to
all for personal use but specifically not to be used for monetary
gain. My practical prepping spreadsheets include my
home-canned foods as well as vacuum canned dry foods. Just use my email address below and send me a
message with "Spreadsheet" as the subject line, and simply request a
copy. I'll send it to you with no BS
attached or required. There are NO
costs, NO gimmicks, NO memberships and NO subscriptions of any type involved. I'm doing this to help other likeminded folks
who care about their family's food supply and physical well-being during a time
of crisis as well as every day. Email me
at:
preppingpatriot@gmail.com
Remember, these food items on the
spreadsheet are from a previous copy of my own food storage tracker, so you
will need to develop your own. I
recommend saving (File, Save) the one I send to you as a sample
in Excel, then make a copy of it with your own document title (File, Save As) and adjust that one as necessary or desired. Of course at some point you would delete all
the foods that I have in there. I would
suggest that you leave mine in place until you get at least five or six items
of your own of each group in there and are comfortable using it. Change the font color for your own information
that you are inputting. That might
visually help you get accustomed to this spreadsheet sooner. After you're used to the spreadsheet, delete
my rows of information and change the font color of your data back to
black. It's less expensive to print and
the black cartridges last much longer than the color ones.
Some of the benefits of tracking your food
storage this way and things that I have discovered for myself are as follows:
You can print out any named tab in this
Excel document and use it as a shopping guide for that category of product.
You will find that as you build your supply
by best-by dates, when you go to buy additional food and take a copy of your
spreadsheet with you for reference, you will see that some of the best-by dates
on the store shelf items will arrive sooner than the dates on the same products
you already have. I normally shop in the
same grocery store, so when that situation occurs, I don't buy the on-the-shelf
product because I consider it to be "seconds" from some other
source. It just couldn't be stored in a
warehouse all together, and then all of a sudden be on the same store shelf and
be five or six months apart on the best-by dates. It could have been sitting in a hot truck or
railcar for all that time. That's NOT a
food that I would buy for my storage. I
feel like the quality has potentially been compromised somewhere along the
delivery route. Thank you just the same
but I'll wait until a new best-by date is shown that is farther out by at least
a month than what I already have in my storage.
I might have to wait three weeks or so for it to change to an acceptable
date, but I'm willing to wait in order to keep the newest foods possible on my
shelves. Using my food storage tracking
system allows you to not "have to" buy these products at this time.
Since you're only adding it to your
existing supply, you really aren't pressured into buying it now. I didn't know this situation could happen so
frequently until I began tracking the dates.
And I do mean frequently!
Best-By Dates are more important than one would think.
Let's say that you have three of the same
item and size, but different best-by dates, so there are three entries in the
spreadsheet. If you use the spreadsheet
in the way it is intended, you should
always consume the product with the earliest best-by date first. If you try to maintain can rotation using the
first-in first-out system (FIFO) that everyone talks about but don't monitor
these best-by dates, the FIFO system really lets you down. You will have various best-by dates all
intermingled in the racks throughout your product's inventory. Marking down the purchase date on a can has
absolutely nothing to do with product longevity when compared with monitoring
best-by dates, and therefore it has no value to me.
Now the advantage of taking a copy of your
spreadsheet with you when grocery shopping is that when you go to buy any replacement
product, you can look at it and see if the best-by date on the product on the
store shelf is farther out than the date of your last purchased product of that
type and size container. If the store
shelf product has a date that occurs before the date of the farthest out date
of that item in your inventory, then don't buy it. It's been transferred from somewhere and
re-shipped to the store you shop in.
When you deplete an item's quantity, delete
the cell content for the best-by date and quantity only. Then, when you click on Data and select Sort,
you highlight that entire food group and then sort by selecting Column C
as the criteria, and it puts all the blank best-by date cells at the bottom of
that particular food group. There's your
shopping list organized by food group!
Remember that you only sort each food group list individually. I like to keep four blank lines past the last
item in a food group so I can write-in the names of additional products I would
like to buy.
I buy at least four of whatever product I
selected, as that quantity seems to work conveniently for my family. You may choose another quantity that suits
yours. It's a good method to build your
food storage without breaking the bank.
Case sales of vegetables late in the year may be a good thing,
but check the best-by dates. They may be
not as far into the future as one might hope for, and you might be buying
"leftovers" with short shelf lives.
Another benefit of using my practical prepping spreadsheet as
a shopping list is that you can write in a product’s information and quantities
purchased while you are in the store if you don't already have it on your
list. Then later at home, you can enter
the data into your computer without having to handle one of each product again
to read the label. It's much less effort
expended that way, and that's how I do my own.
If the item is a same-size replacement, all you need to enter is the
best-by date and the quantity purchased.
The other information has been previously entered by you in your
original purchase of the item. Just
because a product shelf is full in the grocery store, doesn't mean it's all
new. There may be as many as 3 or 4
best-by dates for a particular product.
Check EACH CAN before you put it in your shopping cart.
Several of the food items I utilize for my
own storage may seem repetitious, such as Hormel Corned Beef Hash for
instance. I chose that product because I
like it, plus, it is a high calorie and high protein food. Additionally, Hormel's web site stipulates
that if their product is in a can that has not been dented or compromised in
any way and the can is not swollen, their product will last indefinitely. That makes it a good choice in my opinion.
An
important side benefit of using my system is that it provides a caloric
reference by serving and container. By
checking those, you may decide what higher calorie items you may want to stock
up on first.
Another item of interest that becomes more
exposed when using my spreadsheet method is the trickery of the
manufacturers. I track the number of
servings in a can as well as the weight.
I recently found that Vienna Sausage has reduced the serving size as
well as the weight per can. Vienna
sausage is still a good food storage choice because you don't have to cook it
and it requires no refrigeration. I know
manufacturers do this all the time and it's nothing new, but it still irritates
me when they reduce size and quantity but at the same time increase the cost of
the product. But, like I pointed out
earlier, what are you going to do? Not buy it and teach the manufacturer a
lesson? I don't think so.
PRINTING. Personally, before I print any of my Excel
documents, I set my printer quality to "fast draft" in order to save
ink. I print out my entire workbook with
ALL the tabs every two weeks or so. That
allows me to have an updated hard copy ready to convert to manual pencil and
paper entries for when the electrical grid goes down. I also recommend keeping several spiral
notebooks of various sizes in your emergency supplies. Additionally, a good supply of reliable pens
and some packages of good quality pencils with extra erasers would be excellent
to have in your storage supplies. A few
packs of large index cards could be very handy as well. Don't forget at least a couple of pencil
sharpeners in case one breaks or gets lost.
I have talked primarily about food storage
for the system I have created. The
non-food worksheet tabs in the Excel document I assembled from online
suggestions given while watching some very excellent YouTube Channels such as: Bexar (Bear) Prepper at http://www.youtube.com/user/BexarPrepper ;
southernprepper1 at http://www.youtube.com/user/southernprepper1 ; and
MAINEPREPPER at http://www.youtube.com/user/MAINEPREPPER .
I highly recommend you visit their channels to learn the correct ways to be truly prepared for ANY emergency. These are people that are committed to helping others.
In my non-food spreadsheets, I include simple lists of things that would be comforting to have to see you through many types of situations. Some of these items may not be preferred by everyone. All I'm trying to do is increase all of our planning awareness to be able to take care of all of our families during any event.
You are free to do whatever you wish to with
this information, except to use it for monetary gain. To prevent that from happening, I have
submitted my original work portion contained herein to the U.S. Copyright
Office for registration.
If you like what I am willing to share with
you, please feel free to use it as it is completely free. If you don't like it, don't use it and don't
tell me why you don't like it because that would serve no purpose. I am firmly set in using it the way I have
designed it. I won't entertain negative
comments with a reply, nor will those comments even be seen by the public. They will be removed by the Comment
Moderator. The only thing that I have to
gain from doing this is the knowledge and satisfaction that I have sincerely
tried to help my fellow man in the quest for a happy life.
"I want to make it perfectly clear
that I assume no responsibility or liability for using any of the data,
suggestions or information that I have assembled and provided for
non-compensatory use. You are solely liable
and responsible for your own decisions and actions or inactions through its
use!" By using my spreadsheet to
build your own personal version, you accept the terms and conditions of the
preceding statement.
To use Excel to track your food storage,
you must know how to do the following:* Create simple formulas
* Amend formulas and cell content using the F2 key
* Link cells
* Use AutoSum
* Copy sheet rows
* Change row font color
* Sort worksheet data by selecting "Column C" with "No Header Row" selected in the popup box
* To use F2 to create a formula in a cell with a number already in it, press F2, Home, =, End, then + or - your numeric data and press Enter.
* Highlight the ENTIRE row when sorting, not just the filled cells.
I hope this information will be helpful to those who choose to check it out. A basic ability to use Microsoft Excel would be very useful to you. I cannot provide that, so each person has to have, or needs to learn, the basics of using spreadsheets for themselves. Here is a free Microsoft tutorial site link for Excel:
Here are some foods that I buy from WalMart
because of price and Best-By Dates. I
realize that they probably contain BPA's, GMO's and are not organic, so I would
appreciate you not bringing that issue up.
Look, I know the air is polluted but I still choose to breathe. We have to make tough decisions
sometimes. In case these items are of
help to those just starting their food preps, or perhaps if they give ideas to
those already doing it, I want to provide the product identification for you:
* Sun Maid Raisins in 6-pack individual serving boxes
(Individual serving size is a big asset for avoiding dirty hands reaching into
your large container food supply. Avoids
contamination.)* Del Monte Sliced Bartlett Pears in Syrup (you'll need the energy. More in syrup than in water, however, you can drink the water for hydration.)
* Sliced Pineapple in its own juice
* Green Giant Cream Style Sweet Corn (good for use in enhancing cornbread flavor and texture!)
* Bruce's Candied Yams (multi-year shelf life)
* Glory Seasoned Collards (very tasty for canned collards)
* Sliced Honey Carrots
* Canned Sliced Potatoes (for frying)
* Canned Diced Potatoes (for soups)
* Jif Natural Peanut Butter or your preferred brand (Don't buy many at once because it lasts a long while. Buy how many you would use in a month plus one jar. Repeat this for a few months and you will end up with a good supply that has staggered best-by dates.)
* Planters Dry Roasted Lightly Sea Salted Peanuts
* Chef Boyardee Beef Mini Ravioli
* Spaghettios with Meatballs
* A variety of Hormel Canned Products
* Hormel Corned Beef Hash (a personal favorite)
* Original Treet (for slicing then frying. It's the equivalent of Spam but is much less expensive.)
* Bush's Best Pinto Beans in Chili Sauce
* Goya Brand Premium Garbanzo Beans with Low Sodium (Found in the Latino food aisle of WalMart. The last cans I bought in March of 2013 had Best-By Dates of February 2018!)
* DAK Canned Ham in 1 pound can (Can be found in 3-packs at Sam's or BJ's.)
* Welch's Natural Strawberry Spread
* Sliced Mushrooms in a jar (not stems and pieces)
* Elbow Macaroni to store in quart canning jars
* Spaghetti noodles
* Diced Tomatoes with Garlic and Onion
* Del Monte Can of Garlic and Onion Pasta Sauce (less water than Hunt's)(Del Monte is currently 94 cents for a big can at "our" WalMart.)
* Pure Cane Sugar (Store in Mylar bags or canning jars with NO oxygen absorbers [O2a]. I use glass canning jars because they are tough. Plastic allows air to pass through. O2a makes sugar or salt solidify.)
* BIC cigarette lighters (two 4 packs at least! More if you can afford it. I like several packs that contain 4 or 5 lighters in case they leak out. Don't buy off-brand types as they are more prone to have problems.)
* Wood Strike on Box matches kept in closed used and cleaned plastic peanut butter jars to keep dry. Additionally, I put my boxes inside a zip lock sandwich bag before putting them into the jars. (being plastic, if the jar falls, it shouldn't break, but even if it does, the sandwich bag will still keep the matches dry.)
* Distilled Vinegar and Apple Cider Vinegar. Make sure they are 5% acidity. You will need them for home canning some foods. Glass jugs are best. I'm buying glass half-gallon jugs to transfer the vinegar into for storage. It lasts indefinitely that way.
IMPORTANT: FEEL ALL THE CANS YOU ARE GOING TO BUY AS YOU
PUT THEM IN YOUR BASKET. DON'T BUY ANY
CANS THAT ARE DENTED ON THE SIDES OR THE SEAMS.
I alternately spin the ends of mine in my hands with my fingertips
feeling for any deformed areas. It's a very accurate way of detecting dents or
deformities in the cans.
ALSO, don't be shy! Ask the cashier to be gentle with your cans
as you have picked out cans without dents because they are for a food
pantry. Your own! They have always complied with my requests
with no questions or comments. Better
still, shop in a store that has self-checkout aisles and bag them yourself!
DRINKING
WATER: "Clorox Regular
Bleach" is no longer being manufactured.
In seeking new guidance on water purification efforts, I contacted the
Clorox folks. The following is an excerpt
from the reply I received in April 2013 from Clorox when I asked them how to
use their product for water purification after "Clorox Concentrated
Regular Bleach" was introduced into the market:
"In case of an emergency, we recommend boiling water for 1
minute. When boiling is not possible, we recommend filtering water to let
suspended particles settle out. Pour off the clear water and add Clorox
Concentrated Bleach - Regular Scent as follows: 40 drops Clorox Concentrated Bleach - Regular Scent per 5 gallons water
8 drops Clorox
Concentrated Bleach - Regular Scent per 1 gallon water
2 drops Clorox Concentrated Bleach
- Regular Scent per 1 quart water
Wait 30 minutes. The water
should have a slight chlorine odor. If not, repeat dose and wait 15 minutes,
then sniff again. Use only Clorox Concentrated Bleach - Regular Scent, not
scented bleach.
Again, thank you for
contacting us."
I
had to put that excerpt in there because life depends on good water
purification practices. REMEMBER THAT
CLOROX CONCENTRATED BLEACH - REGULAR SCENT ONLY HAS A SIX MONTH SHELF LIFE. In
this case, I absolutely subscribe to the practice of writing the purchase date
on the bleach container! The
manufacturer's info on the jugs is too difficult to translate into a simple
calendar date.
In closing, I am only sharing my views on
these areas of food storage and prepping.
They are just that. My
views. I am not in any way suggesting
that someone else's way is wrong, it just doesn't suit my needs or
preferences. I hope my copyrighted
information is helpful to others out there, either those just beginning to prep
as well as those who are seasoned preppers.
Perhaps it might inspire them to modify how they track their storage to
better serve their families.
I
want to point out again that I have nothing to sell, and I do not allow
advertising of any kind on my blog, now or ever. I promote no products and receive no items
for free or at a reduced cost to provide a review either.
Thank you for reading this information that
I feel is necessary for me to share with you.
God
Bless America, and good luck to all!
Thanks,Bob
preppingpatriot@gmail.com
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