Canned beans ARE dry beans, just cooked and canned...
(Not green or yellow snap beans, of course!)
Summerthyme
Food How long will what I have last?
- Thread starter nomifyle
- Start date
(Not green or yellow snap beans, of course!)
Summerthyme
SouthernBreeze
Has No Life - Lives on TB
He doesn't know that. Don't tell him.........Shhhhh!
nomifyle
TB Fanatic
I'm a big fan of black eyed peas, but not DH. He'll eat great northerns, navy, and butter beans. Off the top of my head I can't think of any that I don't like. Dh said he would eat lentils if I put a few in soup. He grips about chick peas in soup, but I think he eats them.
SouthernBreeze
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Great northern beans and navy beans are two more that he won't eat. I don't think he's ever tried chick peas. Basically, all he will eat are purple hull and black-eyed peas, butter beans/limas, baked beans, pintos, sweet peas, and green beans. I do use red beans when I'm cooking Cajun, but that's the only way he'll eat those.
I base our storage on calories. 3K a day per person. Makes it fairly easy to keep track. A lb of wheat is 1500 calories. A 35 lb bucket is 47.5K cals or a little over 15 man days. 20 buckets 300 man days. Super accurate? No but it is a quick and easy way to keep track.
SouthernBreeze
Has No Life - Lives on TB
I cringe every time I hear of someone storing their food in an outdoor storage shed/building/facility without heating or cooling arrangements, especially in the kind of heat we have here.
I figure it's really too hard to know. I would always try to supplement what's stored with garden/hunting/fishing and purchases when possible. So...if it looks like enough, it will have to be.
The LTS stuff in #10's (oatmeal, beans, lentils, rice, refried bean/peanut butter/tomato/milk powder, pasta, potato flakes, wheat, peas, dried onion/garlic, pilot crackers) is there, and if things look dire, they will come into meal rotation with the shorter term shelf-stable, regular pantry stuff as it gets used.
The LTS stuff in #10's (oatmeal, beans, lentils, rice, refried bean/peanut butter/tomato/milk powder, pasta, potato flakes, wheat, peas, dried onion/garlic, pilot crackers) is there, and if things look dire, they will come into meal rotation with the shorter term shelf-stable, regular pantry stuff as it gets used.
SouthernBreeze
Has No Life - Lives on TB
That's what our plan is. If things begin to look dire, we plan to incorporate our LTS food into regular meal rotation with our regular pantry foods. Plus, trying to continue to buy, grow, and forage as much food as possible. We can always hunt and fish for meat. Anything one can do to help supplement their food storage might be invaluable later on.
school marm
Senior Member
I am exactly the same. However, I also think it's important to test things out.
I have stored buckets of oats--cool, dry, and dark--that went bad after about 10 years. On the other hand, I have a friend a few miles away who has some very old LTS food that she had in Las Vegas in her garage for 30 years and that has been in her barn here in the northern part of the state for 25 years. She gave me a bucket of powdered milk to experiment with. No Mylar, no oxygen absorbers. I used it to make Magic Mix, which then went into puddings and soups. And I served the dishes to my family members (about six to eight, depending on the day) as well as a dozen ladies from our church food storage group. We were all shocked that everything tasted so good. Two ladies didn't like one recipe (different dishes).
Penny then gave me a 4-gallon tin of pinto beans that were probably older than the milk and stored the same. I pressured canned them and they came out perfect.
I never would have believed that milk or beans could possibly be palatable after 55 years in harsh conditions. (I would like to point out that we are in a desert and I'm sure this affects how well foods store.) But after testing these two items, I would never again assume that old food is bad and automatically throw it away. Nor would I take this as an excuse to improperly store food. I still think it's important to take every measure possible to store our food properly.
SouthernBreeze
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Yes, of course everything would need to be tested. It's not a one size fits all type of thing, especially depending on where you live. It's very hot and terribly humid down here, and things have a tendency to go bad quickly due to heat, moisture, and mold. I can't imagine storing food in these conditions without a way to keep the heat and moisture/mold buildup out. Metal cans also have a tendency to rust very quickly in these conditions, too.