In June, I shared some suggestions for preparing for emergencies, which included stocking up on water and food.  Some of you might be wondering where and how to store the foods you’ve bought (and if you haven’t been buying some food to stock your pantries for at least a couple of weeks, I really, really strongly suggest you do it now – really). 

The ideal foods that can be bought ahead and stored for a fairly long time are beans and grains.  They are easy to buy at most supermarkets and health food stores, and still fairly cheap, and you can get big discounts if you choose to buy large 50 lb bags, which you can split with a friend or two if that’s way too much for you to think of using in this lifetime. 🙂   

What kind of grains can you store?  Wheat, amaranth, millet, buckwheat, rice (though supposedly brown rice gets rancid within a few months, I’ve never had a problem), oats (whole, steel cut, rolled, quick), barley, quinoa, corn, popcorn (you know that’s an important part of everyone’s daily diet!).  Flour and cornmeal don’t stay nearly as long as the whole grains, though it hasn’t stopped me from buying that, too – especially since my grinder grinds corn finer than I like it to be, so the whole corn I bought ages ago is still sitting, unused.  For cornmeal, I like to get the 1 or 2 lb packages that are each separately packaged – easier to freeze, to use, and to protect from infestation.  Then there are loads of different kinds of beans, in addition to yellow and green split peas and lentils. 

Over the last few years, I’ve gotten free buckets from a restaurant, that vary from the large pickle size (I don’t know how many gallons that is – maybe 3?) to 6 gallons.  These are round and have tight fitting lids, and are perfect for food storage.  I’ve heard that restaurants and bakeries around the country give these away, though you usually have to wash them out (I’ve been lucky – mine have all been washed). 

I line each bucket with a garbage bag, and fill the bucket with the grain.  Ideally, you should freeze the grain for a couple of days before you put it in the bucket in case there’s any weevils or moth egg that could potentially hatch; that will kill them.  You won’t usually have this, but all you need is one moth to hatch, and it can infest your entire pantry – it’s amazing what they can get into. 

I also have square buckets, that I love and prefer by far over the round buckets, but they are much harder for me to get hold of.  The restaurant that I got my buckets from usually returns them to the food companies, so I’m delighted whenever I’ve been able to get them.  The reason I prefer them is the same reason I prefer square or rectangular food containers for the fridge – they use the space more efficiently and look neater and more organized.  Another is that sometimes when I get the round buckets, I’m given mismatched lids that don’t close properly (since there are several size buckets as well as different companies that make them and therefore slight differences in even lids that are the same size), but the square lids always fit perfectly – very tight seals. 

For the beans, until now I’ve found it cheaper to buy them by the 1 or 2 lb bags, not in bulk.  But yesterday when I noticed the recent price increases for beans, I thought I probably should reevaluate if this is still the most affordable option.  I don’t have enough of each kind of bean to fill a bucket, and even if I did, I don’t have enough buckets, so what I do is put them all in a large rectangular plastic storage container – I put all of each kind of bean together so it’s easy to pull out what I need without hunting through all of them. 

There are also other things other than grains and beans that can be stored.  Cans of tuna, fruit, vegetables, peanut butter – whatever you would usually use for your family.  Imagine that a hurricane hit your area (like what happened just sevem weeks ago with Ike across many states in the US) and you couldn’t go shopping for a week.  What would you want to have on hand?  Remember, when there’s no power, your refrigerator and freezer aren’t going to be useful.  So you need to have shelf stable foods available.  Whatever your personal list is, that’s what you should stock up on.

I don’t believe in running out and stocking up on a bunch of foods you don’t eat and don’t know how to prepare.  I’ve used wheat berries for almost three years and since we grind all of our grains, it’s natural for us to buy them.  But I wouldn’t recommend across the board that people buy wheat berries just because they store well – you’ll end up letting them sit there forever! 

These buckets do take up some space, but not nearly as much as you would think.  Fifty pounds of grain fits in two 5 gallon buckets – and fifty pounds of grain is a lot of food!  They can be stacked and placed against a wall in an out of the way area of your home – for us, that’s the basement.  Don’t think I run up and down the stairs every time I need a cup of rice, though!  I keep smaller containers of the grains in my kitchen for daily use, and send one of the kids down to fill them up when they get low. 

And no, mice can’t get into these!  I’ve heard rats can, so if you have rats, you need metal storage containers, but hopefully none of you have to deal with that.  Also, I’ve heard that putting some bay leaves at the top of each container helps prevent insect infestation – they don’t like the smell.  I got some bay leaves on Friday, but haven’t gotten around to putting them in the buckets yet, but in any case I don’t have long term experience with how well that works.

Avivah