Special Considerations for Storing Baby Foods

If you have a baby in the house, it is important to consider what baby will need in an emergency. As with many stored foods, the nutritive value of canned foods slightly decreases over time. For most people this is not a big problem, but for infants those vitamins and nutrients are more crucial. It is also more important to keep your foods fresh and safe for feeding to baby. Here are some points to consider when storing food for babies and toddlers: Look ahead. Unless you want to have to update your baby’s emergency food supply every couple of … Continue reading →

Making Baby Foods from Stored Foods

It is important to remember baby’s needs when planning for emergencies. There are a couple of different approaches you may choose to take in order to provide for baby when it is most critical. You may choose to store ready-to-eat baby foods, but you also may want to know how to make your own baby foods from other stored items. The ingredients for these foods generally store longer than the canned baby foods, and of course they are more versatile. Things like rice, wheat, and dehydrated vegetables can be used for making baby foods and in cooking meals for the … Continue reading →

A Surprising Story of 100-Year-Old Meat

Still not sure you want to store canned foods for years on your shelves for emergency preparedness? Would you guess that a can of meat could last more than 100 years? Perhaps this story will convince you of the long shelf life of canned foods. Canned foods were first introduced at the turn of the 19th century. It was a revolutionary concept–to be able to store perishable foods in containers without refrigeration. One of the things that really encouraged their use was the practicality of canned foods in ships for long voyages. In the 1820’s Sir William Edward Parry took … Continue reading →

Canned Food Storage Safety

Some canned foods can last almost indefinitely if they are stored in the right conditions and are not dented or bulging. Make sure to exercise discretion when using old canned foods. And keep these safety tips in mind when storing canned foods for long periods of time: * Always remember to label your cans as you buy them. I would recommend simply writing the month and year they were purchased on the top of the can with permanent marker. For most items, you should be quite safe to eat these items within two years of this date. After two years, … Continue reading →

How Long will Your Canned Foods Last?

How do you determine how long a can of food will last? Actually, it’s kind of hard to guess, but here are a few guidelines when trying to determine the shelf life of your canned foods: Home-canned foods Most sources say that home-canned foods will store safely for at least one year. With other food items, the level of acid in the food is the critical element for determining how long it may store. Low-acid foods last longer on your shelves than foods with higher amounts of acid. Some sources say all commercially canned food should last at least two … Continue reading →

What Do the Dates on Your Canned Foods Mean?

Are you unsure about how long a can of tuna will last? What do the stamps printed on the cans mean? Can the stamped dates tell you how long an item will store? Those codes sure can be confusing! Here are some things to keep in mind when storing canned foods: First, you may be able to get some information from the product codes printed on the cans, but not much. Cans that list a “use by” date or a “best if eaten by” mean more than random numbers or dates without labels. Other codes or dates printed on cans … Continue reading →

Pantry Meals: Vegetarian Chili

Pantry meals are meals that can be put together using only nonperishable food items. Having a few of these meals on hand means you will always have an easy homemade meal ready to be prepared, without having to go to the grocery store or buy take-out. More importantly, stocking up on food can help you to be prepared for an emergency when you cannot make it to the store. To learn more about pantry cooking as a method of long-term food storage, click here. The recipe below is for vegetarian chili. Modify it to your family’s personal tastes before you … Continue reading →

Cooking by Numbers Makes Pantry Shopping Easy!

Imagine being snowed in and not knowing what to cook? This great resource makes it easy to just whip something together from items in your pantry. If you have been following my blog, you know that I have been trying to use up some of my food stockpile before I move. I have been doing this through a self-imposed pantry challenge, well, one of my good friends, Kelly, who has been reading my blogs has just alerted me to a great website that will make my life a lot easier, when it comes to pulling ingredients from my pantry. The … Continue reading →

Pantry Challenge: Falling Off of the Wagon

How many individual packets of sugar does it take to make a half a cup? I’m proud, well, almost proud, to say I now know the answer. I officially ended our pantry challenge when I asked my husband to bring home a bag of sugar (and cold cuts and bread and milk and diapers). My moment of defeat came yesterday when I was faced with fact that it is already February, and we haven’t brought in the class snack for Andrew’s Kindergarten class. Not a problem, I thought, I’ll just make some sugar cookies. I got out the cookie cutters, … Continue reading →

Pantry Challenge: What You Can Do with A Box of Potatoes

From the back of the pantry, hiding from the warm yellow light of the kitchen sits a lone box of instant mashed potatoes. How this box of potatoes got there is a bit of a mystery. I always make mashed potatoes from scratch, since real potatoes are so inexpensively frugal, especially when they are on sale for buy one bag and get one free. It is not unusual for me to have two 5- or 10- pound bags of potatoes available. So where did the…gasp…instant potatoes come from? My best conclusion is to blame it on my husband. No, no, … Continue reading →